From magic to malevolent

Humankind keeps discovering brilliant new ways to destroy itself – anon.

You’re probably thinking “what a way to start a post, and what does this have to do with renovating a house?”  It turns out there are hidden dangers in old house rennovation, two and a half particularly bad ones: asbestos, lead paint and anthrax.

Let’s start from the last (and the half) – anthrax. WTF? In short, animal hairs were used in old lime plaster; anthrax spores can survive decades, so there’s a theoretical risk you can release them from the plaster if the animal was infected. In reality it seems to be an almost insignificant risk, though when the lime plaster falls off and hairs fly during wallpaper removal one does wonder!

Next, lead paint. This was historically used a lot. We were lucky that one of the entrepreneurs who did a quote immediately picked it up as we hadn’t (indeed we didn’t even really know it was a risk). It’s all over our floorboards and stairs at the very least. Lead poisoning is apparently nasty but there is an easy rule to stay safe: don’t dry sand it and don’t burn it! In a later post we may come back to how we’re dealing with the lead paint problem in the happier context of restoring our wood.

Not quite the stairway to heaven.... the paint you see on the stairs with the cable running up it is lead paint.

Finally, asbestos. This hidden nasty is the real subject of this post, as the more we stripped back, the greater unhappy potential for asbestos we found. So last week we had an asbestos survey done.

Like us previously you probably heard a fair amount about asbestos but know little. In short this natural “miracle mineral” was widely used for construction as its properties which ticked all the boxes. It is fireproof, strong, sound and heat insulating and cheap. Sounds too good to be true. Turns out it was, as it also causes aggressive and terminal lung cancer 20 years down the line once released into the air and inhaled. That’s mankind finding a new way of destroying itself - using this thing in millions of homes. Subsequently it has been banned for construction use in most countries since the 1990s. Spare a thought for the poor souls who mined or processed the stuff before the dangers were fully realised, and their families.

OK, with that intro to asbestos here are two questions for you about our house:

1.       Which of the materials in the photos below from our house can contain asbestos?

2.       Which of the materials has been confirmed as containing asbestos after our survey?

(contextual hint – or red herring: it is estimated that 1 in 2 houses in the UK have asbestos)

1. Window sill

2. Drainage pipe

3. Chimney stack

4. Loft tiles and insulation

5. Vinyl flooring

6. Kitchen ceiling tiles

7. Roofing (outhouse)

8. Vinyl wallpaper

9. Garden edging

10. Fireplace (both fireplace itself and backing boards)

11. Bathroom (and kitchen) pre-finished board walling

12. Outhouse wall panels

OK, answers.

1.       All of them, (and more) could contain asbestos - this together with the fact its nigh impossible to identify without specialist tests is why we had the survey done!*

2.        3 (chimney stack), 7 (outhouse roof), 9 (garden edging) and 12 (outhouse wall panels).

We’ve been lucky there’s none inside and what’s outside is in good condition. Though before you start getting paranoid about asbestos in your home, its fine as long as it’s not disturbed… hence why it’s a massive risk during renovation when things are getting ripped apart. So you’ll be fine. Unless you have something like this in your basement in which case it’s probably time to call your own asbestos surveyor…

Asbestos pipe insulation. Bad news, particularly when falling apart like this. The stereotype asbestos and the type we were knew to keep an eye out for when buying (image from Pintrest)

In part 2 of this series I’ll be dressing up like Darth Vader and trying to remove the asbestos from the garden.

* though some items are more common than others, e.g. ceiling tiles (my personal massive fear as we did our own pre-inventory)