Asbestos Floor Tile Removal in Guildford

Thermoplastic floor tiles are the asbestos material people find rather than notice.

They turn up when a carpet comes up, when a kitchen is stripped out, when a leak means a floor has to be lifted. Hard, brittle, usually nine inches square, in a mottled brown, black, green or red that was fashionable for about thirty years and has been under something else ever since.

Recognising them

Size first. Nine inch squares, which is 229mm, laid tight with almost no joint. That dimension is the strongest single clue, because it belongs to a particular era of British flooring.

Then the material. They are hard and slightly brittle rather than flexible. Lift one at the corner with a scraper and it snaps rather than bending, which modern vinyl does not do. The colour is mottled and marbled through the thickness rather than printed on the surface.

Then what is under them. A black, tarry adhesive is the classic bedding for these tiles, and it frequently contains asbestos in its own right. That is worth knowing before anyone starts, because it changes the scope.

Where they are is a clue too. Kitchens, hallways, utility rooms, downstairs toilets and garages. Anywhere that needed a hard-wearing floor in a 1960s house.

Colour tells you nothing about asbestos content, and neither does condition. A sample and lab test is the only certainty, and because the tiles and the adhesive are two different materials, both should be tested.

What it costs

£15 to £30 per square metre, indicative. That makes tile removal one of the cheaper asbestos jobs per square metre, and considerably cheaper than a textured ceiling.

The variable is the adhesive, not the tiles.

Tiles laid on a clean screed with a thin bitumen bed lift with heat and a scraper, and the job sits at the lower end. Tiles bedded in thick black adhesive that has to be taken back to bare screed sit at the top, because scraping glue is slow and the glue is often the asbestos-containing part.

Three other things move it. One open room is quicker than a warren of small spaces with skirtings and door thresholds. Tiles already broken by whoever lifted the carpet cost more than intact ones. And anything heavy that has to come out first is time.

Disposal is by weight at £0.55 to £0.80 per kilogram. Tiles are dense but a domestic floor is not a large tonnage, so disposal is rarely the dominant line here in the way it is on a roof.

The full ranges are on the cost page.

Lift them, or cover them?

Both are legitimate and the right answer depends on what is going on top.

Cover them. Sound tiles that are firmly stuck down and are about to disappear under a new floor are low risk. Covering is a recognised way of managing asbestos and it costs almost nothing. Two conditions apply and they are not optional. Nothing gets sanded, ground, drilled or scraped in the process. And you write down what is under there, so the next person who lifts that floor finds out before they start rather than afterwards.

Lift them. The right answer where the floor level matters, where the screed has to be exposed for underfloor heating or a damp-proof membrane, where the tiles are already broken or lifting, or where you simply want the material gone.

The most common mistake sits between the two. Somebody decides to cover, then discovers the new floor needs the level dropping, and a fitter takes a grinder to the tiles at the doorway. That is the moment a managed material becomes an exposure.

The method

Heat and patience, not force.

Cold tiles snap. Warmed tiles release from the adhesive and come up whole, and whole tiles produce almost no dust. A hot air gun or an infrared plate softens the bed, and each tile is eased up rather than levered against its neighbour.

The area is sheeted and the room is kept damp. Tiles go straight into bags rather than into a pile. Anything that does break gets bagged immediately rather than swept later.

Adhesive is dealt with separately, and how far it comes back depends on what you asked for. Scraped to bare screed, taken back to a sound residue, or sealed in place under a floor primer. Each of those is a different price and each should be on the quote.

Then the clean, with a filtered vacuum rather than a domestic one, along the skirtings and into the corners where fragments collect.

The adhesive, in more detail

The black glue deserves more than a mention, because it is where most of the cost and most of the confusion sits.

Bitumen adhesive was the standard bedding for thermoplastic tiles and it frequently contains asbestos itself. That means lifting the tiles and leaving a black film on the screed has not necessarily removed the asbestos from the room. It has removed some of it.

Three ways to finish, and each is a different price.

Seal it. A proprietary primer or encapsulant over the residue, then the new floor on top. Cheapest by a distance, entirely legitimate where the new covering is going straight down, and it goes on the record for whoever lifts the floor next.

Take it back to a residue. Mechanical scraping while damp, removing the bulk and leaving a thin stained layer bonded to the screed. This is the usual middle path where a levelling compound is going on.

Take it back to bare screed. Slow, and the only option where the level has to drop, where underfloor heating is going in, or where a damp-proof membrane has to bond directly to the slab.

What is never acceptable is a floor grinder or a sander on asbestos-containing adhesive. That is dry abrasion of a friable material in an enclosed room, and it is the single worst thing anyone does to this material.

Garage and outbuilding floors

Worth a separate note because the tiles turn up outside the house too.

Nine inch tiles were laid in garages, workshops and outbuildings as often as in kitchens, usually straight onto a concrete slab. They tend to be in worse condition, because a garage floor takes tyres, jacks, dropped tools and damp coming up through the slab.

The complication is that a garage floor with tiles frequently sits under a garage with a cement sheet roof. Two asbestos materials, two categories, one building. Quoting them together is cheaper than two visits, and it also means the sequencing is right: the roof comes off first, from outside, before anyone is working at floor level underneath it.

Guildford floors

The tiles are in the same houses as everything else from that period, but the trigger is different.

Almost every enquiry we get about floor tiles arrives because of building work rather than because somebody was worried. A kitchen being replaced in a 1960s semi in Burpham. A hallway floor lifted in a Bellfields terrace after a washing machine leak. A downstairs toilet being converted in a Merrow bungalow.

That is worth planning around. The tiles are usually the cheapest part of the job and the most disruptive to discover halfway through, because a kitchen fit that stops for a fortnight while somebody arranges a lab test costs far more than the tile removal itself. If you are having work done to a pre-2000 floor, get the tiles identified during planning rather than during demolition.

We cover Guildford and the surrounding towns. The areas we cover page lists each one, along with what the local waste rules are.