Asbestos Flue and Boiler Removal in Guildford

Old heating installations are one of the few places where several asbestos materials sit within a metre of each other, and where the person most likely to disturb them is a tradesman doing something else entirely.

The materials are usually a cement flue pipe, insulating panels inside or behind the appliance, and rope or gasket seals at the joints. What ties them together is that they nearly always come to light during a boiler replacement.

The three materials

Cement flue pipe. A grey pipe, roughly the diameter of a drain pipe, running from the top of the boiler up through the ceiling and out at the roof, or horizontally through an external wall. It is rigid, chalky, and often in sections with a socketed joint. It is a cement product, so it is non-licensed work and it comes out in whole sections where access allows.

Rope and gasket. A woven white or grey rope round the boiler door, or a flat compressed ring between two flanges on the flue. Soft, dusty, and frequently frayed at the ends after years of heat cycling. HSE covers maintenance on these in the non-licensed category, provided the material is not substantially broken up.

Insulating panels. Boards inside the casing or fixed to the wall behind the appliance, there to protect the structure from heat. These are the one to be careful about, because a fire protection panel of that era is quite likely to be asbestos insulating board, which is licensed work rather than non-licensed.

That mix is exactly why the installation is assessed as a whole. Two of the three are ours to remove directly. The third may need a licensed contractor, and finding that out on the day the new boiler arrives is the expensive version.

Back boilers in particular

The arrangement that produces the most enquiries is the back boiler: a gas fire in the chimney breast with a boiler sitting behind it in the old fireplace opening.

They were fitted in enormous numbers from the 1960s to the 1980s and a lot are still in service. The opening behind the fire is usually lined with board for fire protection, the flue is often cement, and the fire itself sits on a rope seal. Three materials, one confined space, and no way to remove the appliance without disturbing at least some of it.

The other complication is that back boilers are frequently decommissioned rather than removed. The fire comes off the front, the opening is boarded over, and the boiler is left in the chimney breast. That is a legitimate approach, but it means the asbestos is still there behind the plasterboard, and it turns up years later when somebody opens the chimney breast for a wood burner.

Sequencing around a boiler replacement

The order matters more here than on almost any other job.

The wrong order is to book the boiler installation and hope the asbestos question resolves itself. What happens then is that the installer arrives, finds the flue and the panels, and either stops, which costs you the day, or carries on, which is worse.

The right order is to identify the materials first, remove what needs removing, and hand a clean opening to the heating engineer. That usually means one short visit from us before their start date, and it means the new system goes into a space that has been cleaned rather than one that has been disturbed.

If the boiler has already failed and you are without heating, say so. Non-licensed work of this size is a matter of days, and it can normally be fitted in before the installation date rather than pushing it back by a fortnight.

What happens on the day

The area round the appliance is sheeted and the floor is protected out to the doorway. Where the work is in a chimney breast, the opening is sealed off except for the working face.

Rope and gasket are wetted before anything is pulled, because dragging a dry, frayed rope out of a joint is precisely how a low-risk material becomes an airborne one. It goes straight into bags.

Flue sections come apart at the joints and come down whole where the run allows. Where a section is built into the structure it is cut wet with hand tools.

Then the clean, with a filtered vacuum rather than a domestic one, and a check of the hearth and the floor in front of the opening where debris collects.

You get the hazardous waste consignment note. The appliance itself, the casing and any metalwork go out as ordinary waste on a separate load.

Around Guildford

Back boilers and cement flues follow the housing stock of the 1960s and 1970s, which locally means Burpham, Merrow, Westborough and the council-built estates at Park Barn, Bellfields and Stoughton.

Two local patterns are worth knowing. Houses that were on a communal or district heating arrangement rarely have this problem, because there was no individual appliance. And properties that had a boiler replaced in the 1990s or 2000s often had the flue dealt with at the time, so the age of the house matters much less than the age of the heating.

If you are not sure what is behind the fire, a photograph of the front is rarely enough. It is the opening behind it that matters, and that usually means a look rather than a guess.

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