Scraping Asbestos Siding

This presents a problem when it s time to repaint the exterior of the house.

Scraping asbestos siding.

The asbestos i worry about is the loose powdery type used to wrap pipes and such. Or you can hire an asbestos remediation professional to do this for you. Often since asbestos siding holds paint so well there won t be any but if there is it you must remove it before you can repaint. If you hire the job out painting asbestos siding doesn t require any special licensing as far as the contractor doing the work so you.

Results typically take two weeks after the lab receives the sample. Use a water blaster for the large pieces and allow the siding to dry thoroughly. You can power wash any loose paint or simply scrape and remove any. When you say asbestos shingles i presume you mean asbestos siding shingles.

The asbestos is locked into the siding so if a very miniscule amount were to escape into the air i wouldn t consider it a hazard even indoors. The first is the possible and almost certain presence of lead based paint on the siding and the second is the asbestos in the siding itself. Since asbestos is only dangerous when it is in a friable state you will remove the paint without sanding or scraping. Old asbestos shingles on your house aren t dangerous unless you start breaking scraping or otherwise disturbing them.

Advice for painting fiber cement or asbestos cement building shingles or siding. Besides the need to create a good surface for painting asbestos siding there are two other areas of concern. Asbestos shingles chalk badly even after a power wash you are likely not going to be able to remove it all. Latex products won t stick to chalk alkyds will.

These are easily prepared and easy to repaint. Normally you d scrap down the old paint from your siding but doing that with asbestos can release dangerous particles into the air. Using a respirator rated for asbestos and disposable tyvek suits is likely overkill for painting asbestos siding but they are definitely necessary when removing siding but peace of mind is priceless especially if your significant other insists. You can purchase a home based asbestos testing kit that allows you to scrape off a small section of the texture product and mail it to a lab for testing.

Scraping or brushing off old paint from asbestos siding is necessary before repainting but dangerous because it can release small asbestos fibres the approach of removing the old shingles and replacing them with new siding is an option that many homeowners have pursued though probably not as safely as they should. Begin by analyzing a paint sample for lead content.