Scraping Asbestos Siding

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.

Scraping asbestos siding. Since asbestos is only dangerous when it is in a friable state you will remove the paint without sanding or scraping. 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. Use an exterior oil primer and. These are easily prepared and easy to repaint.

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. Besides the need to create a good surface for painting asbestos siding there are two other areas of concern. Old asbestos shingles on your house aren t dangerous unless you start breaking scraping or otherwise disturbing them. Normally you d scrap down the old paint from your siding but doing that with asbestos can release dangerous particles into the air.

This presents a problem when it s time to repaint the exterior of the house. Use a water blaster for the large pieces and allow the siding to dry thoroughly. When you say asbestos shingles i presume you mean asbestos siding shingles. 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. Asbestos shingles chalk badly even after a power wash you are likely not going to be able to remove it all. The asbestos i worry about is the loose powdery type used to wrap pipes and such. In our page top photo of badly peeling paint on fiber cement lap siding we suspect that the wrong paint was used the paint was improperly mixed a primer was needed or the paint was applied over a chalked or damp surface.

Sanding asbestos products siding floor tile etc is also unsafe but your painter should have no need for sanding. 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. 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. Latex products won t stick to chalk alkyds will.

Begin by analyzing a paint sample for lead content. You can power wash any loose paint or simply scrape and remove any.