Asbestos removal

Our Asbestos Story

After John got the laminate flooring off the slab on Saturday, April 17, we were a little suprised to see even older tile that we had never seen. The laminate had been installed in 2001 while we were away. (We had the work done after we left for Germany and before the renters moved in.) On Sunday, April 18, John was sharing photos of his hard work on the flooring and brother-in-law Tony messages him, "better get that checked for asbestos." Ugh! "It couldn't be." We thought the entire slab was built in the 1980s. Then we thought, "what if the slab was built in the 50's as patio or screened in porch?"

On Monday the 19th we called JCJ. Mike Cole came over in the morning on Tuesday, the 20th. He took one look and said, "it's probably got asbestos. 90% sure. But we could be wrong."

We moved into high gear, hoping there would be a way to get all of this cleared up soon enough to not delay the start of our project. Mike told us we were on the schedule to start on April 29.

Here's how we did it:

20 April: John called two companies that could do the asbestos test. One of them, the cheaper one, could get us results the same day if we drove the samples to their office in Whitmore Lake. We recruited Naomi to be our driver (John and Ruth Ann had meetings) and we got the results -- there was asbestos in the tile (2%) but not in the mastic.

21 April: John called abatement companies. We found a guy in Adrian who would come out on the 26th and organize the formal air testing company to take the air test after he finished.

26 April: Dave, the owner of Adrian Environmental, comes out and does a great job removing nasty tile. He wears the full haz-mat suit and gas mask. The mastic is so tough, it takes longer than he thought. He has to re-schedule the testing service to 5pm instead of 3pm.

After Dave was all done:

We passed the air-test!