Lino/diy/rotting/asbestos question!

[Hairtodayandgonetomorrow]

We are doing up our bathroom, it has not been decorated since 198something when the flat was built. We have bought some lino that we were going to lay tomorrow - just over the old stuff. Today I scraped off the mastik around the edges and found that the subflooring around the back of the loo is rotting, when I pulled up an edge to have a look it looks and smells disgusting! It is, however, only a very small area.

I live in social housing, should I ring them to do something about it? I would have ripped up more but I'm concerned it may contain asbestos, does that mean that they would just put new lino on to seal it and cover it up rather than lay new flooring? If we did report it and they fixed it would we have to move out while they did it or would it be a small job?

I'm tempted to pretend I didn't notice and just stick the new lino down to seal it in and forget about it.

WWYD?
Thanks!

Ring your social landlord. If it is asbestos they will have it taken out out -tis the rules. If it is rotten it is in thier interests to fix it before it is covered over again.

I rang them this morning, they are going to ring me back with a plumbers appointment to check for slow leaks and then look at the floor. I hope they fix it!

I had something similar once, they ripped up old floor fixed leak removed rotten boards and covered whole floor with 12mm plywood which we lino'd over. It took less than a day and as the floor was a bit wonky previously it was much better than before.

Its only a small area, how much of your floor was rotten? I hope they don't decide its not worth doing. I looked at it again today and its dried out a bit and doesn't look half as bad. Should I get it really wet when they come round to make it squishy and bring the smell out?

Less than a square foot was actually rotten, rest of bathroom floor was sound, I think the plywood was essentially just to cover up the hole (they didn't put in new floor board behind loo and they had to do the whole floor to make it level. It's not an expensive job ( I paid to have a kitchen floor plywooded which with lino and fitting cost £300 and it was roughly seven times as large as bathroom). I wouldn't deliberately wet it. Actually now it's drier put some loo roll on top and use as normal ( Plumbers often do this with joins on pipes to help them find the leak) that way you can see if it's a leak in which case paper would get wet or previously splashy tenants in which case floor will just need tidied up.

No experience with asbestos though, good luck.

I sprayed under the lino with dettol and then patted it back down and put a teatowel over it to absorb any moisture (its too stinky to leave out to air and we have no windows in the bathroom).

It looks like its already plywood under the lino so should be very easy to replace the bit behind the loo.

Thanks for your help!