Asbestos floor tiles - anyone removed them?

[allduffedup]

We plan to put down a wooden floor in the living, room but when we pulled up the carpet there are asbestos floor tiles underneath. Even worse, the carpet gripper was nailed straight into them so most of the tiles around the edges of the room are loose and cracked, or will crack when we try to remove the carpet gripper.

We had the tiles tested and they definitely contain asbestos. It is probably a low content, eg. 2%, and it is white asbestos which is the least dangerous type. Removal of the tiles is non-licensed work, ie. we don't need a specialist.

However, I contacted a specialist anyway, and we are looking at £400 + VAT to remove the tiles.

Has anyone else had this done, or had someone remove them eg. a floor fitter? The only other option is to just remove the damaged tiles and replace them, but this still requires removal of quite a number of tiles, many of which are split in half or splintered.

Is it a concrete floor?

Have a look here - I believe guidance sheet a23 refers to floor tiles!

Posted too soon...The sheet might help you decide whether you can do it yourself or whether you need to pay for your specialist. Have you spoken to any other contractors who will do non licensed work for you?

There are other sheets in the asbestos essentials set I linked to which talk about the protective equipment etc that you should wear and the precautions you should take.

I think you definitely need to get rid of the damaged tiles or use some silicone paint to "seal" the damaged edges to reduce your likelihood of inhaling any loose fibres.

While it can be a simple (ish) task to do, if you're at all worried about it definitely get someone in to do it.

I had them removed by a licensed contractor. Took them three hours to do a room. I've since spoken to a couple of asbestos specialists and they said the fibres are bonded into the cement so unless you grind or sand the tiles, fibres released when removing tiles are minimal. I'd an air test done afterwards and came back clear. Under the tiles you may see black bitumen adhesive, that could contain asbestos too. You can screed over it before laying your floor.

The floor under the tiles is black, which I assume is the bitumen. Underneath that I'm assuming its concrete

Or it could be an asphalt floor- not sure

We took ours up ourselves, took a couple of hours.

We called a couple of specialists and they said it should be fine as the asbestos is bonded in the mixture for the tiles and will only be a problem if sanded.

They also said to ventilate and wear a mask over mouth and nose.

We also dampened the tiles to limited the 'dust' as much as possible.

We have concrete floors and they were stuck on with the black adhesive stuff. We left that and our floor tiler had no problem levelling/smoothing the floor before adding new tiles.

we done our ourselves, done something similiar to clargo in that we damped the tiles down considerably to stop most of the dust. to get rid of the tiles we had to contact the local council who gave us thick black plastic bags(they were thick so they didnt tear easily) then they took the tiles away for us.

Thanks both, good to know. Have been quoted £275 + VAT and £570+ VAT by two specialist asbestos companies so far!

We have these in our 1950s house. Both builders who've come out to look at them in order to put laminate flooring over have suggested putting a latex layer over the tiles to seal them in, laying the lam over the top.