Stripping wallpaper from asbestos sheets?

[PinkOboe]

Our house is 1920s ex local authority. We have odd panneled ceilings. I'm 99% sure they're asbestos

I'm cool with that. I'm pretty knowledgeable about asbestos (I've even got a certificate to prove it ). They're in good condition, not degraded at all

I quite like the ceilings, there're sort of characterful. Not in a rush to pin board over them although I know this could be done

Thing is, each panel is covered in woodchip. I'd quite like to strip this off.

I have a karcher steam cleaner which you can get a wallpaper striping attachment for. Assuming with the attachment no scraping would be needed, would anyone know if a few coats of paint would suffice or would I need to re paper in lining paper to make them perfectly safe and serviceable?

Paneled? Gah

The risk would be at the stripping stage, when you are exposing it and physically pulling the wood chip off. From past experience wood chip needs scoring before steaming to take it off.
Personally I wouldn't risk disturbing it. Having said that I work for an organisation that has a very low tolerance for asbestos risk - if it is identified we send a speciallist team in to remove it, irrespective of type or amount.

Pretty sure you always need to score through wallpaper before stripping to give the steam access to the water-based glue between the paper and the surface. Without scoring there is a serious barrier for the steam to get through, especially if the woodchip is also painted. Personally I would not risk that if there was a chance it was asbestos.

Yes, they're my fears.

The karcher wallpaper thing has great reviews and a few say no scraping necessary but that's perhaps not talking about decades old woodchip with four layers of paint on top

Woodchip is REALLY hard to remove, even with a steamer. It will need scoring and a lot of pulling/scraping. I wouldn't if asbestos was underneath.