Don’t panic.
my mid 60s dormer bungalow has/had artex…my surveyor said same thing. I don’t think too much about it as I’ve moved a lot and had before and didn’t think I was doing any new works .
butvthen gradually over 5 years I’ve discovered it’s a money sink house. Jeez, just about everything is worng with it 😱
on the first set of works I had done 3 years ago, they had to take a ceiling down. Then discovered artex under smooth skimming.
the builders took samples themselves. You do need to wear PPE As disturbing the asbestos is the risk. Samples came back clear. It cost me an extra £75 . The buidiers were very relaxed about it, said even if it came back positive it would delay works by 2-3weeks and cost me an extra £1000 . Sure, I did worry, but test results comes back clear in a few days
i then had to have upstairs gutted completely for insulation this year …I decided to do testing in advance. Hired company, he came to sample ALL remaining ceiling even if smooth, all over house whilst he was at it…most didn’t have artex under plaster skim and he didn’t charge for those. In total I paid £170 for testing and sampling…given he’d travelled 40 miles, I can’t actually see how he made a living 😱😳…but he seemed happy with tea and a piece of homemade cake.
all my tests were negative btw. Despite being mid 60s house.
they take very small samples from multiple places in each ceiling…it’s nothing that a little poly filler and a lick of paint can deal with in 30 mins or so of work.
so, it wouldn’t, in theory, take much for you to do testing. Get quotes. It doesn’t cost that much! You can take samples yourself but you’ll need to pay out for mask, goggles and a set of overall etc. and dispose of by double bagging becuase you have to assume it’ll be positive till test results back. Leave bag in garage. If negative you can bin, if positive they can be disposed of by asbestos removal company.
BUT, the main question here is what are buyers going to do if you test and it comes back positive. If they weren’t extending then they simply don’t have to do anything. But it’ll probably put them off. But As long as you don’t disturb it it’ll be fine. It’s the dust that is bad. And there are different types of asbestos some of which are worse than others
but if they’re knocking place around, then they’ll do asbestos removal as they do rest of job. They’ll maybe have to take ceilings down anyway and it’ll just add cost of specialist team and disposal . So they can do that. It’s not adding tens of £1000s to build budget…maybe a £2000- 5000 depending on how much they take down (google still says £300 to £700 per room) , If they know ahead they’ll plan it into the schedule.
As others said this is standard surveyor covering arse wording in survey. If it was me I’d be saying nope, you want to know, you do tests AFTER exchange. If they walk away then that’s life. Someone else will come along eventually.
If lots of people express concern around asbestos you might need to rethink and get tests, but if positive then you’ll probably need to reduce price according by a few thousand and be totally upfront with buyers. But it’s not for you to remove if you’re not going to disturb it- it’s unnecessary
please don’t panic..I did, but learnt it wasn’t as scary as it sounds
another thing to check- did it come up in conveyencing when you bought the house? Go back to questionnaire your vendors completed and see if they made comment on artex ceiling…see if it came up on your survey..,see if your solicitor asked about artex… if they were original owners they’d have known if it was asbestos.