How To Tell If I Have Asbestos Flooring

The safest removal option is to have an asbestos remediation contractor remove the old tiles at a cost of between 6 and 10 per square foot depending on where you live the condition of the.

How to tell if i have asbestos flooring.

If you re renovating a building or redoing the flooring in a room look for the pattern of older tiles that could indicate that asbestos tiles were present. Asbestos flooring often has black mastic which is a type of adhesive on the back. But that changes as soon as you decide to remove it. One of the main ingredients used in old asbestos tiles was asphalt so they were primarily made in dark colors only.

As with any asbestos containing material acm the first step to finding asbestos in linoleum sheet flooring and vinyl tiles is. You can t see it if the floor is intact but you can spot the black adhesive if some of the tiles have already popped off the floor. With that in mind here are the keys to identifying asbestos floor tiles. If you know when the building was built or renovated this might help you estimate when the tiles were installed.

Another time period that asbestos floors were popular in was between the years of 1920 and 1960. Even still asbestos was phased out in the 1980s so some buildings built during that time could have still used asbestos materials. Unlike many asbestos containing materials vinyl asbestos flooring is generally safe to be around. Step 3 date the tiles.

The tiles may have asbestos too. Asbestos flooring was made into the 1980s though its heyday was the 1920s through the 1960s. The date of the building or material can also tell you a lot about asbestos risk. Vinyl is a type of plastic that has long been a popular material for floor tiles and sheets.

The mastic itself usually has asbestos in it. Buildings made between the 1940s and the 1980s are very likely to have used asbestos materials. The asbestos floor tile identification articles in this series illustrate that with the combination of design appearance and an idea of floor tile age many asbestos containing floor tiles or sheet flooring products can be reliably identified even before confirmation by a test by a certified asbestos testing laboratory. Vinyl or asphalt tiles that have these colors in it have a high likelihood of asbestos fibers.

Many old flooring tiles that contained asbestos were designed and arranged in a 9 in 23 cm by 9 in 23 cm pattern.