I have started to plan the renovation of my basement in the house from 1954.
In the boiler room (heating system changed several times over the years) and in some other rooms, I have various pipes that are insulated with the following:
- Mineral wool
- Steel mesh
- Gauze
- Yellow paint?
And something gypsum-like in some places.
Can I remove this myself or is there a risk of asbestos in it?
It's quite a few meters as the pipes go to the laundry room and garage, etc.
What is in the picture looks like mineral wool. The wire is najtråd (steel wire) that has been used to hold the mineral wool together during insulation work before the binding. Loose asbestos was used as insulation under fabric similar to the one you have, at bends and T-joints, and you should not decontaminate these yourself. If you take a screwdriver and poke into the bend, you'll see if it's loose asbestos or looks like what you have in the photo. If it doesn't look like the photo, tape over with ventilation tape or similar. Be careful if it is loose asbestos as the fibers are 1/1000th of a mm and float around in the air indefinitely.
Hello
Asbestos is an occupational health problem and not an issue for the average person who dismantles a pipe joint once in their lifetime.
If you want to be safe, just leave the insulation alone. As long as you don't disturb it, it is harmless.
If you're going to remove some insulation, the tip is to wet it thoroughly first so that it doesn't create dust and then not vacuum up any spill but wipe it up with a damp cloth.
Personally, I think the fear of asbestos among private individuals is highly exaggerated.
How many people have changed brake pads on their car when they had asbestos linings and it's not that many years since it disappeared.
If it were as dangerous as these "remediators" want to imply, almost everyone born before the 80s would have gotten lung cancer from all the asbestos dust that circulated in the air from all the eternit, brake linings, insulation, etc. that asbestos was used for.
Fredrik
That's what I'm saying. Be careful. There's a difference between asbestos and asbestos (loose asbestos). If you, Fredrik, think it's "harmless," then you don't know what you're talking about. Hormoslyr and PCB weren't dangerous either until people knew what they were. Do you know how many people have asbestosis from harmless asbestos? Of course, there's a difference between one-time exposure and working with it. As you say, as long as you don't disturb it, it's not dangerous...
Cut the plaster on the outside, spray in a lot of water with a plant spray, and cut the tie wire with cutters, cut up the insulation to the pipe. Then it's just a matter of putting everything into a bag. If there is any asbestos there, almost everything is captured by the wet mineral wool. If you're worried, use a P3 respirator mask and place a wet cloth over the pipe you're cutting through. That's what I usually do when I'm drilling into any of the asbestos things at home; it doesn't create any dust, and the drill chips mostly turn into wet mass.
I don't understand what it looks like. Is it asbestos bound in something like mineral wool? I understand that they are fibers, but if you look at it without a microscope, does it look like a powder? That is, are they free fibers or are they matrix in a material?
What you have in the picture is common insulation, like mineral wool. Asbestos is something entirely different. See this link where there's also a picture.
Asbestos can be found in adhesives, floor mats (Novilon for example) sealing plugs, firefighting clothes, gaskets for boiler doors and pumps, boards, joints, tile adhesives, soft seals. Electrical appliances like toasters, ducts, etc. It is everywhere and often where you least expect it. Some types found in fans, such as cryolite, are sometimes blue. In fire doors. As mentioned, it's everywhere. http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbest
Just to clarify. It's not asbestos in the insulation itself, but a kind of gauze was wrapped around the pipes, and to make nice bends, a gypsum-like mass mixed with asbestos fibers was used. In some really old installations, there may be asbestos directly on the pipes and then horsehair insulation on top.
But if you carefully poke a bend with a knife and it comes off as a white powder, it's definitely asbestos. It looks like gypsum dust.
I wouldn't remove it myself, even though many say you can eat asbestos for breakfast without getting sick. If I, as a professional, remove it without permission and training, we could face fines of at least 50,000 for occupational safety violations.
Sure, the risk is small if you only handle it once, but you have to keep in mind that the fibers spread extremely easily. If you vacuum with a regular vacuum cleaner, for example, you could have spread the fibers throughout the entire room.
IF you were to handle it yourself, I recommend wrapping the bends in plastic and tape, and then cutting them off in the straight sections.
Then check with your municipality where you can dispose of asbestos-containing material.
