The email from the lab arrived at 9.12am on Monday 7 April, the first morning of Matt's Easter holidays, and I read it at my desk at work with my hand over my mouth. The line that mattered was short: chrysotile detected. I rang Matt, who said, "Right. We don't touch it," and that turned out to be the whole plan.
Why we tested at all
The back bedroom ceiling is covered in swirly Artex, the fan-pattern kind that looks like frosting, put on some time in the 1980s going by the age of everything else in that room. Textured coatings sold before 2000 can contain asbestos, usually the white sort, chrysotile. The survey said nothing either way. We wanted the ceiling flat and painted before the room got used for anything, and the guidance from the HSE is clear that you don't scrape, sand or drill a coating like this until you know what is in it. I'd read that page three times before I ordered the kit, which is the sort of thing I do instead of getting on with it.
The sample
The lab kit cost £45 and came with sealable bags, gloves, two disposable FFP3 masks, a return label and an instruction sheet that we followed line by line. On a Saturday in late March Matt took the sample while I stood in the doorway with the head torch. Heating off, window shut, door closed behind us. He wet a patch with a plant sprayer and a drop of washing-up liquid so nothing floated about, then cut a piece the size of a postage stamp, bagged it, sealed it, put it in a second bag and wiped the knife and the stepladder with damp cloths that went into a third. Afterwards we both put our clothes straight in the wash and showered. The whole thing took about fifteen minutes and felt like an hour.
We posted it on the Monday. The result came back a week later, and you know the rest.
Not scraping, not sanding
"A small amount of chrysotile" in a coating that is left alone is not the frightening version of this story. It's disturbing it that creates the problem. So we didn't scrape, sand or drill it. Matt shut the door and stuck a sign on the handle that said DO NOT ENTER, which he had printed at school and which has since lost its job. A phone call to a licensed removal firm told me that taking it off would cost several times more, and we would still have had a bare ceiling to replaster. Overboarding was the sensible option, and the electrician who did the consumer unit recommended a plasterer.
He came on Wednesday 16 April and Thursday 17 April, in the middle of the Easter holidays. On the first day he screwed plasterboard over the Artex and taped the joints. On the second he skimmed it. He had done this many times and knew what he was doing, so I stayed out of the room and left him to it. We lost roughly 15 mm of ceiling height, which nobody has noticed, and the ceiling is flat for the first time since the 1980s. The room still smells of wet plaster, and the paint will have to wait a couple of weeks until the skim has dried properly.
The test was £45 and the plasterer was £420, which makes £465 for a ceiling we can now look at without a knot in the stomach.
What I'd change
I should have sent the sample in the first week. We sat on a guess for two months because testing felt like a big step, and it was a postage-paid envelope. Matt was using the room for his hobby bench in the meantime, and nothing had been disturbed, but I'd rather have known.
Brew count: 10.
