Charlotte asbestos removal
Spray-applied textured ceilings, often called popcorn or acoustic ceilings, went onto a great many homes built from the 1950s into the 1980s. Some of them contain asbestos and many do not. If yours tests positive, removal is a contained job: the room is sealed in plastic, the texture is kept wet so the fibres stay in it, scraped off into bags, and the room is cleaned and checked before the plastic comes down.
Spray-applied textured finishes were a cheap way to hide imperfect drywall and soften sound, and for decades some of them were made with asbestos. In 1978 the EPA banned spray-applied asbestos-containing materials for decorative use, but existing stock kept going onto ceilings for some time after, so a house from the late 1970s or early 1980s is still worth testing. Most popcorn ceilings contain no asbestos at all. The only way to know which kind you have is a sample.
The room is emptied, and the floor and walls are covered in plastic sheeting, with the seams taped. Openings, vents and doorways are sealed, and an air machine with a HEPA filter pulls air out of the space so it stays under slight negative pressure: air leaks in, not out. The texture is sprayed with water mixed with a wetting agent and left to soak, then scraped off in sections into bags while it is still wet. Wet texture comes away in clumps rather than dust.
After the texture is off, every surface is HEPA-vacuumed and wet-wiped, the bagged waste is sealed and labelled, and the plastic is taken down from the inside out. Before the containment comes down, the work area is inspected, and on regulated jobs it is checked as the rules require. The ceiling is left as bare drywall, ready for a skim coat and paint.
Paint over a textured ceiling makes removal slower, because the water cannot soak in. It also adds a second question in houses built before 1978: whether the paint contains lead. Both are worth knowing before the job is priced.
An intact ceiling that you are not going to cut into can often stay. Sealing it with paint, or covering it with new drywall, keeps the material undisturbed, and many homeowners take that route.
How long does it take? A typical room is a day or less of removal once the area is contained. Setting up containment and the final clean-up and check add time on either side.
These often turn up in the same house, or the same remodel:
Samples of each suspect material sent to a lab, with a written result for each one before any work is planned. Includes surveys ahead of a renovation or demolition.
Read more →Old 9-inch vinyl tile and the black cutback adhesive under it, taken up before new flooring goes down.
Read more →Loose grey-brown pebble fill vacuumed out of the attic under negative air, so the house below stays clean.
Read more →Free to ask
Don't sand, scrape or drill it. A quick description is enough to start.
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