We have some kind of sewer line problem it turns out, and we found out when one of our toilets overflowed when our washing machine drained.
Anyway, so we got the line snaked, and it’s draining ok now (still have to figure out what exactly is wrong), and we’ve got a water damage remediation company drying it all out and cleaning it up. Part of their plan is to take out the baseboard trim and the bottom foot of drywall along the walls where it actually flooded. As part of that, they ran some kind of asbestos test on small samples of drywall they removed from those walls.
Apparently they’ve tested positive for asbestos. So my question is, what sort of remediation needs to be in place for someone to remove the bottom foot or so of the drywall? It’s a 1969 house, FWIW. I mean if it was normal drywall, that would take an hour or so to do at most, but I have no idea with this asbestos finding. The adjuster and water remediation guy aren’t scheduled until tomorrow, so I’m wondering what I’m in for tomorrow.
I worked 13 years in water damage mitigation and we encountered asbestos-containing materials (ACM), including drywall, frequently.
The chief concern with removing ACM is the release of asbestos dust into the air which you can breath in, a known health hazard. Asbestos removal, or asbestos abatement, focuses on methods of removing asbestos without unnecessarily releasing this dust into uncontaminated parts of the building.
The area in question is generally sealed off with 6-mil plastic sheeting which is taped up to form a presumably air-tight space within which to work. Because there may nonetheless be air leaks in this sheeting, “negative air” is created within the space by pumping air out of it through a HEPA air scrubber and out of the home. This creates negative pressure and ensures that if there are any leaks, uncontaminated air is always flowing into the space as opposed to the other way around.
The ACM in the affected room is then removed by workers wearing full-body PPE and is often wetted down beforehand to minimize dust levels in the air during removal (anyone who’s removed drywall can tell you how dusty it can get). The ACM is placed into purpose-made trash bags and collected in a (frequently) plastic-lined space in the work vehicle where it’s ultimately hauled to a dump or landfill which accepts ACM. The fees for such dumping can be very expensive, as it happens.
After all desired ACM is removed, the exposed surfaces in the room are wiped down/vacuumed and a post-remediation testing can be performed to ensure that the level of asbestos dust in the air is safe. Afterward the plastic sheeting and containment can be removed and the next phase of the work can begin.
Where I worked, asbestos abatement was subbed to a specialized contractor. The vast majority of time the work was covered by the insurance company but there were exceptions, usually based on particular insurance policy exceptions. If it’s just drywall removal 1’ up in a bathroom, something we often called a flood-cut, then the total work could take a full day, mostly due to pre- and post-demolition containment measures.
If you think of water mitigation as all the things needed to get things dry, it’s easy to see how in this case, asbestos abatement is a necessary step. Again, my experience was that it was covered almost all the time. In fact, I’ve been racking my brain and I can’t recall an instance where the adjuster or the insurance just chose not to cover the asbestos abatement. The one reason they might not cover it would be based on the premise that the drywall doesn’t need to come out in the first place. You mentioned this was a toilet overflow when your washing machine was draining, and we’d typically consider that a “category 3” or black water loss. In other words, anything non-structural that water came into contact with would need to be removed, whether it could be dried in place or not.
And just to cover my ass, I am not your insurance adjuster, and that person is the one best positioned to interpret your policy and what it covers.
Reading this takes me right back to the days when I did structural drying and mold remediation. Glad I’m not doing that anymore, knees couldn’t take the abuse these days.
Kind of irrelevant and tangential but sort of not, industry standard mold and microbial (blackwater) remediation containment techniques(as described above) were adapted (lifted/stolen/borrowed/hey guys that looks good lets do that) directly from asbestos remediation standards and techniques for safety and containment.
I ultimately made it to an office role at my company but generally didn’t like the direction the industry seemed to be going in. We were dealing with more and more “claims managers,” or companies who existed solely to manage claims on behalf of insurance companies and were chiefly interested in minimizing claim costs (for better or worse). One time an employee of one of these companies admitted to me that their job was to lower any given claim cost by about 20%. On the other hand, you had mitigation companies doing everything they could to increase profit margins and therefore increase claim costs. The cost of deductibles especially seemed to increase a lot during my years doing this work.
Ultimately I had enough and went back to college for a career change.
Oooohhhh, that bit about service providers doing whatever they could to fluff the fees!
I started out working at a Big National Company Franchise, got out for a couple years. Went back into it for a little local guy who was angling for a different Big National Company Franchise. Yeah, this guy came in from the money side, he was an insurance adjuster for 15 years and switched to mold and drying. Yeah, he knew all the tricks for getting the most money he could out of a claim. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he just had this dickish and slimy attitude. Left him after a couple months and that was the end of my time in the crawlspace and attic cleaning mold and sucking water.
Good news is that the adjuster said that the asbestos remediation would be covered, as it’s part of the water mitigation. So will the excavation and anything else needed in getting TO whatever’s wrong with the sewer line problem, but the actual plumbing repairs won’t be.
Just need to get the water mitigation guy on the phone and figure how how we get rolling with the asbestos remediation now.
The good news is that asbestos mitigation works. If you have a legitimate company do the work (and if you are using a decent insurance company and contractor, they should point you to a decent asbestos firm) you should be able to do the repairs that need doing pretty safely, for both you and the workers.
So would they still just remove the bottom foot of drywall, or the entire wall(s) since they are going to have to put up the enclosure and do the PPE thing?
If it were my home, I would look at how much more it would cost to remove all the asbestos. It will help the resale value of the home. While it may cost more than I want to pay, it may not be either. Options are good.
That would be my thought too. Now that you know the house contains asbestos, you can’t keep that a secret when you sell the house.
The only question is - was the basement done the same time as the rest of the house, or later? What are the odds the rest of the house uses the same drywall plaster? I.e. will clearing out the basement drywall remove the problem completely?
We had some renovations done (kitchen, master bath), and it looks like maybe some owner before us moved a wall at some point, but that’s it. Most of it is probably that original drywall.
Which is fine, as long as it’s undisturbed. We don’t plan on doing anything else before we eventually move, and I don’t think that gutting the entire house of all the drywall is in the cards. We mostly just want to get the one room repaired and ready to go.