Asbestos Ceiling Removal in Putney

Two different materials turn up on Putney ceilings, and they are not handled the same way. The first is textured artex, the patterned coating brushed or combed onto ceilings and walls in countless flats and houses through the 1970s and 1980s. You see it as fans, swirls, stipples and combed lines, and it was used so widely that a converted terrace can have it in the hallway, the living room and the back bedroom all at once. The asbestos content in artex is low and the fibres are locked into the hard plaster, so removing it is often non-licensed work. That does not make it a free-for-all. It still has to be done wet, kept contained and cleaned up properly rather than dry-scraped or sanded back in a cloud of dust, which is the one thing that turns a low-risk material into a real hazard.

The second is asbestos insulating board, the AIB you find as ceiling panels, behind an old boiler, lining an airing cupboard or boxed around pipework in the bigger houses towards Putney Heath. AIB was used where some fire protection was wanted, so it tends to sit near heat and in service cupboards. It holds far more asbestos than artex and gives the fibres up easily once it is cut or broken, so it is licensed work and treated as the higher risk of the two.

The catch is that you cannot tell which is which by looking. A board ceiling and a plastered one can look identical from below, a painted-over panel hides what it is made of, and two artex finishes that seem the same can give very different laboratory results. So before anything comes down we take a small sample under controlled conditions and send it to a UKAS-accredited laboratory. Results usually come back within a few working days, and we wait for them before we plan the removal, because the result decides everything that follows, from the method to the notice period to the paperwork at the end.

Where the ceiling turns out to be insulating board, the law sets a stricter process and we follow it to the letter. Licensed AIB removal needs 14 days of notice to the HSE before we lift a tool, so there is a short wait built into the start of the job that is worth planning around. The work is then carried out inside a full enclosure with air monitoring running throughout, so the room is effectively a sealed box for the duration and the air inside it is being watched the whole time.

The enclosure does not come down on our word either. The job finishes with four-stage clearance testing by an independent analyst, someone with no stake in the work, who checks the paperwork, inspects the area for any debris left behind, runs an air test and only then confirms the space is safe before the seal is broken. You are left with a ceiling that is gone for good and a certificate that proves the material was removed and disposed of the right way, which is the document a buyer, a managing agent or a future builder will want to see. Lower-risk artex is handled with the same care minus the licence and the notice period, and we tell you exactly which route your ceiling falls under once the sample comes back, so there are no surprises on cost or timing once we begin.

We hold Spectra licence number 142305706, we have worked on Putney ceilings and across the wider south-west London and Surrey area for more than seven years, and every job ends with the certificates to back it up. To book a free site visit, call us on 0800 024 6168.