Asbestos Ceiling Removal in Richmond

Walk through the Georgian terraces around Richmond Green or climb the streets off Richmond Hill towards the protected view over the Thames, and the ceilings tell a story the front elevation hides. A lot of these houses were redecorated through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and a textured artex finish was the look of the day. It went onto ceilings and sometimes walls, swirls and stipples and patterns that were fashionable at the time. Plenty of it is still there under later coats of paint, untouched for decades because nobody had a reason to go near it until a refurbishment came along.

The other indoor material we find sits out of sight. Asbestos insulating board, usually shortened to AIB, was used as a fire-resistant lining. In Richmond it tends to turn up around old boilers, in airing cupboards, on the underside of stair soffits, and as ceiling panels in the flat conversions that fill the Victorian and Edwardian brick by the riverside. The TW9 and TW10 streets near Kew, East Sheen and Petersham have the same pattern, villas and semis carved into flats over the years, and every conversion meant new fire-resistant linings going in around boilers, ceilings and shared landings. A lot of that lining was AIB, and a lot of it is still in place above the plasterboard or behind a later boxing-in that hides it from view.

Neither artex nor AIB is a problem while it is sound and left alone. The risk comes when someone starts scraping a ceiling flat, pulling out an old airing cupboard, or knocking through during a refurbishment. That is when fibres can be released into a room people live in. A buyer mid-renovation, a landlord turning a flat around between tenants, an owner finally tackling a tired ceiling, those are the moments the question comes up, and it is always better asked before the work starts than after.

Most ceiling jobs here are not empty-house jobs. People are living in the flat, or the rest of the family is carrying on around a single room being done. So the room is sealed off before anything starts. We close the doorways, isolate the space, and run commercial-grade air filtration that keeps the working area under negative pressure, drawing fibres into the filter rather than letting them drift through the rest of the home. The artex is kept wet as it comes off, waste is double-bagged and removed, and the room is cleaned down.

Nothing gets a clear until the air has been tested. An air test confirms the fibre count has dropped to a safe level before anyone moves back in, and on a family home that reassurance is the whole point of doing it this way. It is the difference between a room you have been told is fine and a room that has been measured and proven to be.

If sampling shows AIB rather than artex, the work steps up. Licensed AIB removal means 14 days notice to the HSE before the job begins, a full enclosure built around the work, and a four-stage clearance check signed off by an independent analyst who does not work for us. The enclosure seals the room properly, the analyst inspects it, tests the air and checks the clean is genuine, and only a pass on all four stages lets the space go back into use. It is a slower, more involved process, and on the higher-risk indoor materials it is not optional.