Asbestos Floor Tile Removal in Banstead
Lift the old lino in a Banstead kitchen and you often find the original floor underneath. In these interwar and postwar houses up on the North Downs, that floor can be asbestos tiles set in black bitumen.
Why Banstead floors hide old tiles
Banstead grew quickly between the wars and after them, a village core around the High Street and then street after street of detached houses and semis on generous plots running out towards Nork and Burgh Heath. A lot of those kitchens, hallways and utility rooms were first laid with thermoplastic or vinyl floor tiles, the small 9 inch squares that came in browns, greens and off-whites. They were cheap, hard wearing and bedded down onto a black tar-like glue. Most went down well before asbestos was banned in UK building work in 1999.
The tiles themselves are only half the story. The black bitumen adhesive holding them to the concrete screed was very commonly an asbestos-containing product too, and it is the part that stays stuck long after the tiles lift. People rarely notice any of this while a carpet or a sheet of vinyl sits on top. It surfaces during a refit, when the top covering comes up and 2 or 3 layers of flooring history appear in one go.
Clearaway is based in Chessington, a short run from Banstead through Chessington and Ewell, and the owner Graham runs these local jobs himself. He has lifted enough of these floors across the area to read the back of a tile and the smear of glue beneath it before anything is tested. The pattern repeats from house to house here, a strip of newer covering on top, a layer of hardboard or ply, then the original tiles and the glue line straight onto the screed. Knowing that order in advance is half the job, because it tells us where to take the samples and how much of the floor is likely to need lifting.
Where the tiles and the glue turn up
On a Banstead floor the tiles show up first in the wet and working rooms, the kitchen, the scullery or back utility, the downstairs loo and the hall. They are roughly 22cm or 25cm square, laid edge to edge in a tight grid, and they feel hard and slightly brittle rather than soft like modern sheet vinyl. Lift one and the underside is a darker colour, with the black glue printed across the concrete in the same square pattern. In a few houses you also find them on a small landing or in a porch, anywhere a hard-wearing floor was wanted on a budget.
The adhesive is the bigger job. Tiles can pop up in a morning with a scraper and a little heat, but bitumen that has been pressed into a screed for fifty or sixty years does not want to move. It can sit as a thin skin or as thick black ridges, and chipping or sanding it dry is exactly what spreads fibres into a room. That is why the glue, not the tile, is the part that decides how a Banstead floor is taken up and how long it takes.
None of it can be judged by eye. A brown 9 inch tile and a black smear of adhesive look much the same whether they hold asbestos or not, and a guess is no use to anyone planning a kitchen. A small sample of the tile and a separate sample of the glue go to a UKAS-accredited laboratory, and the results come back in a few working days. That sampling step is what tells us whether a floor is a quick refit job or a controlled removal, and it is far cheaper than assuming the worst and stripping a sound floor for no reason.
Taking a Banstead floor up safely
When a floor does contain asbestos, the room is sealed off before any tile is touched. Doorways and any serving hatch through to the rest of the house are covered over, the area is kept under control so fibres cannot drift into the hall or up the stairs, and the tiles are eased up whole rather than smashed. Most family kitchens and hallways in Banstead are a 1 day job once the room is set up, sometimes two where a large kitchen-diner runs across the back of the house.
The black bitumen adhesive is the part that takes the care. It is worked off the screed using wet methods and hand tools that keep it from going to dust, never dry-sanded, then bagged as the controlled waste it is and taken to a licensed disposal site. We do not tip it in a skip on the drive. A clean screed is left behind, ready for the floor layer, so the new kitchen floor goes straight down once the room signs off as clear.
After the tiles are out and the glue is gone, the room is cleaned down and air testing is carried out before anyone moves back in. That matters most in an occupied Banstead home where the family is living around a kitchen refit, because the test is what proves the air is back to normal rather than just looking tidy. The result is written up so there is a record on file, useful later for a sale or for the next set of works.
Local floor work and how to start
Floor tiles and their adhesive sit at the non-licensed end of asbestos work, which is what keeps a single Banstead floor quick and straightforward and the cost down. The job is still done to the same controlled standard, with the room sealed, the waste bagged and the air tested, but it does not carry the full notification process that the higher-risk materials do. That suits the typical Banstead kitchen or hallway refit, where the floor is the only asbestos item in the room. It also means the work fits neatly around a wider refit, so a kitchen fitter or builder can plan their start date once the floor is signed off rather than waiting on a long notice period.
Where a much larger area or a higher-risk material turns up, the licensed standard applies instead. That means 14 days notice to the HSE before work starts, a full enclosure built around the area, and four-stage clearance testing signed off by an independent analyst rather than by us. We will tell you on site which of the two routes your floor falls under, once the samples are back, so there are no surprises on price or on timing.
Clearaway holds Spectra licence number 142305706 and has worked across Banstead and the surrounding North Downs for more than seven years, on the kind of detached houses and semis where these old floors keep turning up under carpet and lino. If you have lifted a covering and found a grid of hard tiles or a black tarry glue stuck to the concrete underneath, call 0800 024 6168 and we will tell you what it is and how it comes up.
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Why Choose Clearaway
Specialist Crew
Asbestos work is all we do, every day, across the South East.
Fully Licensed
Licensed asbestos removal contractor (Licence No. 142305706). Full public liability insurance on every job.
Local & Fast
Surrey-based. Most domestic jobs are booked in and finished within a week.
Our Own Team
We never subcontract. The people who quote your job are the people who do it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our Removal Process
From first call to final certificate, every job follows the same clear four-step process.
Survey
We inspect the property and confirm the material. Sampling available if required.
Quote
Fixed written price covering removal, disposal and any replacement work.
Removal
Material is removed safely, double-wrapped and taken to a licensed disposal facility.
Certificate
You receive a waste consignment note and disposal certificate confirming legal handling.
Get in Touch
Send a few details about your project and we will come back the same working day with a fixed price. We cover Surrey, London and the South East, including Esher, Cobham, Kingston, Richmond, Epsom, Guildford, Woking and Croydon.