Asbestos Floor Tile Removal in Camberley

Most refit jobs in Camberley start the same way. The old carpet comes up, or the worn vinyl is peeled back, and underneath sits a grid of small floor tiles, each one around 9 inches square, laid tight across the screed. In the Victorian and Edwardian villas near the town centre, and in the 1930s, postwar and later semis and detached houses spread out across the heath towards Frimley, Frimley Green, Yorktown and Old Dean, those tiles turn up in kitchens, hallways, utility rooms and the old larder. A small galley kitchen can hold 200 or 300 of them. A through hallway runs to more.

The tiles themselves are thermoplastic or vinyl, and a good number of them contain asbestos in the body of the tile. You cannot tell by colour or pattern. A plain buff tile and a marbled one can both test positive, and a builder lifting them on a Monday morning has no way of knowing by eye. The houses around Yorktown and Old Dean were going up through exactly the decades these tiles were sold, so they are a common find rather than a rare one. That is why the first move is never the chisel. It is a small sample, taken under controlled conditions and sent to a UKAS-accredited laboratory, with results back in a few working days.

Left flat and sealed under a fitted floor, these tiles sit quietly for decades. They are not a danger while they are whole and covered. The risk starts when someone disturbs them, snapping tiles and breaking the surface, and a kitchen or floor refit is exactly the moment that happens. Stripping a floor blind, before anyone knows what is in it, is how a routine afternoon turns into a contaminated room.

Once the lab confirms what the tiles and adhesive contain, we plan the lift around the home staying lived in. Clearaway is based in Chessington, so for Camberley the team travels out to the western side of the county, near the Hampshire and Berkshire borders, and the owner Graham runs the jobs himself, on the everyday domestic floors and on the larger residential and commercial work.

The room is sealed off from the rest of the house before anything is touched. We tape and sheet the doorways and any gaps, cover the route in and out, set up the right floor protection, and use methods that keep the material damp and intact rather than dry and crumbling. Tiles are taken up in whole pieces wherever they will come, lifted rather than smashed, and the bitumen is taken off by hand and with the correct tools, never by aggressive grinding or heat. Everything, tiles and scraped adhesive together, goes into proper asbestos waste sacks, double-bagged and labelled, then to a licensed disposal facility rather than a general skip. On a single kitchen or hallway floor most of this is done inside a day.

When the floor is clear, the work is not finished. The room is cleaned down with a vacuum built for asbestos and a damp wipe of the surfaces, and an independent analyst carries out air testing before the seals come off. The air is checked clear before you walk back in, cook in there, or let children near it, and you get that result in writing. Only then do we hand the floor back as a clean, bare base ready for your new screed, levelling compound or finish.