Asbestos Floor Tile Removal in Kingston Upon Thames
Lift the carpet or old lino in a Kingston terrace and you often find the same thing underneath. Hard, brittle floor tiles, and a black tarry glue holding them to the screed. Both can contain asbestos. We remove them safely.
What turns up under Kingston floors
Most of the floor tile work we do across Kingston starts the same way. Someone is mid refit in a kitchen off Clarence Street, or pulling up a tired hallway in one of the Norbiton terraces, and the old covering comes away to show a layer of stiff, square tiles bedded onto the concrete. They are usually nine inches across, sometimes a dull brown or a faded green, and they crack rather than bend. That brittleness is the giveaway. Thermoplastic and vinyl floor tiles of that age very often contain asbestos, and Kingston has plenty of housing old enough to have them.
They sit in the same places again and again. Ground floor hallways and kitchens in the Victorian and Edwardian terraces around Canbury. Back additions and utility rooms on the interwar semis out towards Berrylands and the Tudor Estate. The flats and Victorian conversions in the town centre, where one original floor has been covered over two or three times by successive owners. The tiles themselves are not the hard part. It is what they were stuck down with that causes most of the work.
The black glue is the real problem
Underneath the tiles, in nearly every Kingston property we attend, there is a layer of black bitumen adhesive. It looks like dried tar and it is bedded hard into the screed. This is the bit people do not expect. The tiles might lift in an afternoon, but the adhesive is stubborn, it does not scrape off cleanly, and on the older floors it has soaked down into the concrete itself. In a lot of cases the bitumen holds more asbestos than the tiles do, and it is the part that fails a clearance check if it gets left behind.
That is why a quick DIY lift is the wrong move here. Snapping dry tiles up with a bolster and grinding at the black residue is exactly how fibres get released into the air of a house someone is still living in. The dust travels. It settles on skirting, drifts up the stairs, gets walked through the rest of the home. Once it is spread through an occupied property in New Malden or up on Kingston Hill, the cleanup is far bigger than the floor ever was. The adhesive has to be lifted properly, kept damp, and bagged as it comes up, not chipped at dry.
Keeping the dust out of the house
Floor tile removal is almost always done with the family still in the property, or at least still moving through it, so containing the room matters more than anything. We seal the working area off from the rest of the house with sheeting, shut down any through draught, and run the job under controlled conditions so nothing carries into the hall or the room next door. The tiles and the bitumen come up damp, go straight into the right bags, and leave the site as proper waste. The aim is simple. The dust stays in the one room and goes out with us.
For straightforward tile and adhesive lifts in a single room, the work is contained, cleared and tidied without much fuss, and we tell you honestly when a job sits at that level. Some larger or more broken-up floors fall under licensed work, and where they do the controls step up. That can mean 14 days of notice to the HSE before we start, a full enclosure built around the area, and four-stage clearance testing signed off by an independent analyst once we are finished. We do not decide our own pass. Either way, the floor is checked before anyone moves back in.
Air testing and a clean Kingston floor
When the floor is up and the room is cleaned, we do not just sweep round and call it done. The space is air tested so you have it in writing that the fibre level is safe, with samples read by a UKAS-accredited laboratory rather than taken on trust. For a kitchen or hallway you are about to retile, that result is the thing that lets the next trade start with no second thoughts. You get the floor back as bare, sound screed, ready for whatever covering comes next.
We are based in Chessington, KT9, a few minutes from Kingston, so this is home patch and the owner, Graham, runs the local jobs himself rather than passing them on. Clearaway holds Spectra licence number 142305706 and has worked across this part of Surrey for more than seven years, on the terraces, the conversions and the interwar semis that make up most of the town. If you have lifted a floor in Kingston and found tiles or black glue underneath, call us on 0800 024 6168 and we will tell you where you stand.
Commercial Building Strip-Out, Kensington
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View this project"Graham has organised two jobs for me, both of which ran smoothly and on time. Clive and the team are really great, they completed the work in the agreed time and left the site spotless. Would recommend using Clearaway if you need any work done."
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Choose Clearaway
On Our Home Patch
We work out of Chessington, right on the edge of the KT postcodes, so a same-week survey here is the norm, not the exception.
The Owner On The Job
On local work Graham quotes and runs the job himself. You deal with the person doing the work from first call to final certificate.
Fully Licensed
Licensed asbestos removal contractor (Licence No. 142305706). Full public liability insurance on every job.
Our Own Team
We never subcontract. The people who quote your job are the people who do it.
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.