Asbestos Floor Tile Removal in Reigate
Lift the carpet or old lino in almost any pre-2000 Reigate house and you can find small vinyl or thermoplastic floor tiles, with a dark adhesive bedded into the screed underneath. That bedding is usually where the asbestos hides.
Floors Reigate Laid Down Decades Ago
Reigate grew in stages, and its floors carry that history one layer at a time. The period terraces around Bell Street and the High Street, the Victorian villas climbing Reigate Hill and the Wray Park side, the interwar and postwar houses out at Woodhatch, South Park and the roads towards Redhill: most of them went down their original floors long before asbestos was banned in the UK in 1999. Newer coverings simply got laid on top, year after year, so the old layer never went anywhere.
Thermoplastic and vinyl floor tiles were a common choice from the 1950s through to the 1980s, usually in kitchens, hallways, utility rooms and downstairs WCs. The tiles themselves often contain asbestos, but the bigger issue tends to sit beneath them. A black bitumen adhesive was used to stick those tiles down onto the screed, and across the RH2 postcode that adhesive is what we are called to deal with far more often than the tiles on top. Most owners have no idea it is there until a floor comes up.
Why a Floor Refit Is the Risk
For all the years these floors stay put, they sit there doing no harm. A sealed tile bonded to the screed under carpet or vinyl is not releasing anything into the room. The risk arrives the moment the floor gets disturbed, and a refit is exactly that kind of disturbance.
It usually surfaces during a kitchen rip-out or a floor renovation. Old lino or carpet comes up, the tiles underneath crack or lift, and the dark adhesive is left smeared across the screed. People then reach for a scraper, a heat gun or a sander to get the floor flat for new tiles or boards, and that is the worst thing to do with it. Breaking, grinding or burning the material is what frees the fibres into the air of a room you live in. They cannot be seen or smelled, and once breathed in they can cause serious lung disease many years later. You cannot tell by eye whether a tile or its adhesive contains asbestos, so anything suspect in a Reigate home is sampled and sent to a UKAS-accredited laboratory before a tool touches it.
Lifting the Tiles and the Black Adhesive
The tiles are the straightforward part. We lift them whole wherever we can rather than smashing them up, keep them intact, and double-wrap them for disposal at a licensed facility. It is the black bitumen adhesive bedded into the screed that is the stubborn one, harder to shift and more likely to release fibres if it is scraped or heated carelessly. That is why we plan the job around the adhesive, not the tiles.
Because most of these floors are inside an occupied home, the work is contained so nothing spreads through the rest of the house. We seal the room off from the kitchen, the hall and the rooms beyond, run commercial-grade air filtration while the floor is worked, and keep the dust held inside that one space. The adhesive is taken off under controlled conditions rather than dry-ground across the screed, and any waste is bagged as we go rather than left to spread. When the floor is clear and cleaned down, the air is tested before the household uses the room again, so nobody walks back onto a floor that is still carrying fibres.
Containment, Testing and the Paperwork
Most domestic floor jobs are not licensed work, which keeps them quicker and less disruptive than people tend to expect. The tiles and adhesive get cleared, the screed is left clean, and the room is handed back ready for the new floor to go down. Where a sample comes back as a higher-risk licensed material, the job steps up to the full standard the law sets: 14 days of notice to the HSE, the room under full enclosure, and four-stage clearance testing signed off by an independent analyst before anyone returns.
Either way you get the waste consignment notes and the certificates that show the floor was cleared and disposed of legally, which is worth having on file whenever a Reigate home is sold or let. We work to the same standard on a single kitchen floor as on a whole-house strip-out, with no shortcuts on the containment or the testing.
We hold Spectra licence number 142305706, we have spent more than seven years working across Surrey, Sussex and south-west London, and every floor we clear ends with that paperwork in your hands. To get a floor tile clearance in Reigate moving, call 0800 024 6168.
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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.