Asbestos Garage Removal in Surbiton
Behind Surbiton's villa conversions and out on the 1930s semis towards Tolworth, the old lock-up garages and garden sheds tend to share one feature: a grey corrugated cement roof. On the older ones, that roof is very often asbestos.
The Garage Roofs Surbiton Tends to Have
Anyone who has spent a Saturday clearing out a garage in Surbiton knows the type. A long single-skin brick lock-up with a low-pitched roof made of grey corrugated sheets, ribbed and faded, often with a skylight panel or two and a layer of moss along the seams. That roof is very often asbestos cement, and on the older garages and sheds around KT5 and KT6 it is the most common asbestos find of the lot.
Surbiton has its grand Victorian and Edwardian villas, and a great many of those have been split into flats and maisonettes over the years. Behind a lot of them sit rows of lock-up garages, tucked down side accesses and shared yards off roads like Maple Road, Claremont Road and The Crescent. Out towards Tolworth and Berrylands the picture changes. There the housing is mostly 1930s semis, and almost every one came with a garage or a garden shed. A fair share of those roofs, and some of the panel walls, were built or re-roofed in cement sheet somewhere between the 1950s and the 1980s, well before the UK banned asbestos in 1999, then left to weather ever since.
The sheets themselves are not the problem while they sit there sound and undisturbed. The fibres are locked into the cement. The trouble starts when the material is old and crumbling, when someone climbs on it, drills it, snaps it or smashes it out with a bar to save time. That is when the dust gets into the air. So the work is steady and deliberate, and the sheets come down whole wherever they will hold together.
How a Garage Roof Comes Off
A single garage roof is normally six to ten corrugated sheets, each around six to eight feet long, held down by a few dozen bolts that have rusted into place over the decades. The sheets are unfastened by hand, lifted off in one piece where they are still solid, and lowered down rather than dropped. Kept whole, a sheet holds its fibres in. Snapped or thrown, it does the opposite. Anything that is already broken or badly weathered gets wrapped on the spot before it moves.
Once down, the sheets are double-wrapped in heavy gauge sheeting, taped, labelled as asbestos waste and taken away to a licensed tip with the paperwork to match. For a standard garage or shed roof there is usually no skip. The waste goes straight into the van, which means the drive stays clear and nothing is left blocking the road or a shared yard while you wait for a collection. On a typical Surbiton garage the whole job, strip and clear, is done inside a single day, and a simple single-garage roof often in three or four hours.
This is the lower-risk end of asbestos work, non-licensed in most cases, but it is still done under proper controls. Clearaway is based in Chessington, a few minutes down the road, so Surbiton sits right on the home patch. Same-week surveys are normal, and Graham, who owns the firm, runs the local jobs himself rather than passing them to a subcontractor.
What Goes Back On Top
A garage still needs a roof once the old one is gone, so replacement is part of the same visit on most jobs. The right covering depends on the garage and what you want from it. Galvanised steel box-profile sheets are the usual swap for an old cement roof. They go straight onto the existing timbers, shed water well and last for years. For a flat or near-flat roof, a three-layer torch-on felt system gives a sealed, hard-wearing finish. Some owners take the chance to put on a proper flat roof or a pitched and tiled one, particularly where the garage sits in full view of the house or the street.
Where you want a like-for-like look without the asbestos, modern asbestos-free fibre cement sheets match the old corrugated profile almost exactly, so the garage keeps its original lines. If the garage is otherwise sound and you would rather not re-roof at all, boxing out is an option in some cases. That means sealing and encapsulating the existing material behind a new lining so the fibres stay locked in and out of reach, which can be the cheaper route when the sheet itself is still in good order.
Asbestos in the Rest of the Garage
It is not always just the roof. On older garages and the interwar semis around Tolworth and Berrylands, the same cement sheet often turns up as wall panels, soffit boards under the eaves and the guttering along the front. Garage ceilings and the underside of a flat roof can carry asbestos insulating board, which is a higher-risk material than cement and needs more care, and some lean-to and outhouse roofs have the same corrugated sheet as the garage.
If a garage clearance turns up something that needs licensed work, the job steps up accordingly. Higher-risk licensed removal means fourteen days of notice to the HSE before a hand is laid on it, a full sealed enclosure around the work area, and four-stage clearance testing by an independent analyst at the end before the space is signed off as clean. Samples that need identifying go to a UKAS-accredited laboratory, so what comes back is a tested result and not a guess. Most garage roofs never reach that level, but it is worth knowing the line is there, and where a job sits on the right side of it.
For most Surbiton garages the order of events is simple. We come and look at the roof and any panels, confirm whether it is asbestos and whether the work is licensed or non-licensed, then give you a fixed price for the strip, the clearance and the new roof if you want one. Because the survey and the removal both run locally, there is rarely a long wait between the two. Clearaway works under Spectra licence number 142305706 and has spent more than seven years on asbestos work across Surbiton and the rest of this corner of Surrey. To get a garage roof looked at, call 0800 024 6168.
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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.