Asbestos Garage Removal in Wimbledon
Behind the terraces around Wimbledon Park and the semis out towards Raynes Park sit rows of old lock-up garages, many still roofed in corrugated cement. Graham takes those sheets down whole, keeps the drive clear, and finishes most in a day.
The lock-ups behind the SW19 terraces
Drive down the back of almost any Victorian or Edwardian street near Wimbledon station and you find the same thing: a run of single garages, some brick, some prefab concrete, most of them topped with corrugated cement sheets. They went up between the 1950s and the 1980s, when a household got its first car and wanted somewhere to put it. The sheets were cheap, light and fireproof, so they ended up on garages, sheds and lean-tos right across south-west London. Wimbledon got more than its share, because the town below the hill filled in fast once the railway arrived and the gardens behind those terraces were the obvious place to build a lock-up.
Those same sheets are the most common asbestos find we deal with in Wimbledon. Up the hill the Village has its Georgian and early Victorian houses, but the garages there are no different from the ones down in the denser town below, or the rows of 1930s semis that run out towards Raynes Park and South Wimbledon. Forty or more years of frost, sun and rain have left a lot of them cracked, mossy and starting to crumble at the edges. You see it most along the ridge of the roof and around the bolt holes, where water has been getting in and the surface has gone soft.
That weathering is the whole problem. A sound, painted sheet left alone holds its fibres tight in the cement. A flaking one that someone is about to pull off in pieces with a crowbar does not, and that is when fibres get loose. So the moment a garage roof starts shedding grit, sagging, or letting water through, it is worth dealing with properly rather than leaving it to break up on its own.
Why the garage roof is the classic find
A typical single garage roof in Wimbledon is six to eight corrugated sheets, each one running about three metres up the slope. That is a small area of roofing, but it is asbestos cement, so it gets handled as asbestos cement rather than as ordinary old roofing. The sheets are taken down whole, not snapped or smashed, because breaking them is exactly what puts fibres into the air. A man with a hammer and a Sunday afternoon is the worst thing that can happen to one of these roofs.
The method is slow and deliberate on purpose. We damp the sheets down, undo the bolts that hold them to the purlins rather than levering them, and lift each one off in one piece. Every sheet is wrapped before it leaves the roof and lowered by hand, never dropped or slid off the edge. Wrapped sheets go straight onto the van for disposal at a licensed site, which is why most garages need no skip sitting on the drive or out in the road. On a tight terraced street near South Wimbledon, or up a shared rear lane behind the Village, that matters a great deal. The neighbours keep their parking and you keep your access for the day.
Most single garages are a single day from start to clear. The roof comes off in the morning, the frame gets checked over while it is open, and the new covering can often go on the same afternoon. A double garage or a longer run of outbuildings will stretch into a second day, but the principle does not change. Cement garage work like this is usually non-licensed, so it does not carry the 14 days of HSE notice, the full enclosure, or the four-stage clearance testing that higher-risk licensed jobs need. It is still done under controlled, properly contained conditions, the area kept damp and the waste double-wrapped, just without that waiting period hanging over the booking.
What goes back on once the sheets are off
Taking the old roof down is half the job. The other half is what you put back, and that depends on what the garage is actually used for. If it is still a working car space or a store, galvanised steel box-profile sheets are the usual choice. They are light, quick to fit, and a clean match for the old corrugated shape without any of the asbestos. Most people who just want a dry, secure lock-up go this way, and the new sheets sit on the existing frame once it has been checked.
For a flat garage roof, a three-layer torch-on felt system gives a sealed, hard-wearing finish that copes with the wet south London winters far better than the old sheets ever did. Where the garage has quietly turned into a workshop, a home office or a garden room, which happens a lot in Wimbledon now that floor space is at a premium, people often want something better than a basic cover. A proper flat or tiled roof changes how the building looks and feels, and asbestos-free fibre cement sheets are there if you want to keep the original corrugated profile without the original risk.
There is usually some tidying up to do at the edges as well. We can box out the eaves, the soffits and any exposed timber so the finished structure looks deliberate rather than patched. On a garage that backs onto a neighbour or sits in the Village conservation area, where appearance matters, that final boxing makes the difference between a repair and a proper roof. Whichever way it goes, the point is that the garage leaves our hands as a finished, watertight building, not a stripped frame waiting on another trade to turn up. One visit, old roof gone, new roof on, and the drive swept clean before we leave.
Local removal done properly in Wimbledon
Plenty of Wimbledon garages belong to rented houses. The terraces near the station and around South Wimbledon are heavily let, and a landlord clearing a garage between tenancies wants it done quickly, cleanly and without a skip blocking the street for a week. A homeowner up in the Village conservation area wants the same care taken with access, parking and tidiness. The work itself is the same either way: whole sheets, kept damp, contained, and off the site the day they come down. What changes from job to job is the access, and on the narrow rear lanes and shared drives around here that is worth talking through before we start.
If you are not certain the roof is asbestos in the first place, that is completely normal. You cannot tell corrugated cement apart from its modern replacement by eye, so a small sample sent to a UKAS-accredited laboratory settles it before anyone touches the roof. Results come back in a few working days, and most of the time they confirm what the age of the garage already suggests. It is a cheap, sensible first step if there is any doubt, and it means the removal is booked on fact rather than a guess.
Clearaway is based just up the road in Chessington, and the owner Graham runs these local jobs himself rather than sending out a crew he has never met. The company has been working across this part of Surrey and south-west London for more than seven years and holds Spectra asbestos licence number 142305706. If you have an old cement garage roof in SW19 or SW20 you want looked at, call 0800 024 6168.
Licensed Asbestos Removal, Weybridge
Weybridge, Surrey · Licensed Removal
View this project"Clearaway Asbestos did a brilliant job coming out to survey our old garage roof for asbestos. They were professional and we were impressed with the job they did replacing the garage roof"
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.
Why Choose Clearaway
Landlord Compliant
Survey reports and waste consignment notes that satisfy managing agents, lenders and a tenant's right to a safe home.
UKAS Accredited Testing
Every suspect material sampled and confirmed by a UKAS-accredited laboratory before any removal begins.
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.