Asbestos Roofing Removal in Chiswick

Most of the asbestos roofing in Chiswick is round the back, out of sight from the street. Edwardian and 1930s housing fills out the area towards Gunnersbury and Grove Park, and the gardens behind those homes collected a lot of cement sheet over the years. Lean-tos against the rear wall, a shed in the corner, a flat-roof extension that went up to add a kitchen or a utility room. A lot of it was put up by previous owners who simply wanted a dry store or a bit more space, using the cheap, hard-wearing sheet that everyone reached for at the time. The corrugated sheets on the suburban stock are the obvious ones, but they are not the whole picture.

Look up at the eaves on the interwar semis and you often find more. Cement soffits, the boards that close off the underside of the overhanging roof, and sometimes the gutters and fascia boards alongside them. These were standard fittings on a lot of the housing here, and plenty of it is still in place. People rarely think of the soffit as asbestos because it sits high up and out of reach, so it gets left alone for years and only comes to light when someone clears the gutters or repaints the eaves. It is one of the commonest finds on a Chiswick semi.

The larger houses towards Grove Park add their own version of the problem. Bigger roofs, higher roofs, outbuildings at the bottom of long gardens that have stood since the house was built. The job is the same material but more of it, and the height changes how we get to it. Many of these big houses have also been split into flats over the years, which means a single old roof or run of soffit can sit above several homes at once, and that is worth knowing before any work starts.

The aim is to lift the material off whole. We do not cut, smash or break cement sheet to get it down, because that is exactly what releases fibres. The sheets are unbolted and lowered in one piece wherever the roof allows it, kept damp so nothing drifts, then double-wrapped and taken away to a licensed disposal facility. For most domestic roofs we work without a skip, so your drive and the road outside stay clear and the neighbours are not living next to a heap of broken sheet. On the tighter terraced plots around Turnham Green and the Chiswick High Road, where there is no side access, that matters even more, because everything has to come out cleanly through the house or the garden.

Soffits, gutters and fascia boards are handled the same careful way, eased off rather than ripped down, since a board that is yanked at will shatter and spread dust along the whole eaves line. The higher and larger roofs on the bigger Grove Park houses need proper access and a bit more planning, and where a roof now covers a flat conversion we make sure the work does not disturb the homes below. The principle does not change with the size of the job. Whole removal, kept damp, contained, then cleared away properly and the area left clean.

Once the asbestos is gone you are left with a bare structure, and there is usually a sensible replacement to put back. Galvanised steel box-profile sheet is a common choice for a shed or outbuilding roof, light and quick to fit. A flat extension can take three-layer torch-on felt or a new flat covering, and asbestos-free fibre cement is there if you want to keep the original look without the asbestos. Soffits and fascias go back in modern uPVC or timber. We can talk through what suits the building and the budget rather than push one option, and on a listed or conservation property we match what the rules allow.