Asbestos Sampling in Hove

A sample is small. For a textured coating or a sheet material, a piece the size of a 10 pence coin is usually plenty for the lab to work with, so the material is barely marked. Before anything is cut or lifted, the spot is dampened to hold the dust down, the immediate area is sheeted, and the piece is double-bagged and labelled on site. The point of sampling under control is that the act of taking the sample does not itself release fibre into the room.

Most homes need more than one. A renovation about to disturb several materials, say an artex ceiling, the floor tiles beneath the carpet and an old boiler flue, is three separate samples, because each material has to be tested on its own. Graham, who owns Clearaway and runs the jobs himself, will look at what the work is going to touch and take a sample from each suspect item rather than guessing that one result covers the lot.

A visit to take two or three samples in one flat is short, frequently under an hour on site, because the work is the careful taking and bagging, not a strip-out. The bagged samples then go to a UKAS-accredited laboratory, which is the accreditation that tells a solicitor, a lender or a building inspector the result will stand up. Turnaround is a few working days, and you get a clear written result for each item: asbestos present or not, and if it is present, the type. The cost sits well below a removal job, and that is the whole point of sampling. It is the small spend that stops you guessing. A clear result means a builder can carry on the same week. A positive one means the job is scoped properly from the start, with the right method and the right notice, rather than a tool going into a ceiling and a room having to be shut down after the fact. From there the decision is yours, and it is an informed one.

Sampling and surveying are not the same job, and it helps to be clear which one you need. Sampling tests specific items. You point at a material, it gets sampled, you get a result for that material. A survey inspects the whole property: an assessor walks every room and space, records each suspect material, and hands back a written report covering the lot, which is what a builder, solicitor or buyer often asks for before a larger project. If you are touching one or two materials, sampling answers it. If you are gutting a flat or buying blind, a survey is the better tool. We do both, so the honest steer is towards whichever fits the work, not the bigger invoice.

Where a sample comes back positive and the material is higher risk, the licensed standard applies: 14 days of notice to the HSE, full enclosure of the work area, and four-stage clearance testing signed off by an independent analyst before the space is handed back. The Regency and conservation streets add their own planning, since scaffold, access and listed-building care all have to be worked around. Lower-risk materials such as some artex can be handled without the full licensed process, and the lab result is what tells the two apart.

Be straight about the distance. Clearaway is based in Chessington in Surrey, so Hove is a long run to the coast, much the same trip as Brighton next door. For a single sample on the doorstep that may not stack up on its own, though it is easily folded into a sampling visit across a few flats, a fuller job, or a survey where the paperwork has to be right. This is not the local KT patch, it is work the credentials justify the trip for. Clearaway holds Spectra licence 142305706 and has spent more than seven years working across this stretch of the south coast. To talk through a suspect material in Hove and whether a sample or a survey is the sensible first move, call 0800 024 6168.