Asbestos and your home

Asbestos was widely used in heating and air conditioning applications up until 1978. This means that if your home is pre 1980 (some homes were being built, but did come onto the market until 1980) then your ducting could very well be insulated with asbestos bearing material.

You can indentify asbestos ducting by eyesight and you can have it verified by any number of testing companies or even get an asbestos test kit and mail a sample away. They are all readily available to anyone, but why waste your money. Asbestos insulation on ducting is easily identifiable and visual testing is actually recognized as an approved method of asbestos verification for heating and cooling ducts by The State of California.

I have provided you a number of pictures depicting the common types of asbestos products found in homes throughout Southern California. Once you determine that your ducting or furnace contains asbestos material, do not disturb it and do not hire a company to remove it. You are most likely making a mistake and a costly one at that.

There are a lot of asbestos removal companies that charge a fortune to have the ducting removed and then turn around and try and sell you new ducting without a clue as to install it properly. We can save you a lot of money and a lot of hassles. Just give us a call and we will handle everything. It is what we have been doing for many years.

I have seen homeowners pay as much as 10 times the money for asbestos removal that we have done on a weekly basis year round. I have seen many horrific ducting jobs by asbestos removal firms. These jobs have undersized ducting, poor installation techniques and poor quality materials.

Asbestos removal requires a specialized license and so does ductwork installation. We hire out the abatement of the asbestos to a local licensed company that we have been working with for nearly 20 years. They are prompt and efficient. We will do it right and the proper installation with increase the effectiveness of the heating and cooling and lower your utility bills while making your home much more comfortable.

Identifying asbestos

The picture on the left (first column) is broken friable asbestos insulated ductwork in a home. It is a standard common form of asbestos insulation. It appears to be a white corrugated paper. This normally contains between 20 to 60 percent asbestos fibers by volume.

The picture closest shows white insulation stuck to heating ducts in a manner similar to old fashion plaster casts. Remember that broken arm when you were a child? This type of duct insulation is paper wrapped around the metal ducting and then cast in a plaster like substance containing asbestos. It is very common in older furnace installations. The setup in the picture is a gravity furnace pre 1950.

You can go on web site after web site and read that asbestos was widely used in construction through the 1980’s. While this is true, the asbestos was not friable or airborne. Roofing materials such as tar were big users, but those asbestos fibers buried in that roofing mastic could not become airborne and therefore did not pose a threat. This practice of imbedding asbestos fibers has been stopped and all the building materials available today in California are Asbestos free.

A typical asbestos ducting abatement and replacement takes about a day with a skill crew. Often the ducting must be up sized to account for newer furnace installations, the newer furnaces mover far more air, and to account for static pressure changes in the system. Asbestos ducting and metal ducting moves air more freely than standard class one flexible ductwork, the material of choice, and therefore some thought must be put into the system to prevent furnace overheating and air conditioning freezing when sizing the new ducting.

Don’t go down to the local hardware store and purchase some ducting and replace this yourself unless you have been properly trained in sizing the air ducts and attaching the air ducts. Attaching air ducting with duct tape sure seems correct, but it is not. The savings in labor that you’ll receive doing it yourself will soon be offset by the increase in utility overpayments month after month.

 

Asbestos tape sealing air duct joints

This picture shows asbestos tape on metal ducting. This is very common on metal ducting and very common on the furnace plenum, the boxes on top of your furnace and under your furnace in up flow furnaces and downflow furnaces and on either side of your horizontal furnaces. I have seen this inside air ducts, on furnace flues and flapping through supply registers in the home. Supply registers are those grill that the conditioned air, heated air or cooled air, flows into your home.

Under most circumstances this tape is covered by a layer of raw fiberglass insulating the ducting or plenum. This cannot be abated properly as the duct joints get filled with asbesots material so the tape must either be sealed or the ducting replaced.

Aluminum faced cardboard

This is the most common form of asbestos insulated ducting. This can be corrugated asbestos only ducting or metal ducting covered with corrugated asbestos bearing material. They look the same. This picture shows a ridiculous repair using duct tape.

In the background of the picture you can see two flue pipes. One will be for the water heater and one will be for the furnace. These flue pipes are asbestos cement and should be removed and replaced. It is not required to replace these unless you are upgrading your heating system to a intermittent ignition system. New forced air heaters are intermittent ignition.