How To Know If You Have Asbestos Floor Tiles

Step 3 date the tiles.

How to know if you have asbestos floor tiles.

Armstrong produced the excelon tile series beginning with a plastic asbestos floor tile series in 1954 referring to the product as vinyl plastic asbestos floor tiles beginning in 1955 and vinyl asbestos tiles from 1957 to 1980. If you have an older home you might have asbestos in bathroom walls floor tiles and other areas. You can either engage an asbestos remediation expert or obtain a test kit for. Vinyl or asphalt tiles that have these colors in it have a high likelihood of asbestos fibers.

It was used in a variety of building materials until the 1980s. How to remove asbestos tiles. Resilient sheet flooring containing asbestos was also produced finding wide use as early as 1968. Nevertheless it pays to know how to identify them and asbestos floor tile removal is a serious business.

Unless the amount of asbestos containing products is very small you are better off hiring asbestos removal professionals who will take care of every step of the asbestos abatement process for you. Asbestos is a potentially hazardous material that can cause cancer if the fibers are inhaled. The use of asbestos in building materials such as insulation rolled roofing siding and floor tiles was common in the first half of the 20th century and if you have an older home it may be lurking in your floor tiles. If you decide to remove nonfriable vinyl asbestos flooring you have to be cautious for two reasons.

Identifying asbestos floor tiles. Because asbestos was widely used before 1980 if you have flooring tiles that were installed before then you need to test a piece of the flooring to make sure it s safe. The most important step is they will test and tell you if you have asbestos in tiles at all. Asbestos tiles can be difficult to identify because you can t see the asbestos in the tile.

You should never remove asbestos tiles yourself. Another time period that asbestos floors were popular in was between the years of 1920 and 1960. Asbestos floor tiles are fairly common in properties of a certain age and needn t be a reason to panic you may not even need to remove them. Even if the vinyl flooring is pulled up intact the old adhesive underneath may also contain asbestos.

One of the main ingredients used in old asbestos tiles was asphalt so they were primarily made in dark colors only.