Test Before You Open the Wall
Asbestos is only dangerous once it is disturbed — and the most common way it gets disturbed is a renovation nobody tested first. We sample, contain, remove under negative air, and hand you a disposal manifest. The air clearance is run by a lab you hire, not by us.
Find It, Then Decide What to Do About It
Removal is not always the answer. Testing always is.
We are an abatement contractor. We do not do the renovation afterwards — which is deliberate, because a firm that profits from the remodel should not be the one deciding how much abatement you need.
Intact Asbestos Is Not an Emergency. Sanding It Is.
Asbestos in good condition, left alone, is not releasing fibres. Millions of houses contain it in floor tile, siding and pipe wrap and have done so safely for decades. The hazard is airborne fibres, and material that is sealed, painted and undamaged is not producing them.
What produces them is a saw, a sander, a scraper or a demolition hammer. Which means the population most at risk is not people living with asbestos — it is people renovating without having tested. That is the entire argument for spending a few hundred dollars on samples before a project starts rather than finding out midway through, with the dust already through the house.
- ✓Undisturbed and intact — genuinely low risk, and often best managed in place
- ✓Cut, sanded, scraped or demolished — that is when fibres go airborne
- ✓Pre-1980 construction: assume it is present until a lab says otherwise
- ✓Six samples on a typical house is $450-$700 and usually narrows it to one room
Five Materials, by Era
If your house predates 1980, these are the five places we find it most often in the Bluegrass. Knowing the list is not a substitute for testing — visual identification is not possible.
9x9 floor tile and black mastic · pre-1980
Nine-inch square tiles are a strong indicator by themselves, and the black adhesive under them is frequently positive even where the tile is not. Non-friable while intact, which is why prying it up is exactly the wrong move.
Pipe and duct wrap · pre-1975
White or grey chalky insulation on basement pipes, often with a canvas outer. Friable and easily damaged, so it is the material we treat most seriously and the one to stop touching immediately.
Popcorn and textured ceilings · pre-1980
Sprayed acoustic texture. Positive often enough that we test every one. Removed wet under containment, never scraped dry — a dry scrape aerosolises the whole ceiling.
Vermiculite attic insulation · pre-1990
Loose grey-brown pellets that look like tiny accordions. The overwhelming majority came from a single contaminated mine. Do not enter the attic, store things in it, or run cable through it.
Cement siding, joint compound and roofing · pre-1980
Fibre-cement shingles, textured joint compound and older roofing felts. Usually low-risk in place; the question is only what happens when a renovation reaches them.
Six Things That Should Be on Any Quote
This work is invisible once it is finished, which is precisely why it is worth knowing what you are buying. Ask every contractor about all six.
Sealed containment with an airlock
Poly sheeting, sealed seams, and a decontamination chamber to get in and out through. A crew walking straight from the work area into your hallway has moved the problem rather than solved it.
Negative air pressure with HEPA filtration
Machines that keep the containment at lower pressure than the rest of the house, so any leak pulls inward. Air is exhausted through HEPA. This is the core of the method and it is not optional.
Wet removal methods
Material is wetted with amended water before it is disturbed so fibres bind rather than fly. Dry removal is faster, cheaper and the reason some jobs go badly wrong.
Third-party air clearance
An independent lab you hire samples the air before containment comes down. We will not clear our own work, and we would tell you not to accept it from anyone else either — it is the one place a conflict of interest really matters.
A disposal manifest you keep
Asbestos goes to a licensed landfill under a tracked manifest. That document is your proof it left the property and was handled lawfully, and it matters at resale.
Kentucky certification, checked
Abatement contractors and workers are certified by the state. Ask for the number and verify it. Uncertified removal is both illegal and uninsurable if something goes wrong.
Sample, Contain, Remove, Clear
Most residential jobs are two to four days on site. The sampling comes first and sometimes ends it.
Sample
Small bulk samples taken wet and sealed, sent to an accredited lab. Two to five days for results. Roughly half the surveys we run come back needing nothing.
Scope
A written scope naming the materials, the square footage and the method — removal or management. Priced per material rather than as a single frightening number.
Contain & remove
Poly containment, decon chamber, negative air, wet removal, double-bagged and manifested. Two to four days for most houses, and you stay out of that zone throughout.
Independent clearance
A lab you hire samples the air inside containment. Only when it passes does the containment come down. You receive the clearance report and the disposal manifest together.
We Remove It. We Do Not Rebuild the Room.
There is a reason we do not offer to put the kitchen back afterwards, and it is not modesty. A company that makes its money on the remodel has an interest in how much abatement it finds — and asbestos scoping involves genuine judgement about what needs removing versus what can be safely left.
So we do the abatement and hand the space back clean, cleared and documented. Your contractor picks it up from there. It costs us the follow-on work and it is the only arrangement that lets us tell you honestly that five of your six samples came back negative.
- ✓Testing, containment, removal, disposal and clearance — ours
- ✓Framing, drywall, flooring and finishes — your contractor's
- ✓We do not run the air clearance either; an independent lab does
- ✓About half our surveys end with a negative result and no work at all
Work Around Fayette County
What People Say
Our contractor had already started pulling up the kitchen floor when someone mentioned 9x9 tile. Ashvane stopped the job, tested, and it was positive. They contained and cleared it in three days. I do not want to think about the alternative.
They told us the pipe wrap in the basement was in good condition and better managed than removed, and wrote us a management plan instead of an invoice for eleven thousand dollars. Two other firms had quoted removal.
The air clearance was done by a lab we hired, not by them. They insisted on it. It never occurred to me that anyone would do it the other way until they explained that most do.
Six samples, ninety dollars each, and five came back negative. We only abated the one room. The survey paid for itself several times over on a house we were about to gut.
Asbestos, Without the Panic
How dangerous is asbestos in my house right now?
If it is intact, sealed and undisturbed, the risk is genuinely low — that is the honest answer and it is not the one you will get from anyone selling removal on fear. Asbestos harms people as airborne fibres, and undamaged material is not producing them. The risk appears when it is cut, sanded, scraped or demolished. That is why the message here is test before you renovate, not evacuate tonight.
How much does testing cost?
$75-$120 per sample through an accredited lab. A typical pre-renovation survey on a house is six samples, so $450-$700 all in, and it usually narrows the problem to one room or clears the house entirely. Against a renovation budget it is a rounding error, and about half of ours come back negative.
What does abatement cost?
It depends on the material and the square footage, which is why we price per material rather than quoting a lump sum. Popcorn ceiling runs about $3-$7 per square foot. Floor tile and mastic $4-$9. Pipe wrap $10-$25 per linear foot because it is friable and slower. Vermiculite attics are usually the largest single number.
Can I remove it myself?
In Kentucky a homeowner may legally do some work in their own single-family residence — and we would still tell you not to. Without containment, negative air and clearance testing you have no way of knowing whether you have removed a hazard or distributed it through your house. The equipment is the job; the scraping is the easy part.
Why won't you do the air clearance yourselves?
Because we would be marking our own homework. The clearance test decides whether our containment worked, and the company that did the work should not be the one certifying it. We ask you to hire an independent lab. Plenty of firms will happily clear their own jobs — that is exactly the practice we are pointing at.
Do I have to move out?
Usually not. Containment isolates the work area and negative air keeps everything moving inward, so the rest of the house stays usable. For whole-house work, or where the containment blocks the only route to a bedroom or bathroom, we will tell you at the quote rather than on the morning.
Does this have to be disclosed when I sell?
Kentucky requires disclosure of known material defects, and known asbestos generally falls there. This is an argument for keeping your paperwork: a clearance report and a disposal manifest turn an awkward conversation into a documented one. It is also why we hand both over rather than just invoicing.
We've already started demolition and found something suspicious.
Stop, leave the area, close it off and do not clean it up — sweeping or vacuuming makes it substantially worse. Call us the same day. This is the most common way people end up needing full-house work rather than one room, and how quickly the work stops largely determines which of those it becomes.
Renovating a Pre-1980 House?
Six samples and a lab report before you open anything. About half come back clear — and the other half are much cheaper to handle before the dust than after.
Book a Survey
Sampling, an accredited lab and a written result in two to five days. A negative result costs you nothing further and is a perfectly good outcome.