I am going to be doing work on my old 1 1/2 story farmhouse that was originally clapboard siding but now has asbestos siding. The house is in Connecticut. Several areas of the house has missing siding and I would really like to remove all the asbestos siding and go back to the original clapboard. I sent a broken peice of siding to a lab and the results claim 10%asbestos(Chysotile). What problems, if any, do you see if I remove it myself.

The are no problems associated with removing your siding, but there may be problems regarding disposal of the asbestos.

Check with your local government regarding asbestos removal regulations (if any) and with your local landfiills regarding the permissability of disposal.

I can't speak for your State, but in ours, the type of siding you've described can be disposed of as "non-friable construction debris" a lot cheaper than regular (friable) asbestos. If you need to know the difference between friable and non-friable, consult the previous discussion.

The other thing I would say about siding is this: if it looks like it's creating dust, wet it down with a garden hose. One of the dreads of my life is a large exposure I got to some supposedly non-friable asbestos cement board about 15 years ago. I say, "supposedly" non-friable because by the time we got it loaded into our enclosed trailer and then began unloading it at the landfill there was a veritable dust storm in the trailer of white dust. I guess time alone will tell if I got too much. But it would have been so simple to avoid the risk with some water.



Fortress Environmental Solutions
www.fortressusa.com