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Hi! We're buying a 1970's-built 3-bed detached chalet-style house in Bedfordshire. Apart from a lick of paint and a recent bathroom, it's pretty much unchanged since built: Gas warm-air heating (ducts, and lots of 'em) with electric immersion heater for hot water Parquet floors to lounge, hallway and dining room which needs resanding, filling and sealing (plus filling the gaps left when we remove the warm-air heating outlets) 1970s kitchen, including sliding-door cabinets! Our aspirations are: Immediate - Convert current tiny utility and the end of the double-length garage into a new dining area flowing off the kitchen, plus new utility and (probably) downstairs shower room Immediate - Roof lantern and bi-fold doors onto garden in new dining area Immediate - Replace warm-air heating, ideally with something more environmentally friendly Medium term - New kitchen (self-fitted) Long term - Replace tiling on gable ends with cladding (possibly cement board e.g. Marley Eternit) Challenges are: Three-gabled (T-shaped) chalet roof limits possibilities upstairs unless we put in dormers (which we don't have budget for and which would be tricky anyway due to multiple gables) No space to add a shower to upstairs bathroom unless we make the small bedroom smaller and so thinking of downstairs shower Existing ground-floor spaces are concrete floor with no inbuilt insulation Garage floor is about 6" lower and so when we raise floor we'll have to raise the roof too Extending heating to the converted area of the garage - warm-air ducts can't be extended (and we don't think we're fans of it anyway), so thinking of wet under-floor heating in conversion and replacing heating in rest of building with traditional wet rads Asbestos throughout (we've had a specialist survey) including soffits, boiler flue, roof tile underboard, boiler cupboard door, utility ceiling, Marley vinyl floor tiles in kitchen (only the last three of these areas are likely to be touched though) Budget for immediate stuff is £30k. Conversion could be £20k, leaving only £10k for heating changes. Looking for: Bright ideas on heating. Keen on ASHP but as we need new rads could be beyond our budget. Might have to settle for modern combi-boiler Any genius insight or pointers to existing posts on any of the above!

Hi all. Thought I would come on here as I have spoken to a few companys but i cant eat, sleep and function properly. Started some work in the house which has unexpectedly turned into a full house renovation. My partner and our 14 month old baby boy moved out while the work was getting done and I've been working long hours trying to do all this on my own with my dad helping me. So we come across black 9x9 plastic tiles and adhesive which has now been tested and in the dining room, kitchen, living room and hall way found traces of Chrysotile in both tiles and adhesive. Both my dad and I popped the tiles up not knowing and we have already broken the tiles in the living room up and bagged them up about a month or 2 ago now. We have started on the hallway and it clicked. We then got a test done and come back positive with it in. We had a builder in also and he went through the kitchen with a hammer drill and got all the tiles up which later we found Chrysotile in the adhesive. I am paranoid to death that this could be all over the house, we have a granny flat where I have stayed while doing the work, sometimes people have walked through the house I've been working in to the flat and I'm mindful something could be in the carpets. All over the house really! My 14 month old has stayed over a few times because I'm not living with him just so I can see him but now I am paranoid that hes been exposed to it. I'm not bothered about myself I feel sick, cant sleep, head is racing thinking the worst. I dont know what to do now regarding any possible dust that could be there. I've hovered the carpet where we have been staying and tried my best to keep on top of cleaning. I'm so paranoid about it and all I keep thinking about is the baby and what if. I would appreciate any help/advice regarding what to do next? I've been told its low risk but it's not making me feel any better. I'm mindful of anything on the carpets and any dust lying around that hasn't been cleaned up could pose a threat still.

Hi Guys We have an old heating pipe which runs around the outside edge of our house, under the floorboards. We’ve discovered test it is lagged in Asbestos and a survey has identified Crocidolite, Amosite & Chrysotile on the pipe and in the surrounding soil samples. We’e now waiting for a contractor to come to take a look. In the meantime I’m wondering what the likely remedy will be? Will it be necessary to dig up and remove the soil too? Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Robert

Apart from a lick of paint and a recent bathroom, the house is pretty much unchanged since built: Gas warm-air heating (ducts, and lots of 'em) with electric immersion heater for hot water Parquet floors to lounge, hallway and dining room which needs resanding, filling and sealing (plus filling the gaps left when we remove the warm-air heating outlets) 1970s kitchen, including sliding-door cabinets! Our aspirations are: Immediate - Convert current tiny utility and the end of the double-length garage into a new dining area flowing off the kitchen, plus new utility and (probably) downstairs shower room Immediate - Roof lantern and bi-fold doors onto garden in new dining area Immediate - Replace warm-air heating, ideally with something more environmentally friendly Medium term - New kitchen (self-fitted) Long term - Replace tiling on gable ends with cladding (possibly cement board e.g. Marley Eternit) Challenges are: Three-gabled (T-shaped) chalet roof limits possibilities upstairs unless we put in dormers (which we don't have budget for and which would be tricky anyway due to multiple gables) No space to add a shower to upstairs bathroom unless we make the small bedroom smaller still. Possibly considering downstairs shower Existing ground-floor spaces are concrete floor with no inbuilt insulation Garage floor is about 100mm lower and so when we raise floor we'll have to raise the roof too Extending heating to the converted area of the garage - warm-air ducts can't be extended (and we don't think we're fans of it anyway). Garage floor isn't low enough for UFH and necessary insulation, and we don't have budget for lowering it, so it's going to have to be a combi-boiler and rads Asbestos throughout (we've had a specialist survey) including soffits, boiler flue, roof tile underboard, boiler cupboard door, utility ceiling, Marley vinyl floor tiles in kitchen (only the last three of these areas are likely to be touched though). No asbestos in warm-air ducting - confirmed by survey. Budget for immediate stuff is £30k. Conversion could be £20k, leaving only £10k for heating changes.

I am posting this in case it is helpful to anyone on this site now or in the future. We have just had the last bit of asbestos removed from our 1960s bungalow and demolition is now able to commence. If you have asbestos it needs to be removed and disposed of appropriately. Some asbestos is not as bad (chrysotile for example) and can be dampened, double bagged in heavy duty polythene and taken to a tip that accepts asbestos (many don't). But if you have the bad stuff (we had amosite) it has to be put in sealed containers and shipped out properly and the work has to be done by licenced contractors. The Health & Safety Executive needs to be informed 14 days prior to work commencing. Our contractors did that for us. We suspected asbestos so got a couple of samples tested a year ago. One was chrysotile, the other was amosite (asbestos insulating board used on our soffits). At that point our demolition costs went up by a factor of 6 ? You need an asbestos survey before demolition. These are invasive and leave your house with holes everywhere (ceilings / walls). They can repair the damage and allow you back in once it is done but most surveyors we spoke to didn't recommend it. We moved out permanently before getting our survey. Sadly our survey showed up even more asbestos than we knew about. We knew about the soffit boards and the roof edging strips and the artex ceilings. We didn't know that every vertical wall strut in the outer walls of our timber frame 1960s "flat pack from the NEC" would be lined with a strip of asbestos. Our asbestos contractors have been in for a week in April and then again for most of May (had to give an additional 14 days notice to HSE for the newly found asbestos). First a protective plastic "bubble" was fitted around the house, encasing the soffits. Extract fans were placed to filter the air before extracting it to the outside world. An airlock of plastic encased boxes was built to the front of the house. A shower unit was permanently on site for the guys when they de-suited each day. The soffits were removed, then the house was sealed from the inside so the internal asbestos could be removed. At all times, all the guys working wore masks and full protective suits. After all was removed, an asbestos analyst attended to ensure that the air was clean and the asbestos was removed and all areas appropriately cleaned. A certificate of reoccupation was then issued to officially allow people to go back into the house without all the suits and masks. A contractor has done all this for us and we are glad that we haven't attempted any of this ourselves. They finished yesterday (though the chrysotile roof edging is still in place and will be taken off with the tiles). Some photos attached. Hope this is helpful to someone else.

I recently received the results back of a soil survey which I commisioned as a stipulation of planning acceptance. The survey repoort comes to >170 pages and I asked the surveyor to summarise whether there were any issues found. He said that there were no showstooppers, but that within the made ground there was asbestos detected in one sample and lead in another. Since this is a brownfield site and the plan is to demolish the house and build a basement as part of the new structure, I'm wondering what the implications of this are. Does anyone have experiience of problems like this? I'm wondering what cost / delay I may have to factor in.

Can you hear that? It's the sound of my fingers tapping as I find myself waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn. This time, it's the turn of Natural England and their (hopeful) approval of our bat mitigation strategy and licence to remove the roof from the old bungalow. It takes around 6 weeks for them to decide on a licence application but they are behind by a week or two right now, so that means it could be anything up to 2 months. 2 months! Unbelievable! I've come to the conclusion that this part of self building is like being stuck in the mother of all traffic jams, one that lasts for months and years on end. Still, all I can do is sit and wait and hope to hell that the licence is granted before the bats decide to move back in for the summer, some time in early May, possibly. I've planned to within an inch of my life for stuff to do with the house and I don't think that there's much more I can do at this stage that will be of practical use or run into the danger of overthinking things. My boredom was slightly relieved last week by having the asbestos survey done prior to demolition - nothing nasty, all standard - and getting all the hedges in close proximity to the bungalow taken out by my trusty groundworker. Actually, I do need to have a look into site facilities for once demolition is done as I can't go for a discrete pee behind the hedges now that they are down. Things could get tricky if I start mooning the neighbours. The asbestos survey chap was a pleasant fellow. I rang around for quotes and they seem to all come in at a similar price, in the region of £350 + VAT. I used Mark Harverson of Four Paddock Ltd. He is in Lymington but is happy to travel and was nice to deal with. So, I'm waiting for the soil survey report, the asbestos report and the bat licence, for the architect and MBC to finalise drawings for the building regulations submission. If things get really desperate, I won't be able to ignore work and housework for much longer. Tap, tap, tap...... Edit: A small addition about the asbestos survey. In theory, unless the householder suspects that there is asbestos present, there is no legal obligation to have an asbestos survey carried out prior to demolition. In practice, however, no groundworker will demolish without knowing that you've had one done and what the results were, so best to get it done and out of the way in good time before knocking things down.