Not every licensed job is a mill or a station. This one was a hallway cupboard in a modern detached house on a quiet residential close in north Carlisle, and it shows what “licensed work” means at the small end.
A domestic refurbishment survey had picked up an asbestos insulating board ceiling panel of around a square metre and an AIB wall panel of about a metre inside the ground-floor cupboard by the front door — chrysotile and amosite, in good condition, but in the way of a refurbishment. Textured coatings elsewhere in the house were surveyed separately and left out of this scope.
Because it is AIB, it is licensed work whatever the size. The job was notified to the HSE, the homeowner moved out for the day, and we built a sealed, negatively pressurised enclosure around the cupboard with a three-stage airlock opening onto the hallway. The decontamination unit sat on the driveway beside the van. Two operatives, one day, panels out whole, four-stage clearance by an independent analyst, and the house handed back the same evening.
The survey had already identified and sampled both panels, so the enclosure could be designed before we arrived: a single enclosure to the cupboard itself, airlock onto the hallway, transit route eight metres from the airlock to the front door and the waste vehicle. The whole route was sheeted in polythene to protect the flooring, and the front door and driveway were controlled with signage for the duration.
The panels were removed intact wherever practicable, with fixings eased rather than the board broken, and wet methods and shadow vacuuming throughout. The material is small in quantity but amosite-containing board is a high-fibre material when it is damaged, which is why it is enclosed and cleared like any larger job.
Full negative-pressure enclosure with smoke test before any removal, airflow indicator visible from the airlock, three-stage airlock and separate baglock. Anticipated exposure inside the enclosure was set at 0.03 f/cm³ against the control limit of 0.1, from our own personal monitoring on comparable AIB jobs. Background, leak, reassurance and clearance air monitoring by an independent UKAS-accredited analyst, with a four-stage clearance to HSG248 before the enclosure came down. Self-contained decontamination unit on the driveway, powered and watered from the house.
The main risks on a job like this are the ones around the asbestos rather than the asbestos itself. The cupboard is a tight space, so one operative worked in it at a time. The neighbours’ houses on the close were occupied throughout, with children and pets likely to be about, so signage and barriers were set out so that passers-by could see the working area and stay clear of it. Waste runs were timed to avoid school-run traffic on the close, and the client’s floors and finishes were protected along the whole route from cupboard to door.
