How To Spot Asbestos Roof Slates

Here you can find instructions for installing a slate roof repairing and restoring slate roofs and repairing asbestos roofs and ceramic tile roofs.

How to spot asbestos roof slates.

Check the manufacturer and product name on the insulation label and do a web search to find out if it contains asbestos. Determine when the shingles were installed on your roof. Finding these marks can be a problem. Buildings made between the 1940s and the 1980s are very likely to have used asbestos materials.

With slates the mark was ink jetted on to the back of approximately one in twenty products with the same letters denoting whether they contain asbestos or not. Their width can range from 12 to 48 inches and are very simple to identify since asbestos fibers can be seen on the grained sections of the material. The date of the building or material can also tell you a lot about asbestos risk. Slate roofing materials products where to buy roofing slates slate roof tools slate roof supplies slate hammers slate hooks and other special slate roofing tools are sold by several specialized distributors listed here slates of varying grades colors and applications as roofing slate or slates for steep or vertical slopes such as steeples mansard roofs walls are available from a.

Find an inconspicuous area in the roofing and mark a square inch of tile. If they look old they might have asbestos fibers in them. Their color ranges between grey light green peachy orange and even purple. The asbestos fibers inside slates can only be released when they are broken and this roofing material does not necessarily require removal although many people choose to do it.

While an expert lab test using polarized light microscopy may be needed to identify the specific type of asbestos fiber or to identify the presence of asbestos in air or dust samples many asbestos containing building products not only are obvious and easy to recognize but since there were not other look alike products that were not asbestos a visual identification of this material can be virtually a certainty in many cases. If the tile has less than 1 percent asbestos then the results are negative. The cost of testing a small sample is reasonable. Asbestos shingles were so common during the 20th century that almost any shingles installed between 1920 and 1986 probably include asbestos.

Cut the tile carefully and place it in a plastic container.