Asbestos in Bathrooms, Laundries and Vinyl Floors: A Geelong Renovator’s Guide
Bathrooms, laundries and old vinyl floors are where most Geelong renovations run into asbestos. They are also the rooms people most want to update, which means they are the rooms most likely to be cut, drilled, chiselled and scraped. If your home was built or renovated before the late 1980s, it is worth knowing exactly where the asbestos is likely to be before the first tile comes off.
This guide covers the wet-area and flooring materials we find most often in homes across Newtown, Belmont, Highton, Corio, Norlane and the rest of Geelong, and what to do about them before a renovation starts.
Why wet areas were built with asbestos
For decades, asbestos-cement sheet was the standard lining for rooms that got wet. It was cheap, stable, resistant to moisture and easy to tile over. So in a bathroom or laundry of the right era, the walls behind the tiles, the ceiling, the lining around the bath or shower recess and sometimes the floor underlay can all be asbestos-cement sheeting. Kitchen splashbacks and the wall behind an old laundry trough are common too.
In post-war fibro homes in Corio and Norlane the whole house may be lined with it. In brick or weatherboard homes elsewhere in Geelong, the wet areas are often the only rooms that were sheeted rather than plastered, so they are the ones to suspect first.
What it looks like behind the tiles
You usually cannot see it until the tiles come off. From inside the room, a tiled asbestos-cement wall looks exactly like a tiled modern fibre cement wall. Signs that a wall is sheeted rather than plastered include the flat, hard feel of the surface, cover strips or joints in untiled sections, and sheeting visible from inside a cupboard, the ceiling space or the back of a vanity.
The risk comes when the renovation starts. Removing tiles by chipping or grinding breaks up the sheet behind them. Cutting a new opening for a window, exhaust fan or plumbing does the same. That is the dust you want to avoid creating.
Vinyl floor tiles and sheet vinyl
Older floors hide asbestos in three places, and they are frequently overlooked.
The first is vinyl floor tiles themselves. Some older vinyl tiles, often the small square ones in kitchens, laundries and bathrooms, contained asbestos. They are generally a bonded, non-friable material while intact, but breaking and scraping them changes that.
The second is the backing on old sheet vinyl and lino. Some older sheet vinyl had a backing layer containing asbestos. Depending on its condition, that backing can be friable, which moves removal into a different category altogether under Victorian rules, as our guide to Class A versus Class B asbestos licences explains.
The third is the adhesive. The black bituminous glue under old vinyl tiles can contain asbestos too, and it often stays stuck to the floor after the tiles are lifted. Scraping or grinding it back is exactly the kind of work that should not happen until it has been tested.
It is also common to find two or three generations of flooring stacked on top of each other, with an old vinyl layer hidden under newer vinyl, floating boards or carpet.
Test before you renovate
The simplest way to avoid a mid-renovation shutdown is to test before any work starts. A trained sampler takes a small piece of each suspect material, wetted down and sealed afterwards, and it is analysed by a NATA-accredited laboratory. Testing is usually a few hundred dollars, and the result tells you whether you have asbestos, what type it is and whether it is bonded or friable.
Sample each material separately. The wall sheet, the floor underlay, the vinyl tiles and the adhesive are different products that went in at different times, and a clear result on one tells you nothing about the others. Our guide to asbestos testing in Geelong covers how sampling works in more detail, and our Asbestos Testing and Identification service can sample a bathroom or laundry in a single visit.
What the rules mean for a bathroom job
In Victoria, removing more than 10 square metres of non-friable asbestos must be done by a licensed removalist, and any friable asbestos is Class A work. A small bathroom can come close to that threshold once walls, ceiling and floor are added together, and a bathroom plus laundry often exceeds it. Even below the threshold, many homeowners prefer a licensed crew, because wet-area sheet is usually broken by the time it comes off the wall.
Plan the order of works so that asbestos removal happens first, before the plumber, electrician or tiler starts. A bathroom or laundry strip-out is typically one to two days, and our Pre-Demolition and Pre-Renovation Strip-Out service is built for exactly this, leaving the room clean and ready for your trades.
Disposal and clearance
Asbestos from a bathroom cannot go in a skip or the household bin. It has to be wrapped and taken to an EPA-licensed landfill with the correct documentation. After removal, a clearance inspection confirms the area is safe to reoccupy and for other trades to begin. Keep the disposal record and clearance paperwork with your property documents.
If you have already started
If tiles are already off and you suspect what is behind them, stop, do not sweep or vacuum, and keep people out of the room. Our guide to finding asbestos mid-renovation sets out the steps. Then book a sample test so you know what you are dealing with before the job goes any further.