Asbestos is the Bestos!

ASBESTOS WILL KILL YOU!

Seriously, it will..  in about 40yrs and with prolonged exposure to airborne fibers.  That said, I am of the camp that isn't really scared of Asbestos but strongly believes in proper abatement of friable Asbestos based materials.  Now, for those not in the know, there are two types of Asbestos containing materials.  There are friable materials that can easily allow the Asbestos particles to become airborne by just touching them and non-friable materials which contain Asbestos but are generally not going to release the Asbestos fiber unless you're grinding the stuff up. 

All of that said, I am going to cover my A** and say that I am not an Asbestos abatement professional and anything I write here (or say in person) should be taken as pure conjecture and that you should consult an EPA certified abatement professional when dealing with any form of Asbestos or Asbestos containing materials.  In other words.. I am talking out of my butt. 

So... what does this have to do with our house?  Well, when our house was built Asbestos was a VERY common material to use to insulate steam pipes.  In the form of pipe wrap it isn't necessarily a huge issue.  If the wrapping and underlying materials are in good condition you can just leave it be. 

Unfortunately, our pipes looked like THIS

That... isn't good.  We died shortly after taking this picture and are writing this from beyond the grave!!! OOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooOOOOOOOoooooo

Ok, we're not dead but that still isn't a good thing.  That said, this wasn't a surprise for us (nor should it be for anyone as its in plain sight and your inspector should at the very least tell you to get it checked out) and we had planned on having an abatement company come remove it. 

We had quite a bit...

We hired a local abatement firm and they were in and out in one day.  Since this was under a certain amount they were able to do the work using glove bags. 

 The end result looks like this..

 Yes... that handrail is a tree branch.....

They did a nice job but did miss a short run by the boiler.   I spoke with their field manager and they will be coming by to take a look and hopefully get that wrapped up soon.  I'm withholding their name and a glowing review until that gets sorted.  That said, their staff and crew have been extremely professional and polite thus far so I have no concerns about this getting taken care of in a timely manner. 

So, now that the evil Asbestos is gone everything is great and we can move on right?  Nope, since we just removed all the (very good) insulation around our steam pipes we now need to re insulate them with 1" thick fiberglass pipe insulation.  The need to do this is twofold.  The first reason is that we are losing a massive amount of heat to the basement which is just very inefficient.  The second reason is that since we are losing so much heat we are causing some condensate to form before the steam gets to the radiators which will cause all sorts of noises.   If you intend to do the same be sure to use at least 1" insulation which you will most likely have to source from a local plumbing supply shop as the big box stores only have 1/2in insulation which costs almost the same but isn't quite good enough.  You can go thicker but the law of diminishing returns kicks in right at the 1in mark.  We'll be chronicling that fun journey soon!