What are these walls made from? Could this contain asbestos?

[ellnic]

Hello there,

I know this is something that is asked very frequently, but I have a question about possible asbestos. It's something that has recently come up in conversation, and I am hoping that somebody here may be able to tell me that I am talking nonsense, and what the walls are actually made of. ie. is this easily identifiable as something commonly used that doesn't contain asbestos.

Background: I am currently in the process of helping my elderly father in law redecorate his mother's house along with several other members of the family. My father in law's mother passed away earlier last year, and the place needs to be sold. Unfortunately, it needs quite a bit doing to it (she was in her 90s and didn't do too much to it in her later years). The house was built in prime asbestos time, early 60s. We have already identified that there was asbestos used for insulation in the garage, and we paid to have this removed professionally. We are now in the process of stripping all the outdated wallpaper and sanding the walls / filling the imperfections ready to give the whole place a nice neutral paint job.

The walls are (obviously) not plasterboard, and it was mentioned today about the walls underneath the paper being a greyish plaster.. asbestos is grey... it was then laughed off. Being that asbestos paranoia is a healthy thing, I thought I would post some images of the walls in the hope that someone will say "Oh, that's XXX wall, it's made from XXX" to put our minds at rest... Our worst fear is that someone says it's asbestos cement or plaster!

Thanks

The walls:

In the kitchen near the ceiling, there is an area of several inches that needs some repair, this reveals some of the walls composition:

Some of the chunks that were loose and removed.. could that thinner top layer contain asbestos? The walls throughout are the same:

Finally, a little different, but it's also been suggested that the 'popcorn' ceiling in the bathroom may contain it too:

Obviously, I know it's probably very difficult to tell from these images. I'm really just keep to see what people think. I apologise if these images show something that is obviously not asbestos, I'm good with polyfilla and a paintbrush but I've never seen asbestos before this house.

Thanks in advance

 

[footprints]

OK so from your post, you know the real answer is no one can say for sure even on-site without having a sample tested

All I can say is lots of plaster in the earlier years was grey, not at all unusual. From the side view the top skim looks irregular in depth, asbestos sheet would be uniform. There is really no reason to add asbestos fibre to a plaster unless it was specific use say to fireproof that area like heating pipes (those big white ones you see in factories ships and submarines) or to prevent fire spread in a partition and then you would just use asbestos sheet. No logical reason to apply a fireproof coating to a cement and brick wall it ain't going to catch fire!

The "popcorn" (an American name) ceiling could be Artex (an asbestos product) or just a textured paint like Pollytex. The true popcorn ceilings were usually spray painted I think so fairly uniform in texture but as any Idiot may have brushed or rollered Artex on it's anyone's guess, just paint over with out disturbing it and it will be fine.
If it is heavily stained with nicotine and you don't fancy scrubbing away at it you can use Classidur paint the price will bring tears to your eyes but it covers without cleaning like magic! https://www.promain.co.uk/superclassic-renovation-paint.html?gclid=CIrFj__O0NECFUJmGwodO50Peg

 

[ellnic]

Thanks for the info. I think you've said pretty much what I wanted to hear about the walls. "no logical reason"... The build of the house certainly wasn't splashed out on, so I can't imagine anything to add additional unnecessary cost would have been done. We'll just paint the ceiling as suggested.

Thanks