Remidiation looming

Been another busy day.

Had a couple of updates to do for Tacoma and should receive another set of markups tomorrow.  That should almost complete the engineering and design.  Should be in good shape for permit application meeting Friday afternoon as long as I can get the signed and sealed floor truss calcs out of the local vendor.

Received the quotes for the asbestos remediation.  One was  $8700 + tax and the other was $6800 + tax (if I remember right – it was a verbal at site and I still have not received the formal quote by email).  I am going to go with the higher quote because I got a better feeling that it was going to be done right and because I have had previous dealings with the vendor (I recommend them to my home inspection clients and they have also prepared articles for an industry newsletter I used to produce).  And they seem more willing to let me do some of the work to potentially bring that higher number down.  I may even be able to help with the remediation (with the right gear of course).  This is considered a ‘High Risk’ remediation because of the ceilings (risk of fibres falling) so a full containment must occur including a walk through shower area to get to the outdoors again.  We will need to build a ‘tunnel’ from the front door to the container that the crew can walk through.  This way they do not have to double bag inside the house.  They can go right to the container and it saves some costs.  The drywall then goes to an approved facility in Alberta.

What was interesting to note was that up until a year ago, places that took in drywall for reclaiming the gypsum have not been ensuring the waste drywall had been tested to not contain.  SO some of the drywall returned and reprocessed into new drywall would have contained asbestos.  Now the concentrations would be so very low it would not pose much if any risk to home owners, it did mean that the receiving facility workers were being exposed and their is now apparently class action law suites over this exposure.

The problem with asbestos is that the fibres have barbed hooks on them.  This prevents the body from expelling them like other foreign entities.  They get sucked into the lungs where the continually cut the linings. This forms scar tissue and if enough of an exposure occurs early enough in life, a few decades later this scar tissue forms to the extent that the person can no longer get enough air because there is not enough healthy surface area of the lung left to absorb the O2 out of the air.  It is a horrible way to die.

As I have mentioned earlier, I could have actually done all of this work myself, BUT I am not positive I would have been able to properly dispose of the removed product AND I would have probably contaminated all the rest of the products I actually want to salvage out of the house once the removal was complete.

I did have one scare when the vendor informed me they wanted to start Friday.  I was pretty sure I was not going to have time to finish emptying the house by this point especially since I need to finish off all the drawing edits before the permit meeting.  Fortunately they are able to accommodate a Monday start date instead.

On the camera front, I am working with someone in the USA that is trying to help to get some script working that will run on the server and capture the images I will use for the time lapse of the build.

This brings me to the final comment I have for the night and it is a bit of a rant – OK a lot of a rant!  People picking up free stuff can be VERY inconsiderate!  I am over 125 ads for free items.  I cannot believe the number of people who respond stating they want the item and asking for the address.  They then make arrangements to come at specific times but never show after stringing it out for days.  Or if they do show they are hours or even days late.  I am disappointed with humanity right now.  Do these people think I have nothing better to do then site around all day hoping they will show up???  BUT – what really annoys me is the people that think they can just walk around my yard and take what ever they see that they like (I often leave the item they are coming to get at the front door so they can get when they want and I do not need to be there, but because I have a LOT of stuff I have purged their is always multiple people coming each day). Over the last week I have had 4 people that have taken other things including items in some cases were MINE and not being given away.  I have generally been able to catch them with the camera feeds I have and have blasted a couple of them by email. But REALLY, are people that ignorant? I will soon have signs up that state the property is under monitored video surveillance and that all theft will be prosecuted.

Sorry for the downer – but I needed to vent and you all are available for the abuse 🙂

Thanks for visiting.