Asbestos Abatement · Decatur, GA
Asbestos turned up during a Decatur sewage cleanup
A sewage backup flooded the bathroom and living room of this 1972 Decatur home. When we tested the soaked materials before tearing anything out, the lab came back positive for asbestos, which meant licensed abatement had to come first, before any of the water demolition could start.
How the job went
It started as a sewage backup
It came from the small bathroom in the corner of the living room, and the contaminated water had pushed out into both rooms. That puts it in the most contaminated category, the kind where the soaked drywall, flooring and cabinets aren't something you dry and keep, they come out. The bathroom tile, drywall, baseboards, vanity and trim were saturated, and in the living room the water had run into the carpet, padding, paneling and the bottom of the walls.
Testing changed the whole job
The home was built in 1972, old enough that the materials getting torn out could contain asbestos. So before any demolition, we collected samples of the affected materials and sent them to the lab. They came back positive. That reorders everything: once asbestos is confirmed, nothing can be ripped out the normal way. It has to be removed under licensed abatement first, with the state notified ahead of time, and the water demolition waits until that's done and cleared. In the meantime we placed drying equipment to stabilize the space and keep the moisture in check while the abatement was scheduled, so the wait didn't make the water damage worse.
What the wallpaper was hiding
One thing the inspection caught early: the bathroom wallpaper was glued straight to the drywall and acting as a vapor barrier, sealing moisture into the wall cavity behind it. That traps water where you can't see it and hides contamination behind a finished surface, so the whole drywall assembly had to come out, down to the framing.
Sealing it off before anything was opened
The living room, bathroom and garage all shared the same air, so we built one sealed containment across all three, with an airlock and a decontamination chamber to pass in and out, the HVAC vents taped off, and negative air machines running HEPA filtration the whole time so no fibers could drift into the rest of the house. One honest detail: on setup day the disposal trailer hadn't arrived yet, so we deliberately opened nothing. You don't disturb asbestos until you can bag and haul it the same day.
Removing it under containment
With the controls running, the crew took out the asbestos-containing materials: the glued-on drywall, the wet insulation packed in the wall cavities, the bathroom tile, the vanity, countertop, sink and toilet, and the trim and paneling. All of it was bagged, sealed and labeled as regulated waste and staged for disposal, kept separate from ordinary debris. Then we HEPA-vacuumed and hand-cleaned the bare framing down to sound structure.
An independent all-clear, then hauled off the job
We don't sign off our own asbestos work. A licensed third-party inspector did a visual check of the cleaned containment, then ran air sampling for a couple of hours with the negative air still running. The lab confirmed the airborne fiber level was below the safe threshold and the area passed. Only then did it clear for occupancy. With the all-clear in hand we took the containment down, and the staged waste along with the poly itself was hauled off to a licensed disposal facility as regulated waste, kept apart from ordinary debris the whole way. From there we could move on to the water cleanup and the rebuild.
