Fibro sheeting, asbestos-cement eaves, corrugated shed roofing and the backing under old vinyl floor tiles are the four things we pull out of Sydney homes most often. Whether it is a single sheet or an entire garage, the process and the legal obligations are the same.
Where it usually turns up in a Sydney house
Post-war and mid-century Sydney housing used asbestos cement almost everywhere, and renovations through the 1970s and early 1980s added more. The places it surfaces, roughly in order of how often we see them:
- Bathrooms and laundries — fibro sheeting behind the tiles, which is why so many jobs start the day a bathroom renovation begins.
- Eaves and soffits — usually intact, usually fine, until someone runs a power tool through them.
- Garages, sheds and carports — corrugated roofing and wall sheeting, often the most degraded material on the property because nobody has maintained it.
- Boundary fencing — see asbestos fence removal.
- Under vinyl floor tiles — the black bituminous backing is usually the asbestos-containing part, not the tile itself.
- Behind ovens and heaters, and in old meter boxes — small pieces, easy to miss.
The two moments people call us
The first is a planned renovation, where the material was found by the builder or flagged in a building report. That is the easy version: there is time to quote it, notify SafeWork NSW, and schedule the work so the trades behind us are not standing around.
The second is mid-job. A wall came down, a tile came up, or a sheet cracked, and work has stopped. That version is more urgent but not usually more dangerous, provided the right thing happens next: stop, close the area off, do not sweep it and do not vacuum it, and photograph it from a distance. Sweeping and vacuuming are what actually put fibres in the air — a domestic vacuum will pass them straight through the filter and out the exhaust.
Living in the house while it happens
Most residential jobs are done inside a day, and for external work — a shed roof, a fence run, eaves — you can usually stay home, with the work area isolated and access controlled. For internal work in a room you use daily, we will normally recommend being out of the house for the day, not because the risk extends past the isolation but because the isolation itself makes the room unusable and we would rather not have to police it.
Pets are the part people forget. A dog that wanders through a controlled area undoes the controls and then walks the contamination through the house.
What it costs
Small residential jobs are quoted as a fixed price rather than per square metre, because on a job this size most of the cost is getting a licensed crew and a truck to your address and getting the waste to a licensed facility afterwards. The practical consequence is worth knowing: if you have a shed roof and some eaves and a fence run, having them all quoted and done in one visit is materially cheaper than doing them one at a time.
The cost guide sets out the published ranges by material and explains the minimum charge in full.
