What fibro actually is
"Fibro" is Australian shorthand for fibre cement sheeting — cement with a reinforcing fibre pressed into flat sheets. The word describes the format, not the hazard. Fibre cement is still manufactured today, entirely without asbestos.
What changed is the fibre. Sheeting made in Australia from the 1920s until the mid-to-late 1980s was reinforced with asbestos — typically around 15% chrysotile in flat sheeting — and stock kept reaching building sites until about 1990. So the question is never "is this fibro", it is "how old is this fibro".
Five things to look at
None of these confirms asbestos. Together they tell you whether you are looking at asbestos cement sheeting or at something else entirely, which is usually the decision you actually need to make before you pick up a tool.
- Dimpling on the hidden face. NSW Government asbestos guidance describes a pattern of small dimples "like a golf ball" on one side of asbestos cement sheeting, and treats it as an indication of the material. You will rarely see it on the finished wall — look at a broken edge, the back of a sheet inside a cupboard, under the house, or the offcut left in the roof space by a previous owner.
- Cover strips over the joins. Fibro was hung in sheets and the gaps were covered rather than filled. Moulded asbestos cement battens (commonly 40 × 6 mm or 75 × 8 mm), timber "D-mould" strips, or thin silver metal strips running floor-to-ceiling every metre or so are the classic signature. Sheets were made roughly900–1200 mm wide and cut to land on a stud, which is why the strips fall at an even spacing right along a wall. Note that the cover strips themselves may be asbestos cement.
- Thickness and hardness at an edge. Asbestos cement is dense, hard and brittle — it feels and sounds like a thin slab of concrete, not like board. An exposed edge is only a few millimetres deep, so what you are looking at is a surprisingly thin line of what is unmistakably cement. Around a light switch, a doorway reveal or a cut-out, a fibro sheet reads as cement, not paper.
- How it breaks. Damage in asbestos cement sheeting is characteristicallyjagged, with a rough fibrous face rather than a clean crumbling edge. A corner knocked off a fibro sheet looks snapped; the same knock in plasterboard dents and tears.
- The fixing pattern. Fibro was face-fixed with clout nails or screws in regular rows near the sheet edges, often with visible heads or filled dimples. Sheets sat on a timber frame in a repeating grid, so the fixings usually run in straight lines you can trace across a whole wall.
Photograph, do not probe. Every check above is something you can see. None of them requires you to break a corner off, drill a test hole, or scrape a sample — and doing any of that is what turns a stable sheet into airborne fibres. If the tell you need is on a hidden face, that is a job for someone who can take a sample under controls.
Where it turns up in a Sydney house
In a pre-1990 Sydney home, fibro sheeting is most often found in these places, roughly in the order people find it:
- Eaves and soffits — the underside of the roof overhang, frequently the last painted surface anyone thinks about.
- Wet-area walls and ceilings — bathrooms, laundries and toilets, usually behind or under later tiling.
- Garage, carport and shed linings, and the whole external skin of a fibro cottage.
- Gable ends and fascias, and the infill panels under windows.
- Outbuildings — external toilets, chook pens, boat houses and lean-tos, which the national product guide lists explicitly and which renovators routinely forget.
One Sydney-specific pattern worth knowing: fibro is often underneath something newer. Sheeting rendered over, clad in vinyl or aluminium, or hidden behind a 1990s bathroom renovation is still there, and it is usually discovered by a demolition saw rather than by looking.
Age is the strongest clue
Australia phased asbestos out of building products through the 1980s and banned it outright on31 December 2003. For sheeting specifically, James Hardie stopped using asbestos in building products in the mid-1980s, and existing stock continued to be installed until around 1990. NSW Government guidance is blunt about the practical consequence: many homes built or renovated before 1990 still contain asbestos.
| If the sheeting went up | Treat it as |
|---|---|
| Before the mid-1980s | Very likely to contain asbestos. Do not disturb it. |
| Mid-1980s to about 1990 | Genuinely uncertain — this is the overlap period. Test before any work. |
| After about 1990 | Very unlikely to contain asbestos, but confirm the date rather than assume it. |
Two brand-level details make the point that appearance cannot settle this. Hardiflex, launched in 1964, contained chrysotile asbestos; the later Hardiflex II contained none, and the two are not distinguishable by eye. And CSR's Fibrock products containedcrocidolite — blue asbestos, the more hazardous fibre type — in a sheet that looks like any other grey board on the wall.
What it is not
Most of the panic we get photos about turns out to be one of these. Ruling them in is often faster than ruling asbestos out:
- Plasterboard (Gyprock). Paper faces, gypsum core, dents under a thumbnail, joins filled and sanded flat instead of covered with a strip. Standard in Sydney housing from the 1960s onward and everywhere by the 1980s.
- Modern fibre cement. Same cement look, no asbestos, and often stamped on the back. If you can read a legible modern brand and sheet code on the reverse, that is real evidence — but a painted, installed sheet rarely offers one.
- Hardboard and Masonite. Brown, smooth-faced, timber-fibre based, and light in the hand rather than dense.
- Villaboard and later wet-area boards. Fibre cement, but generally 1980s and later. The date is what matters, not the format.
What to do, and what not to do
If you think you have found asbestos fibro, the correct next action is almost alwaysnothing. Bonded asbestos cement that is intact, painted and undisturbed is generally stable — the exposure risk in a home comes from breaking it, not from living alongside it.
So, specifically:
- Do not drill it, cut it, sand it, grind it or angle-grind through it.
- Do not water-blast or pressure-wash it. Painting an old sheet is one thing; blasting it strips the surface and releases fibres.
- Do not sweep or vacuum debris. Domestic vacuums pass fibres straight through and redistribute them.
- Do not send a demolition crew, a plumber or an electrician into it without telling them it is there.
- Do photograph it from a safe distance, note roughly how many square metres there are, and get it identified before any work is scheduled.
We do not publish removal instructions and we do not recommend DIY removal. NSW law does allow an unlicensed person to remove a limited quantity of bonded asbestos — the rules, and why SafeWork NSW advises using a licensed removalist regardless, are set out on our NSW asbestos licensing page.
How it gets confirmed
Only a NATA-accredited laboratory can confirm asbestos, by analysing a sample under AS 4964-2004. There is no reliable field test, no visual certainty, and no app. Anyone offering an instant on-site verdict is giving you an opinion, not an analysis.
Sampling itself is a controlled procedure — a small piece is taken wet, sealed, and the spot made good — which is why it is done by someone equipped for it. See asbestos testing for how the sample and the written result work, or asbestos inspection if you need a whole property surveyed and a register rather than one answer about one wall.
What removal involves
Intact fibro sheeting is bonded (non-friable) asbestos, which is the more straightforward category of removal work: sheets are wetted, unfixed whole rather than broken, wrapped and labelled, and taken to a facility licensed to receive asbestos waste. Badly weathered, burnt or smashed sheeting is a different matter and may be assessed as friable — see friable vs bonded asbestos for why that changes the licence class, the controls and the price.
For what the work looks like end to end, see asbestos removal. For what it costs and what drives the number, the Sydney cost guide publishes indicative market ranges per square metre by material, plus why small jobs carry a minimum charge.
Where this information comes from
The physical descriptions, dates and asbestos content figures on this page are taken from the national Asbestos Product Guide (opens in a new tab) published by the Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency, and from asbestos.nsw.gov.au (opens in a new tab). The ban date and the pre-1990 guidance are from the NSW Government asbestos site (opens in a new tab).