Roofing

I have aquired an older house and am wanting to get it ready to sell. It has the old slate shingles. My guess is the slate shingles probably contain asbestoes. Is this a safe assumtion? I was wandering if I could put a new layer of asfault shingles over the slate.

It it is truely slate, it won't have any asbestos in it...

If it is a manufactured slate look-alike, then all bets are off - it could. A real slate roof can last literally hundreds of years. Working on one is both expensive and dangerous. The things are slippery and brittle.

If it is a real slate roof, and there aren't any broken tiles, I'd probably leave well enough alone. Sometimes, there isn't even any roof decking under one of those. Have you been up in the attic?

The house is 50 or 60 years old and is located in Iowa. (It was my mother and father's) There are some broken slate tiles. The slats are flat and look simlar to asphault shingles. The main draw-back to removing the slate is disposing of them because of the wieght, however, the draw-back to NOT removing the slate is it would be nearly inpossble to get the asphault shingles to lay like they should.

Removal

If the tiles do have asbestos in them the proper way to get rid of them is to have one person use a hose and keep the tiles wet during removal. A long lugger for garbage disposal placed next to the building is used to drop the tiles into. Also the use of particle masks are required during removal to prevent breathing in any of the material. Unless the original owners had alot of money, (100% slate roofs were very expensive) the tiles probably contain asbestos anywhere from 5 to 30%. The roofing company I use in Wisconsin has told me that 99% of the roofs they remove that have what are called Slate tiles, contain asbestos if the roof was installed before 1971. Most states have free analysis to determine if your tiles contain asbestos.

The tiles may very well be asbestos . These were common, as were a siding shingle prodcut made of asbestos compounds.

If it is asbestos, you cannot just hose it down and throw it into a dumpster. State and Federal regulations require a licensed asbestos abatement contractor to do this work.

jimbo said:

The tiles may very well be asbestos . These were common, as were a siding shingle prodcut made of asbestos compounds.

If it is asbestos, you cannot just hose it down and throw it into a dumpster. State and Federal regulations require a licensed asbestos abatement contractor to do this work.

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Jimbo,

While what you say is true the costs are often so prohibitive that there is no way that the costs can be justified. What burns my biscuits is that there is no major remidiation for this. You have to cover the costs. That being said a lot of people are just throwing this stuff out. The companies that sold this stuff are to blame and more needs to be done to make sure that products on the market are safe in the long run.

With that banter out of the way. I do believe the instructions given by the poster on proper removal are fairly accurate. I'm not admitting to anything but that is how I may have approached similar projects in the past. The only difference is I would consider sealing the stuff in plastic.

Life's tough.

Tom

forgot to mention

As pointed out you do need a certified person to handle the removal of the tiles. And yes, if the company is certified here in wisconsin they do hose the shingles, place them in bags and drop them in a dumpster. To do the work a person needs only a 16 hour course and $50.00 for the license through the state of Wisconsin. Personally I would never do it myself and thats why I hire roofing jobs out. Its a young mans game and im to old to be crawling around on a roof.