May 6, 2008, 08:17 PM
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Inspector Floors
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Minneapolis, MN.
Posts: 5,558
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Asbestos and the Air Force Academy
After mentioning a job my old company (Morton Floors, Inc. out of Chicago) performed in the early 80s, I was asked by several to share one of the varied experiences we had on this job.
I am going from memory on dates but it had to have been 80 or 81 as asbestos was not the hot button issue it has been for quite a few years now. We were awarded the contract to remove and replace all of the VA tile in the corridors at Fairchild Hall, the single academic building at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The work was scheduled to commence immediately after the completion of the spring semester. Job was about a quarter million square feet.
We arrived with about a 15 man crew for the first day of work to to find a 15 foot section of a hallway isolated floor to ceiling with visqueen. We were instructed by the contracting officer to enter the area and use our normal work procedures to remove the tile. This entail floor stripping (the old red Roofing equipment machines with the big weight on front) and ice scraper type hand tools. After maybe an hours work for three or four men (had other unloading trucks, staging materials, etc.- no wasted time on this baby!) we were told to leave the job! No explanation or any other discussion, just we were done for the day!
Came to the site the next day and all the protection was gone and nothing was said except to proceed.
After the completion of the job, we had become quite friendly with the contracting officer, a career military man approaching retirement. Put him in contact with another account looking for a director of facilities, TCU in Ft. Worth. After he was hired there, maybe four years after the Air Force job I was talking to him while doing a project at TCU and discussed the episode with him. He said he had not been at liberty to discuss it with us but they had had very extension air quality testing done in the trial demo area. No asbestos was released at all. Given what the government invests in Air Force cadets (I'm sure it is in the millions at this point), I have always found it very "interesting" what their own determination was when it came to the old school ways of VAT removal, i.e. making it friable and all that good stuff. Of note: No tile was ever sanded so my surmisal is the breaking of tile does not release asbestos fibers and the vinyl in the product was always a good encapsulant.
HUGE DISCLAIMER: I AM IN NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM ENDORSING, CONDONING OR SUGGESTING ANYONE, ANYWHERE REMOVE COMPOSITION TILES BY ANY METHOD. ALL REMOVAL OF ANY FLOORING PRODUCTS SHOULD BE PERFORMED IN CONJUNCTION WITH ALL APPLICABLE LOCAL, STATE, FEDERAL AND/OR OTHER JURISDICTIONAL AGENCY AS WELL AS MANUFACTURER DIRECTIVES. This is the simple relating of one experience I have personally had during the many years I was a contractor.
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