Checking Old Rural Buildings in Shasta County for Asbestos and Lead

A survey comes before the first cut on any building old enough to have gone up before the late 1970s. The running record shasta county house demolition renew grid mag holds shows that sheds, barns and detached garages around Shasta County, CA are exactly the buildings that skip this step, because owners treat them as too small to matter. A demolition crew still treats a corrugated roof the same as a house roof until a lab says otherwise.

What gets sampled

Siding, roofing felt, cement panels, window glazing, floor tile and joint compound can all carry asbestos in buildings from the middle of the last century. Painted trim and doors can carry lead. A technician takes small samples from each material and sends them out, and results come back in a few days.

Why outbuildings are not exempt

Old garages in Redding and Anderson were often finished with leftover siding and shingles from a house, so the same materials appear in a shed that nobody thinks about. Cement board roofing on a barn near Palo Cedro is a common example, and it breaks into dust under a skid steer bucket.

Wet work and containment

If asbestos shows up, the material is kept wet, removed in whole pieces, bagged and sent to an approved landfill, and the crew does not use a jackhammer or a demo hammer on it. Lead paint is handled with plastic sheeting under the work area and a clean sweep afterward. A stud wall coated in lead paint is taken down and bagged, not knocked over.

What the survey changes

A positive result adds a specialist and extra days to the schedule, which is why the survey is done before the excavator is booked. Machine work waits until abatement is finished, and the debris pile is kept apart from the clean wood and concrete.

Rules and paperwork

Air districts and the county look at notifications for demolition work, and the rules vary with the size of the building and the amount of material. A crew checks with the county around Shasta Lake before the date is set, since an unreported teardown can be stopped halfway.

Fire-damaged buildings

Buildings touched by the Carr Fire get the same survey, because heat does not remove asbestos, it only breaks the material into smaller pieces. Burned siding that looks like plain ash may still carry fibres.