The Best way to remove Artex

The Best Way to Remove Artex

Home renovation has always been a part of home maintenance and people often think about renovating their home after a certain period. Renovating a fairly modern home can be easier for the homeowners as well as for the people who actually work on your project. However, things can be more difficult for older homes that were constructed during the 70’s and 80’s. It can be a bit risky as well because homes built during this period often used artex on walls and ceilings. Artex often contained asbestos, and the use of asbestos containing artex was later banned in both the USA and the UK. The reason behind this was of course the harmful effects of the asbestos that the artex contained.

Test it first:

It is quite possible that the artex ceiling of your house may or may not have some asbestos content within it. You need to be sure about this before trying to remove the artex. There are a number of ways to go about this if you are interested in removing your artex. For instance, you can ask local specialist companies, experts in asbestos removal, to test whether it contains asbestos or not.

Why you need to remove artex that might contain asbestos:

The presence of asbestos in artex can be quite harmful to health. Laboratory tests have found that asbestos can have severe harmful effects on the human respiratory system, which is why it is a good idea to remove such artex to improve your living conditions for the future. However, removing artex can be quite a tiresome job requiring a lot of patience.

Steps to remove artex:

• Before you start removing artex, you must equip yourself with a few things including eye protection, mask, boots and overalls. These will protect you from any contamination with asbestos that might be in the artex. You must ensure that the entire dress covers your body perfectly with no exposed areas.
• The room or the area of the house where you are working must be sealed to prevent dust contaminating the rest of the house. This is necessary to protect anyone else in the house from the harmful effects of artex dust that might contain asbestos.
• Use of mechanical means to remove the artex usually produces lots of dust and bits of artex, which may be contaminated with harmful asbestos fibres, hence the need for all these precautions. The use of lots of wet towels and water mists is essential to minimise the amount of potentially harmful dust floating around the atmosphere in the house.
• This task of removing artex can be hugely simplified by using one of the many chemical artex removal agents on the market today. The water-based artex strippers are the safest and easiest to use. They convert the artex to a gel which locks in any potentially harmful asbestos fibres and prevents their release into the atmosphere. This gel can then be easily and quickly scraped or wiped off the walls or ceilings and disposed of. This makes removing artex a safe and simple job even for the average home improvement person.