Asbestos shingles are relatively strong but brittle.
Remove nails broken asbestos siding.
Remove pieces of siding by pulling nails or cutting nail heads so as to minimize breakage.
Asbestos cement shingles can be removed safely without costly teams of abatement professionals.
If siding should begin to crack or crumble immediately wet the cracked or broken areas with the pint size spray bottle or garden pump sprayer.
If necessary carefully lift siding pieces with pry tool to expose nail heads.
Don t nail through existing asbestos shingles since this could cause harmful dust to get airborne.
When you remove those shingles they will either come off when you pull out the nails require you to snap them off or require you to cut them.
Use vise grips or end cutting pliers illustrated in our faqs below or a pair of horse shoe nail clips or similar tool to carefully pull out the nails from the intact un damaged cement asbestos shingles above and around the damaged shingles.
Fiber cement siding removal procedures to minimize dust to permit possible salvage re use of the material.
This would trigger dust and asbestos dust is a problem as i ve mentioned.
Removing shingles can be safe.
This article describes why owners decided to remove fiber cement siding from their home and to replace it with james hardie s hardieplank fiber cement product.
Keep the nails 1 inch 2 5 cm below the top of the shingles and space them around 12 inches 0 30 m apart from one another.
Step 4 pry off the siding.
If you need to reuse existing asbestos shingles put new nails through the existing nail holes.
Do not throw or drop removed asbestos siding.
The article details just how the old fiber cement siding was removed with minimum damage.
Work from the top down removing the snails to keep from breaking the asbestos siding.
Covering old asbestos shingles with new siding may seem like an option too but it s not easy to do safely.
Breakage releases asbestos fibers.
Use the hammer to remove any nails that are holding the siding in place.
Use the pry bar and the hammer to start taking off the siding.
Throughout the process you should strive to always keep the siding wet.