Beware of Asbestos Before a Demo - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with John Kenney from Cotney Consulting Group . You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to the AskARoofer Podcast, where all your roofing questions find their answers. Your hosts, Megan Ellsworth and Lauren White, peel back the layers of the roofing world to reveal the knowledge, tips and FAQs you've been curious about. From shingles to skylights, metal to asphalt, we are here to demystify the system above your head. So get ready to ask, learn and explore the fascinating world of roofing one question at a time on the AskARoofer Podcast.

Hello everyone. My name is Megan Ellsworth, and you are listening to the AskARoofer Podcast. I'm so excited. We have a legend in the roofing industry, full of absolute wisdom, John Kenney from Cotney Consulting. So hi, friend. How are you?

John Kenney: Great. How are you? I've always loved getting on these whenever possible. It's good to see you again.

Megan Ellsworth: It's good to see you too. I'm excited to learn about asbestos today because it is still very, apparently, a danger in construction, in old homes. So I would love to, just before we get into that, have you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Cotney Consulting.

John Kenney: Absolutely. Well, again, I'm happy to be here and this is a good topic to talk about. But my name is John Kenney. I'm with Cotney Consulting Group now, but prior to being in Cotney Consulting Group, where I get the background and the expertise in a lot of these fields, because people are like, "Oh, consultant, how do you know about all this?" I was a roofing contractor for 45 years, and then currently now in the consulting end, I work with roofing contractors on the betterment of their business and other avenues they may need and training, management and operational skills, but still continue to work in the roofing industry and of course I get chances like this to work with great people like yourselves and Roofers Coffee Shop and that and giving back to that industry so people get that knowledge in what's going on and what can hopefully make their lives a little better.

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing. Well, I know as a, hopefully, future homeowner, I have so many questions about all sorts of aspects of owning a home and asbestos, in where it's found and its dangers, is definitely one of them, so let's just start there. What is it and where can it be found in these old homes?

John Kenney: So asbestos is a natural mineral. It is found in the ground. Asbestos is, as we say with a lot of things, is pretty much as old as time. Asbestos actually originally dates back to its earliest uses from Egyptians and Romans, and they actually, believe it or not, used it in clothing for fire protection and they also used it in like the doilies that went underneath the candles and the first fires to help prevent it.

That is the main purpose of asbestos. There's two main purposes for asbestos when it was used in roofing. It was used for reinforcement, and what I mean by reinforcement is that's what keeps things from splitting and opening up, because without it, there's no strength. So just think about it, like anything else out there, it comes with strength and then it's used for fire. It has a Class A fire rating and it's almost impossible to burn through. So that was the two main reasons, and it comes out of the ground in mining the same as you get any other mineral out of the ground.

Megan Ellsworth: Okay, wow.

Where in a home should homeowners be concerned about asbestos, especially maybe they need a new roof? Where in the home can it be found most commonly now?

John Kenney: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. So as we talked about or we're going to talk about, if you have a home that was built prior to the 1980s, which you're going to almost go from 1990 and go under, you probably have asbestos in your home somewhere. All right? That's the key. They didn't really get it out, like it wasn't just brought out all at one time and gone. It dwindled in.

So let's start with the roof. So it also, which you may still find out there in the marketplace, is what they call a pure asbestos roof tile. If you look up at a roof, it's usually kind of, might resemble a slate look but kind of octagonal, usually looks like that octagonal look, but it's always going to have like that dull sheen unless it's been painted. It looks like a dull, faded green sheen and sometimes you actually see the asbestos fibers in there. So if you have that type of roof, which there's still many of them on in existence today because they were a very long-lasting roof, that's a pure asbestos.

Asbestos was also mixed in with shingles, but honestly, fiberglass has been out a very long time, like in the '70s and that, so fiberglass, again, we're talking about reinforcement, replaced asbestos use in asphalt shingles. Chances are, as a homeowner, you're not going to find an asphalt shingle roof with asbestos in it on your home only because of the age, right? They haven't used it, more than likely they haven't probably put asbestos, even though it was possible up to the '80s, but that's still 40-plus years ago, 40, 50 years ago, so the roof may have been tore off. But you do have to be careful what's under the top layer of roof. So you want to make sure you don't have that asbestos tile roof under it, because they roofed over a lot.

So that's what you look at. Other than that, it can be in a lot of places, siding, which we forget about, right? If we have vinyl siding, probably not, but the key is what was covered. If your house was built long enough time ago, it may have been re-sided, what's under that. So those are the things you want to think about. And it's very similar. Asbestos was used in many siding products in the marketplace, and now, like a lot of people know the term Hardie board, we see it out there all the time. That's a cement board. They had boards similar to that that were based with the asbestos base on that that also could either look like regular clapper, it can look like shingles, it can look like wood shakes. There's all different ways and ones that were out there.

Now, that's mainly on the exterior. Now, the biggest hidden probably danger I'd say for homeowners are the interior of their homes. If you have a home that's old enough and you have the type of furnace in the basements that have the pipes in there, more than likely it was wrapped with asbestos. Now, if it was not abated, which abated means you're getting rid of it at some point in time, if they probably sold it past 1990 and you may be the next owner, it may have been abated, but you want to check for those things. They also used it in floor tile.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. It was used everywhere.

John Kenney: It was used everywhere. I will tell you, it was known as the magic mineral. That was one of the things it was known as because it was added in, like a home in probably the '50s may actually had asbestos in with the drapes and all the other products that were in the house. Amazing because it was a fireproofing membrane. It was even used in old Christmas ornaments back in the '30s and '40s, so depending on what you have in your attic, you may very possibly have asbestos in your areas.

But those are kind of the extremes. So you want to look roof, siding, kind of experiment, see what you got. And then interior, if you're concerned, look for any kind of pipe wrappings that you have over piping that usually goes with a furnace-type heating system. And then if you have floors that are the old vinyl-type tile, and I know anybody out there that's been in an older home and sees that traditional black and green tiles that are on the floors, they're more than likely pure asbestos tiles, because that was the big way they made them. So those are the really main areas that you're looking for.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. And you may or may not have it on your Christmas tree in ornament form.

John Kenney: You may not. I mean, you don't know. I mean, I actually have ornaments that were passed down through my family that we did find out had asbestos on them and I will tell you, we got rid of them because regardless of what value they have as being heirlooms in your family, you do not want to mess with asbestos.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah.

So, okay, how can homeowners know if their home has asbestos in it? Like is there a test they can do? Do they just need to hire a contractor to do an inspection? What's the deal?

John Kenney: Yeah, so most of your home inspection agencies have avenues to get asbestos testing done and if you have any, so if you're buying a home, you normally would get a home inspection report and they will usually, at that stage, put up the red flag and say, "Hey, you may have it in your roof." Usually they're not going to test for it. They're going to say, "These are the areas where you possibly could have asbestos. It appears to be that way." That would be like step one.

If you really wanted to have it tested, then there would be usually some sort of an environmental engineering firm that would have the availability to come out and do a cutout or a test and let you know if it's asbestos and they take it back to the lab and it could be anywhere from three days to a week or more, depending on the speed of the lab, to get the results. But the only way you can actually verify if you have asbestos is having a test that they're... You can look at it and make an assumption you may have it, but there's no way of knowing unless you have it tested.

Megan Ellsworth: What would you say are the major health risks of asbestos exposure?

John Kenney: So asbestos falls into two categories. It's called friable and non-friable. What that means is friable means it can get airborne, okay? Non-friable means that it's probably only way it could get airborne is if you broke it up, cut it or crushed it. You got to do something with it.

Let's go back to the pipe wrappings. That's a great example of friable. That very easily can get airborne and it's extremely dangerous because of that, because the wrapping that went around it was probably an asbestos-reinforced paper and that dries out over time and there's nothing to stop those fibers that are inside the pipe used for the insulation value to get out into the air. That can happen. That's friable.

Good news is, like your floor tiles, your siding products, your roofing products, they fall into non-friable category. So by themselves, they're not dangerous. So if you had asbestos siding on your house, that does not mean that it's dangerous to you because unless something happened to make it friable and the only way that could happen is between cutting it, crushing it and making it airborne. So that's what you want to look at. So I don't want anybody to panic, because just because you have asbestos in a building product doesn't necessarily make it a danger, an immediate danger.

So that's what they're going to test for. So let's say we have, and most of what's going to be in our building material is going to fall into non-friable and they'll test for that and they'll test it and they'll say, "Yes, it contains X amount of asbestos." The reason why that's important, because under a certain limit, it's so small, it does not matter. And they'll let you know this. That's what the environmental engineers do in their reports.

Megan Ellsworth: So when a homeowner say they need a new roof and they find out that they have asbestos, what are some of the precautions they can take to lower the amount of exposure for them in their home and also probably the workers, too, doing the work?

John Kenney: Yeah. So really that would then... So I'm Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner, we get it tested and I know I have asbestos in my roof. So I would want to notify my contractor that I'm going to hire that, "Hey, I've had this test and it's asbestos." They need to follow asbestos abatement protocols for roofing.

Now, again, the good news is, as I said, roofing falls into non-friable, so you're not going to see them in the suits and the masks and you're not going to have to have yellow tape all over your yard that you look like an environmental hazard zone. Now, what they're required to do, they will need to wear a filtered mask. It has the right filter in it to prevent any loose asbestos from getting in there. Normal process is they'll wet it down, you put water on it just to keep the dust down and then it will go into a dumpster. There's two ways that are acceptable. The dumpster either has to be double-lined with the double mill plastic in there and then wrapped and taped, or they can bag it and the bag gets sealed up with duct tape and then put into the dumpster.

So that's the abatement portion. Now, the other key is, where people get into trouble, is to make sure that that dumpster is going to an asbestos-approved landfill and you want to make sure as a homeowner that that's happening and you get a copy of the tickets from whoever they're using for the dumpster, whether the roofer is hauling it themselves or whether they brought in a dumpster, a third-party dumpster company to haul it out. But reason why I'm telling you this is if there's ever a problem down the road, nobody can involve you, as the homeowner, that you didn't have the receipts, that you've done everything right. You're really responsible as an owner of any building to test for asbestos, the contractor's not, but again, it's kind of up in the air whether or not you need to based upon some of the things we discussed earlier. But if we do have a asbestos, you want to follow that and you definitely want to have the receipts that that went to a legal dump site.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. Yeah, wow. That's so important. And these are things that first-time homeowners wouldn't know. I had no idea. I have no clue. So I'm just so glad we're talking about this.

How can asbestos impact the cost and timeline of a roofing or a siding project, and how can knowing prior help keep that timeline shorter?

John Kenney: Yeah, time-wise, it's probably not going to add a lot onto it. It'll slow down production a little bit because of the precautions they need to make, but let's just say if we had a five-day roof replacement project on a home, which would be a longer duration, maybe it'll take six. So you could see it's not a big deal.

Cost-wise, that's different. Cost-wise because of the double bagging and the things that get involved with it, the cost going to the dump and then probably your testing, it depends, but you're going to probably add on, it could be 20% more than what it would be if it wasn't or 25 even. It depends on how much you have, the type you have and the area you're in, because some areas are expensive to get rid of asbestos compared to others that are fairly reasonable.

Megan Ellsworth: Would every state have an asbestos-approved landfill, or would you have to like go out of state?

John Kenney: No, usually every state accepts it. Again, this is the key. If it's non-friable, it usually goes into the same landfill as the rest of the garbage, but it goes into a special section and really what they do by special section is they're documenting where it was dumped into their records.

If it's friable, which is the bad asbestos, that's a whole other story. If you're doing a friable, if you're a homeowner and you go in and it's in your ceiling tiles... And here's another thing we forget about. Popcorn ceilings, we know how popular they were. Usually the popcorn ceilings in the '80s and earlier, the pops that make it look like popcorn, a lot of times they were asbestos that was mixed in. So now if you run into that situation and you have to abate it, that's all considered friable and that is expensive. That could be 50 to 80% or double what it would normally cost in a renovation in comparison to getting rid of standard building materials. And they would have to be suited, and there's vacuums and there's pumps and there's air monitoring that goes with it, but luckily, hopefully... I would be more concerned as a homeowner about what I have on the inside. The outside, you can deal with. But the good news is that's why we're here. We're getting some education out there.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, exactly. And it's also a good reminder that you probably don't want to do this yourself. This isn't a DIY project.

John Kenney: Any contractor that abates any type of asbestos, whether it's friable or non-friable, has to go through and have a course and be trained. In most states, the contractor has to be registered to abate asbestos. So there's a process to it. This is definitely not a DYI.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

So are there any legal requirements for asbestos testing in residential projects?

John Kenney: So usually friable asbestos, most banks for mortgages require the building inspector to look for that. That's real easy. They're going to pick that out. I'll give you an example. I bought my first home, my wife and I, we bought our first home in the '80s. So the house that we bought had a lot of friable asbestos in it. It was in the popcorn in one room, it was in the drywall in another room and it was all over the heating pipe. So that's easy for them to pick out. They know it. The non-friable and the roofing and that, it's hard for them.

But here's the good news as a homeowner. Federally, commercially, it falls under every state. It's on the owner to test the contractor to abate. There can be some legal ramifications if that's not followed. Good news is for homeowners, four stories and under residential facilities are exempt from these EPA requirements, okay? So you won't be breaking any rules or laws or have to worry about filing and all that. But the most important thing is you still want to be aware and know if you have it because if you're going to abate it, you want to follow the proper rules and regulations that we just went through with the bagging and so you understand it. Because let's face it, as a homeowner, the last thing you want is somebody's worker coming back 5, 10 years later and filing a lawsuit against you, which we all know things happen.

Megan Ellsworth: So follow-up question to that. If you're buying a house and you somehow find out you do have non-friable asbestos in your siding, it's not hurting anybody, it's non-friable and your siding looks fine and you don't really need to replace it, can you just leave it if you know it has asbestos?

John Kenney: Yeah, technically you can, for sure, but again, that might depend on your bank, your mortgage. Okay? That's usually more of the driver of that, and, unfortunately, insurance, that's what drives everything today. So I want put that asterisk next to it that you can always be driven to do something that you may not be required to do anywhere else by your lender or your insurance company.

A couple of things that are interesting coming out, which probably is going to affect the commercial world more and I expect two-story dwellings or two-family and under to be exempt from this because it would be devastating, the new building codes that are coming out on the next round in 2025, you are going to be no longer allowed to cover over asbestos roofing or siding commercially. So that's going to be a little bit of a game-changer for commercial contracts, but I do believe they're going to leave the same exemption in there that is for most of those type of things that the two-family, two-story dwellings and under will be exempt. So again.

But the problem with asbestos on your siding is if it's beyond its life span, then it starts to crack and break and that's when you have a friable problem. So, like anything else, buyer beware.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And beware for your own health and the health of the people living in the home.

Going back to those new building code requirements, that's huge for apartment buildings that were built before the '80s and building owners that own those buildings, so that's good to be aware of.

John Kenney: Yeah. And again, there are going to be some exemptions in certain codes and as far as that... So a homeowner may not know this, but a lot of commercial contractors don't know it either, you got to know what's adapted into your state. So just understand that, because something changes in 2025 doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be effective in anyone's area immediately. Like for example, right now I live in the state of Florida. So the state of Florida updates the codes every three years. So yes, in Florida that will become part of the new code going forward. But for example, in Texas, I do a lot of teaching of contractors in Texas, Texas hasn't adopted. Their code, I think, is 2013.

Nothing wrong with that. That just means legislatively they haven't met and found a need to update. So the new code changes are not going to affect, say, Texas until they decide to adopt the code. But that's just a little background, so I don't want anybody panicking and saying, "Oh my."

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, no, absolutely.

So how does asbestos abatement add to your overall value of a home when you're going to resell? Does it change it?

John Kenney: Yeah, definitely if you could prove that you've had a house with asbestos and you've done the abatement, that's why I said those receipts for dump tickets are so valuable, it adds value to it. It's the same like, I know in a lot of states, homeowners are going to relate to this, if you have a fuel oil tank in the ground, you have to get it out before you're even allowed to sell your own home or you've got to negotiate with a possible buyer to be willing to pay for that, which most buyers aren't, to you as a seller.

So this is a great way to say, "Hey, I've got a house." Let's say it was built in 1950. "It had asbestos. We've abated it. Here's all my proof it was abated." Right? Now, when the real estate agent goes to list that, I'm positive you are going to add percentages of value to that home compared to if I had the identical home next door and my asbestos was still there, because that could be a 20, $30,000 abatement bill that someone, which would more likely be me, trying to sell it would have to pay before someone would buy it.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, absolutely. That is such a good thing to keep in mind selling a home, buying a home and also real estate agents listing them, too, making sure that your clients know that it will add value, so maybe do it now, like a couple years before you're thinking about selling and for commercial buildings too.

John Kenney: And you could do it in stages too, you know? It doesn't have to all be done at one time.

Megan Ellsworth: Exactly. One project a year for a couple years and then boom, you're ready. Love it.
Well, John, I've learned a ton in this episode. I can't thank you enough. Is there anything we haven't spoke to or touched on?

John Kenney: No, I think we did cover everything that's a good educational value to the listeners out there. And like I said, the only thing I just wanted, that's why we wanted to cover the interior, because sometimes that's even more of a problem than the exterior. So I think we've got that rounded value from it. Again, I always enjoy coming on and being able to share this, because I believe anybody that picks up a tidbit or something they didn't know listening to something, then our jobs has been done very well.

Megan Ellsworth: Yay. I completely agree. I hope everyone got something from this episode, and I look forward to having you on again. You're just a regular now, and I love it.

John Kenney: My pleasure. I'll come back anytime.

Outro: Yay. Well, thank you so much, John. Everyone out there listening, you can find more information about Cotney Consulting on askaroofer.com and rooferscoffeeshop.com. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via the AskAQuestion tab on askaroofer.com and we will do a podcast episode to answer it and we'll also send you a written answer from a roofing contractor near you. Thanks everyone for listening, and we'll see you next time on the next AskARoofer Podcast.

If your roof needs answers, subscribe now to the AskARoofer Podcast. We've got your questions covered one episode at a time. Go to askaroofer.com to submit your questions and learn more. Stay tuned and keep those questions coming.