Asbestos Floor Tile Removal
At Raleigh Asbestos Removal Pros, we get calls almost every week from homeowners who pulled up a rug or moved a washing machine and found square floor tiles underneath that don’t look like anything sold today.
If your home was built before 1980, there’s a real chance those tiles contain asbestos. We inspect, test, and remove this flooring safely, and here’s what you should know before you touch it yourself.
| Sign | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Tile size | 9 by 9 inch or 12 by 12 inch squares, the standard sizes for vinyl asbestos tile |
| Installation date | Installed before 1980, though some product ran until the mid 1980s |
| Adhesive underneath | Black cutback mastic, which can also contain asbestos |
| Condition | Brittle, cracking, or crumbling at the edges |
Wake County’s housing stock is part of why this comes up so often. Census figures for Raleigh show roughly 21,881 homes built in the 1970s alone, another 12,054 from the 1960s, and 8,893 more from the 1950s.
That’s tens of thousands of houses built squarely inside the window when vinyl asbestos tile was the standard flooring choice, long before anyone thought much about what was in it.
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Our removal process usually looks like this:
- We take a small tile sample and send it to an accredited lab instead of guessing based on age or appearance.
- We seal off the work area and shut down HVAC returns before cutting or prying anything loose.
- We keep the tile wet during removal, because dry scraping is what releases asbestos fibers into the air.
- We bag the tile and mastic as regulated waste and haul it to a landfill licensed to accept it.
- We can arrange third party air clearance testing once the room is clear, useful if you need documentation for a home sale or renovation permit.
A lot of the tile we pull up still carries a manufacturer’s mark on the back, even after 40 or 50 years. Armstrong, Kentile Floors, and Congoleum were the largest producers of vinyl asbestos tile through the 1960s and 70s. Flintkote made a smaller share of the market. All of them phased asbestos out of their flooring lines by the mid 1980s as regulations tightened, but plenty of that older stock is still glued down in Triangle area homes today.
North Carolina requires anyone doing abatement work for pay to hold a state asbestos contractor license through the Department of Health and Human Services. The EPA’s NESHAP rule also governs how asbestos containing material gets handled and disposed of during renovation or demolition. DIY removal is legal in most owner occupied homes, but the fines for improper disposal and the health risk from disturbed fibers are why most people call us instead of renting a floor scraper.
If you’re not sure what’s under your flooring, send us a photo or give us a call. We’ll tell you honestly whether testing makes sense before we ever talk about a removal quote.