LESLIE: Brian in Colorado is calling in with a flooring question. How can we help you today?
BRIAN: Well, we had a carpet problem in our basement there with – when you walk on it, it crackles and everything. So we were told the basement flooded a couple of times and everything. So we decided to go ahead and pull the carpet up and, lo and behold, there’s asbestos tile up underneath the carpet and the padding there and we’re wondering what’s the cheapest and most economical way around total removal of that asbestos tile. Would we better off sealing it with a wax or something or how would we go about doing that?
TOM: What’s the end project? What are you going to replace the carpet with?
BRIAN: Either we’re going to put some other flooring on there; like maybe some parquet or – we’re not really sure yet.
TOM: OK. Well, first of all, the asbestos that you’re talking about is vinyl asbestos tile. That asbestos is contained inside of a vinyl binder, so the risk of exposure is pretty minimal.
LESLIE: Unless you start crumbling it up, right?
TOM: Right. Are those tiles sticking well to the floor? Are they loose and falling apart? What do they look like?
BRIAN: There’s two or three that will come up.
TOM: OK. Then here’s what I would do. You’re thinking about some sort of hard surface flooring. I would go right on top of that. I would leave it alone. I see no reason whatsoever to pull that up and get into that big mess.
You might want to think about looking at laminate floor because when you put laminate floor down, or even engineered hardwood, you put a very thin like soft underlayment underneath it. Usually it’s about a …
LESLIE: Like a roll of foam or something.
TOM: Yeah, it’s very, very thin. And you put that down and then on top of that, you put the laminate flooring or the hardwood flooring and it just stays that way. It floats. It doesn’t attach to the floor and it looks great; very durable; very water-resistant, if you go with laminate; and I see, again, no reason to take up …
LESLIE: Perfect for the basement.
TOM: Oh, yeah. No, reason to take up that asbestos.
BRIAN: OK. Well, I thank you very much, guys. I will keep that advice in mind and I sure appreciate your show. You guys are wonderful.
TOM: Well, thank you very much and we hope that helps you out.
BRIAN: You bet it does. Thanks a lot.
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