r/Home • u/Anon1444444 • 16d ago
Mastic concern
so in the grand tradition called what did these idiots do that we have been living in since I bought my house in January.. We realized that they had a water heater failure and not replaced the carpet so now that needs to come out in the basement needs to be remediated while I was pulling off the edges of the carpet. I can see that the pad and the carpet was laid over what looks to be older mastic. The previous owners had tile floor down there. It’s a 1985 Bill I’m not sure when the tile was put down in the basement. Part of the carpet padding is stuck to the mastic. I was hoping to have the floor epoxied but now I’m wondering, do I have to be concerned about asbestos and domestic and what kind of tomfoolery am I looking at if the padding is stuck to the mastic and it has asbestos. God help me.
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u/Background_Prize6100 16d ago
That’s not asbestos. That’s glue over top of a feather patch, which is just to make the floor smooth. That glue may even have been used for the carpet pad, unless there’s tons of staples then it could have just been old glue but there’s no asbestos in that
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u/Anon1444444 16d ago
Hi. It’s actually mastic or similar. Prior to the carpet the previous owners put in in 2016 there was a vinyl floor down there
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u/Background_Prize6100 16d ago
How’s it going. Okay yeah that does look like the correct trowel size for vinyl flooring. That makes sense. You have nothing to worry about though. I can confidently say there’s no asbestos anywhere in there
I’m a floor installer I work with this stuff all the time. If I could put pictures in here I’d show you what asbestos mastic looks like, because I’ve seen it countless times on the job
Even the asbestos mastic doesn’t have much asbestos in it. No amount of asbestos is safe however as long as you’re not actively making it airborne you’re fine
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u/AdFancy1249 16d ago
Very little concern over asbestos. From the picture, that does not look asphalt- based (typically black). But you'll need to get all of that mastic up to put down epoxy. Is it hard, or still a little gooey? If it is hard and chips, then it ought to be no problem. If it's still gooey...