Posted By Ray Collins my company are at present refurbishing an old mansion. We have had an asbestos survey carried out but during the rip out procedure have found some materials we are unsure about . I intend to get the surveyors back out but would appreciate it in the meantime if some one who has experience of this type of work would give me some advice. We have found some material behind some of the plaster work to the external walls the description is as follows. It appears to be of a fibre manufacture hung in place with chicken wire and and backed with a semi solid ribbed material the whole system is fixed to the wall with nails and washers. We believe this system could be 70 years old. Has anyone seen this before and if so what is it

Posted By Dave Wilson Don't you just love the law quoters. Adrian your LLB has done somethjing to you my old pongo friend!I have solid looking object whiuch fell out a wall, its got some muck on it, and its a bit dirty could be asbestos or a house brick! from what you have said matey I very much doubt it is Asi, but best to get it checked eh! I give up!!!

Posted By steven bentham Is it some type of animal hair?

Posted By Jonathan Sandler CMIOSH could be plaster containing animal hair, in which case you still have a coshh issue, normaly pre first world war is the cut off date for anthrax spores.

Posted By Ray Collins Thanks to everyone who has given advice on this subject. I visited site this morning from what I can see and by doing a simple test passed on to me ie. rolling a sample between my wet finger and thumb I can say that the material is not fibrous but am sending a sample to the lab for analysis any way. We had a stage three asbetsos survey carried out and found the same material in the loft space and this was stated as not asbestos. But as I have said i am getting a separate test done jsut to be certain. Once again thanks to all Ray Collins

Posted By Robert K Lewis Ray Have to bring this forward again as I think Salus makes an important point. A type 3 was required for a refurbishment and you clearly have not been given one or you failed to make sure that a type 3 was specified and undertaken - although all surveyors should know MDHS 100 well enough now to have priced and undertaken a type 3 as routine. Appearance is no guarantee so make sure the surveyors come back in and complete their intrusive survey. Make sure that they state clearly where they have been and identified all areas that were sampled, whether or not the results were negative. Because there isn't a result you cannot presume it is clear without positive evidence. This is an area which increasingly concerns me - in spite of the intensive training requirements the quality of many of the reports I have seen leave a lot to be desired. I recently received a report for a 200 bed victorian hotel under refurbishment where only the areas of asbestos were identified, I had no idea where else the surveyors had been. Bob