I tore out carpeting from our walk-out basement. My plan was to paint or seal the floor and get a number of years out of it before putting down tile. However, I found several places where there was vinyl sheet flooring under the carpet. The vinyl contains asbestos…not sure about the mastic. The vinyl is mostly well adhered to the concrete, but there are a few places around the edges where it is a bit curled. By the way, the house is 30 yo, the basement is bone dry…no signs of flooding in the carpeting…and the concrete floor barely has a crack in it. If the floor was all bare concrete I’d be off to the races.
Here are my dilemmas…a few of the locations are separate enough where I could put down 1/4″ cement board and have a small transition. However, there is one area at an entrance to the largest room that is very obvious. I do not want to put own ~800 sqft of board to do the entire room if I can help it. The other problem is that I am not sure how to best fasten the cement board over the vinyl without kicking up the asbestos (e.g., by drilling or power nailing).
Any ideas?
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I don't think you'd want to try this with a power nailer, but for drilling I've heard a dollop of shaving cream can be plopped onto the drilling site before drilling to eliminate any dust.