Question About Lead Paint and a Re Model
I am helping a friend gut an extra room to make into a baby’s room. We had tested the walls several years back for lead and got a negative response. Today after we gutted the room we tore up the hardwood floors and underneath the the hardwood was the original planking. It at one time had been painted with Lead paint. I ran a test and I got a positive response. We had torn the hardwood out because of concerns of termite damage. The original plan was to repair any termite damage, (there was none), and then re-cover the planking with 3/8 or 1/2 inch plywood and them carpet on top. I have major concerns about lead paint because it is after all a babies room yet I have read that the real problems are from the paint flaking and being digested or the dust being inhaled.
If I cover it with ply and carpet, should I be safe??? No lead surface would be exposed once finished.
Thanks – SC
Replies
smc... there are coatings ( paint ) you can use to cover lead paint with that will encapsulate any lead dust..
then put down some 15 # felt before you lay your plywood subfloor.... most of the lead abatement problems come from paint chips and dust.. so if you take care of those two , you take care of your problems
as far as liability issues go... tearing up the lead painted cflooring itself can also contaminate the job site... so i would go for encapsulating in this case
Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Hi Sean,
When we were dealing with our county mandated lead abatement, they were very specific about what abatement procedures could and could not be done about lead abatement. The only thing they were open to an untrained homeowner doing was encapsulating with paint.
The inspector even pointed out that removing a door coated with peeling lead based paint was not allowed/encouraged unless you were a properly trained lead abatement contractor. It was ok to paint it with a material that would encapsulate the existing lead paint.
Piffen has pointed out at least once that it is airborne dust particles like those that would be generated by double hung windows sliding up and down in their tracks that cause most of the problems. It is apparently pretty hard to extract lead from the paint in the digestive process but your lungs do a pretty good job of extracting it from the airborne dust.
Given this I agree with Mike that your best plan is to just paint over it and put down the flooring.
Karl
The gutting and stripping you've done so far has probably already caused the worst of the problems you are likely to cause. There is no gaurantee that the testing you did prior is accurate. False negatives are numberous. I assume that you did one of those simple swipe wipe tests. If it gicves a positive, there is lead present, but if it gives a negative, chances are only thirty to fifty percent that there is no lead about.
The three main things you do to control lead ( if I remember right) are.
ENCAPSULATE
Paint it over, seal it up, barrier it to dickens, and you won't need to worry abbout it. Lead is a heavy metal and very inert - not at all like formaldehyde.
CONTROL
When working on it, or suspected leaded surfaces, use dust maskes, Dict tape plastic barriers to prevent lead dust from traveling around the house. Spray mist from mist bottles to settle dust. Use HEPA filters on your air cleaners. Seal HVAC ducting to keep that from spread the dust. vacumn, vacumn, vacumn, using a HEPA vac
REMOVAL
More vacumning, and all the above, then wash, vacumn, wash, vacumn, rinse, vacumn
Do the washing with real TSP - it binds up with lead.
In your case, if it is only the floorboards that contain lead, going over them will pretty well take care of it for you by encapsulating the source of the problem, but remember to take care of yourself too, not just the future inhabitant.
Excellence is its own reward!