In Which The Basement is Gently Disassembled and Something Unwanted but Not Unexpected is Discovered

-NOTE- this post has, as have many others, been backdated for timeline record purposes. I apologize to anyone confused by the post dates.

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Back when we bought the house, I had some of the basement tiles tested for asbestos: they came back negative, but there are two types of ceiling tiles in the basement and we never got the second tested. Well, when we finished the upstairs floors at the start of April, I decided to get off my butt and get the second type of tile and the HVAC tape tested. The tile came back negative as well (cellulose) but the tape was 90% asbestos (I suspected as much). I was a little surprised by the cellulose only tiles, since I know the basement was finished in 1963 and asbestos tiles were all the rage back then. It did look like there were two vintages, so it's possible that half of the basement  was renovated at some point, but that doesn't explain the lack of asbestos in the other half. Not that I'm complaining mind you, it's just that there is always the possibility that a previous owner ripped it out without adequate abatement. Too late now though, c'est la vie.

Demolition

After the results came back in, I drafted my friend to help tear down the ceiling in the "unfinished" portion of the basement. Although the ceiling is pretty low, I'm even shorter, so having someone who was a little taller really helped. We suited up in tyvek and masks and then went to work with prybars and our hands. The cellulose boards were very soft and easily removed just by grabbing an edge and gently pulling down. It made an unholy mess with all of the dust and vintage spider webs so I ran a box fan with a 5" pleated furnace filter on the intake side which really helped clean up the air (at least the large particulates). About midway through, I noticed something I really didn't want to see: knob and tube wiring running into a junction box that powered the lights and furnace. There were no other supply side wires, so I knew that it had to be live k&t. I know that there is some k&t in the attic running to light fixtures (at a minimum), but I had assumed (I know, I know) that it had been removed from the rest of the house, after all, the electrical panel was new and on the surface, it looked like there was mostly nonmetallic cable running into it (more about that interesting discovery in a later post). Anyway, I turned the breaker off for that circuit and we continued with the demolition.

On another section of ceiling, I wondered why he was pulling 1.5" thick mats of dark grey fiber out from above the ceiling tiles. I freaked out and checked to see it it was asbestos insulation or older tiles that had been encapsulated. No, as it turns out, it was just something like 92 years of dust. I realized that the air return for the old part of the house was done with panned joist bays and we had just broken into them. Oops. Honestly though, considering how much dust (and god knows what else) I found up there, I am glad to have the opportunity to clean the supply side of the air ducting. It does, however, mean I needed to re-pan the bays before we could use the HVAC system.

Once the ceiling demolition was complete, we cleaned up and called it a day. The next few posts will cover the re-wiring and re-panning, as well as the rest of the basement demolition work.