Asbestos Tiles

The house we are buying may contain asbestos tiles in the finished basement. First, is there any way I can have whether or not the tiles conatain asbestos verified?

Has anyone dealt with asbestos tiles in their home?

Also I have been reading online that it may just be better to cover them up rather than ripping them out, is this true?

Any insight is greatly appreciated.Thanks.

Message edited 2/25/2007 9:55:49 AM.

Re: Asbestos Tiles

I can't speak about tiles,but where we are moving has popcorn ceilings and in the 1960's and early 1970's most popcorn sprays contains asbestos. I called the town and after trying fr 5 days, finally got my answer that this complex DID NOT use asbestos bound popcorn spray. See the entire complex has the same ceilings and was built in 1972-1973. Town of Islip has records of residential hazardous materials.

I did call around and it would have been expensive to get it tested and removed.

Re: Asbestos Tiles

I think we have them in our basement too

We plan to refloor (is that a word?) right over them

Re: Asbestos Tiles

It's better to cover them b/c ripping them up releases the asbestos into the air.

Re: Asbestos Tiles

We had asbestos tiles in our basement and we couldn't go right over them because we wanted to put tile in our bathroom and laundry room. We ended up ripping them all up and found out from our dumpster company that we can throw them right in our dumpster. Our engineer is the one who told us they were asbestos tiles. We also have asbestos shingles--that shoudl be fun when we decide to have them replaced.