Wet areas, vinyl and renovations in Traralgon

Where it sits in a bathroom, laundry or kitchen

Latrobe City's homeowner fact sheet asks one question: "Was your home built before 1990? If so, it probably contains asbestos." Wet areas and kitchens are where a renovation meets it first. Where this page says what a house of a given era tends to have, that's our take on the era, not a survey of your house.

• Behind the wall tiles. Cement sheet was a common backing in showers and over the bath. From the front all you see is grout, so nobody knows until the tiles come off.
• Laundry walls. Plain grey sheet on the lower half, often painted over several times, sometimes with timber cover strips on the joins.
• Vinyl sheet flooring. The council fact sheet singles out the backing on vinyl floor sheeting as one of the few friable exceptions in a house. That's the felt layer underneath, not the pattern you walk on.
• Older vinyl floor tiles. Worth a sample before you lift a whole kitchen of them.
• Kitchen walls. If the cupboards come off, or an old splashback is levered away, to reveal grey cement sheet rather than plasterboard, stop there and get it tested.
• The switchboard. The same fact sheet names the lining of old electrical switchboards as friable. If the reno includes a new board, raise it with the electrician before they start.

Which Traralgon houses to test first

It comes down to when the house, and the room, were built. More detail on the Traralgon homes by era page.

• APM and Housing Commission houses. The APM company estates date from the late 1930s, and the Housing Commission's 199 houses on the old Traralgon Park land around Gordon Street were finished in 1952. Most have had a bathroom redone at least once since, and every one of those jobs could have added sheet or covered it. Test, don't guess.
• The Loy Yang years. The town grew from 14,666 people in 1971 to 19,774 in 1991 as tradespeople and SEC workers arrived. Brick veneer of that age often has cement sheet in the wet areas and the eaves.
• Built 1990 to 2003. Council's sheet says manufacturing stopped in 1987, but the national ban didn't take effect until the end of 2003. A date alone doesn't clear a 1990s bathroom. A test does.
• Built after 2003. Homes in The Rise, Silverwood and Franklin North in Traralgon North, or Ellavale on the east edge of town, went up after the ban. They shouldn't contain asbestos building products. Anything older on the block, like a shed that came with the land, is a separate question.

Getting the trades in the right order

The expensive mistake is booking the demolition before the test. Do it the other way round:

• Test in week one. One sample per distinct material: the wall sheet, the vinyl, the laundry lining. See testing and inspection.
• Get a removal quote on the positives. Only the materials that came back positive need pricing.
• Strip-out and clean-down. The asbestos parts only, with the WorkSafe notice lodged first and a clearance afterwards where the rules call for one. Your builder's crew stays out of the room. The services page sets out that paperwork in order.
• Trades back in. Plumber, waterproofer, tiler.

Measure before you guess which rules apply. A shower recess with three tiled walls is only a few square metres of sheet. A bathroom lined floor to ceiling, plus the laundry next door, can pass 10 without trying.

What the removal day looks like

Expect taped-off doorways and asbestos signs, a crew in disposable coveralls and fitted respirators, and the sheet kept damp with a fine mist while it's unscrewed by hand. Debris lands on drop sheets and goes into an H-class vacuum. Nothing gets swept. Everything is double-wrapped in heavy plastic, labelled, and wiped down before it leaves the room, and the crew decontaminates before walking back through your house.

Vinyl backing that has to be scraped up indoors is Class A work, so only a Class A licence holder can do it. The regulations require air monitoring before and during that kind of job, and the enclosure can't come down until a reading shows less than 0.01 fibres per millilitre.

The load is commercial waste, so it doesn't go to the council's arrangement at the Hyland Highway Landfill. The removalist takes it to an EPA-authorised facility and logs it in EPA's Waste Tracker. Keep that record with your renovation paperwork.

If anyone reaches for an angle grinder, a broom or a high-pressure hose on that sheet, stop the job and ask why.

Why a small bathroom isn't priced by the metre

Small rooms are priced on setup more than square metres, so a single bathroom often lands on the minimum call-out. What pushes it up: friable vinyl backing, a switchboard, tight access, a second room done on another day, and the independent clearance where one is required. Ranges and the reasoning are on the cost guide.

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