My mother is in the process of gutting her garden.
I am concerned that the roof of the shed may be asbestos.
I have no idea how to identify it. My fairly useless google skills suggest that it may well be.
I had it on what I thought to be good authority, that I could inform the council and they would send someone to check, but I've just got back from them at Whitfield (after numerous unanswered phone numbers and a visit to Gateway, who gave me another number to phone, also unanswered). They informed me that as it is a private residence we would have to "find someone in the Yellow Pages". I was quite taken aback by this. I wasn't asking them to remove it for us. I just want to know if it is asbestos or not.
Isn't this rather irresponsible? Doesn't it leave people open to dodgy cowboy outfits who will go, "Yep, that's asbestos" when it isn't, and then charge a fortune to remove it? Or worse, people unknowingly breaking the stuff up themselves without taking the necessary precautions, and then just dumping it as normal waste? Or knowingly even, because of the cost? I am led to believe that this stuff can be fairly dangerous
.
Anyway, rant over. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to proceed or identify the stuff?
My latest idea is to break a piece off (safely, following all guidelines obviously), take it up to the tip and show it to whoever sees the stuff regularly up there.