Asbestos Removal in Anoka

If your Anoka plans include a new kitchen, a furnace swap or taking a garage or house down, we can line up the sampling, remove the materials the lab marks positive and look after the state notice and waste papers from start to finish.

Anoka has a larger share of older homes than Coon Rapids, with more than 6 in every 10 built before 1980 and roughly 1 in 9 standing since 1939 or earlier.

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Bedroom of a 1930s house with the plaster partly stripped to the wood lath and plastic sheeting on the floor

Example project

Vermiculite removed so an attic can get a plywood floor for storage

Example project

Home: 1960s one-story house in Anoka with a pull-down attic stair and loose fill between the joists
Original request: Lay plywood over part of the attic for storage boxes, with new insulation under it
Testing: A sample of the attic fill by an MDH-certified inspector, and one of the hall ceiling texture under the stair
Found: Asbestos in the attic vermiculite
Clear: No asbestos in the hall ceiling texture
Area: About 900 sq ft of attic floor
Timeline: Five-day notice, then three working days
Cost: $8,550

In this example, the owners of a 1960s house in Anoka are short on closet space and want to keep boxes in the attic. Their carpenter plans to lay plywood across the joists near the pull-down stair, and the attic floor is covered in light, pebble-like fill.

See the full example and more projects

Asbestos removal services

Testing first

Sampling comes before anything is cut, sanded or pulled out of an Anoka house. A certified inspector collects only what your plans will reach, and the asbestos testing page goes through both remodel sampling and the full inspection a teardown needs.

Plaster and remodels

Plaster, joint compound and old window glazing should be sampled before walls come open. Taking them out is part of remodel and demolition abatement.

Heating pipes and ducts

Our pipe, duct and furnace insulation removal service takes the wrap off heating pipes, boiler jackets and insulated ducts.

Floors

Under old carpet or a later vinyl floor there may be a second, older floor with black glue holding it down. We take a sample from each layer, and the results decide whether floor tile and mastic removal is needed before your new floor.

Textured ceilings

A textured ceiling can get scuffed when someone hangs a new fixture or patches a crack. Book a sample of the texture before that happens. Should the lab find asbestos in it, popcorn ceiling removal describes how we take it down.

Attic fill

Look in the attic before you schedule an insulation upgrade. A loose, pebbly fill instead of batts may be vermiculite, and vermiculite attic insulation removal explains how MDH says to handle it.

Anoka housing

Anoka’s homes span a long stretch of years. The 1960s and 1970s together account for more than a third of them, 16 percent were built before 1950, and the median home dates from 1973.

Older houses

An Anoka house built before 1950 may have plaster walls, insulated heating pipes or attic fill, and each of those is on MDH’s lists. Whether a particular material contains asbestos is something only a lab result can tell you.

Rentals and apartments

One-unit homes make up about 59 percent of Anoka’s housing, and a little over 4 in 10 occupied homes are rented. Because the owner-occupant exemption does not extend to landlords, a licensed contractor has to handle regulated work in any rental. More than a third of homes sit in buildings of five or more units, and demolishing one of those needs MPCA notice ten working days ahead.

Census Reporter: Anoka housing Minnesota Department of Health: asbestos in homes MPCA: asbestos and demolition fact sheet

Permits in Anoka

Anoka handles permit applications online. Its building permit pages make no mention of asbestos or of demolition, but state rules apply regardless, so call the city and ask what your remodel or demolition permit will require before you lock in a schedule.

Disposal

The last step on an Anoka job is getting the waste to the right place. Each container is kept damp, sealed leak-tight and labeled, and a truck carries the load to a landfill that accepts asbestos, with a manifest recording what was sent.

City of Anoka: building permits MPCA: managing asbestos waste

A 1950s bathroom opened for a remodel, with the tub surround cut out, floor tile lifted and plastic sheeting up

Frequently asked questions

Who files the notice before asbestos work in Anoka?

MDH takes the notice only from the licensed asbestos contractor, so we file it for you. On regulated work in Anoka it must reach MDH five calendar days or more before the start date, and we build that wait into your schedule.

Can I take out asbestos myself?

We advise against it, and so does MDH, which strongly recommends a licensed contractor. The legal exemption is narrow. It frees only an owner working in the single-family house they occupy from the license and the permit fee, so landlords, rentals, duplexes and apartment buildings have no way around the rules.

How much material makes a job regulated?

We measure during the site visit, because three numbers decide it. Friable insulation running more than 10 linear feet along pipes makes it a licensed job, and so does more than 6 square feet of friable material elsewhere in the house. If the friable material has no length or area you can measure, the number is more than 1 cubic foot. MDH’s point about smaller jobs is that being unregulated does not make them safe.

What should I ask a contractor for?

Start with proof of the contractor’s Minnesota license and the MDH permit for your job. When the work is finished, MDH suggests getting the waste manifest and the air-sampling lab report as well. Together these papers show the removal was done and where the waste went, so keep them with your Anoka house records.

Working in Fridley? See asbestos removal in Fridley or the home page.

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