Does my tank contain asbestos?

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31 Jan 2015
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I recently moved into a house built circa 1970 and found an empty tank in the loft. The home report suggests we should have it tested for asbestos, but having looked at photos of asbestos tanks, I would say this one probably isn't one of them. For one thing the metal is quite thin and it's also shinier than the photos I found. I searched for "Hercules tanks" in Google but found absolutely nothing, obviously the company stopped trading prior to the internet even happening.
I made the mistake of piling lots of stuff on top and around the tank and now I'm concerned that if it does contain any asbestos, it may have contaminated everything. All forums say "leave it alone, the fibers won't be released unless you break it", but there are holes all over it so it's kind of broken already.
Asbestos inspection is really expensive and I'd rather not go through all that if I just have an old aluminium tank in my loft.
Can anyone help shed more light on this just by looking at the images? I can take more photos if necessary but I'm trying not to go too near it until I know more.
Thanks!
 
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Asbestos tanks are made of grey asbestos-cement, which is a kind of concrete. Does your tank appear to be made of thin concrete?
 
No John, to me it just looks like iron or aluminium, as I said it's quite thin and not at all like cement. It's hard to tell from the photos, I could try and take some closer ones.
 
it looks to me like galvanised steel. A magnet will stick to it and you can usually see rivets where the plate was folded and joined.
 
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Thanks John, I'll try the magnet thing. I take it if it was asbestos cement a magent wouldn't stick (stupid question probably)?
 
Yep, magnet sticks. Just Googled images of galvanised steel water tanks, there's some vintage ones being sold on eBay to be used as planters, they look exactly like the one I've got. I am starting to relax already.
 

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