Dust allergy during building work?

[noseall]

Genuine question: why do you see all that stuff on commercial sites, but not domestic jobs.

The budget on commercials is roughly 10x that of domestic.

 

[noseall]

The source is the room. Close the door, open the windows, maybe use a fan. It really is very simple.

Close the door, open a window and get the Henry out after. That I agree with. I'm curious as to how you get all that dusty waste from the back bedroom into the plasterboard waste area? Let me guess, you spend more £££ breaking the plasterboard into little pieces, bagging it up in the room? Is the bedroom door airlocked from the landing? Do you install locks on the bedroom doors, in case a plumber wants to breach the airlock and vent a rad or some such?

 

[Notch7]

Last year I had to grind a channel through the screed in my hallway, I sealed off the area with temp timber frames plastic sheeting and had the front door open….but somehow a bit of dust still managed to get upstairs and you could smell it all over the house.

It’s feasible to reduce dust spread by say 90% by containment, but elimination is all but impossible…..if you want to achieve that you need to be using asbestos style methodology.

My neighbours had a plumbing leak which flooded all the downstairs, the insurance assessor said the floor tiles under the carpets had asbestos……so they had specialists in to do it and the insurers made the householders move out and stay in a hotel…..for 3 months. God knows how much it all cost.

 

[^woody^]

Close the door, open a window and get the Henry out after. That I agree with. I'm curious as to how you get all that dusty waste from the back bedroom into the plasterboard waste area? Let me guess, you spend more £££ breaking the plasterboard into little pieces, bagging it up in the room? Is the bedroom door airlocked from the landing? Do you install locks on the bedroom doors, in case a plumber wants to breach the airlock and vent a rad or some such?

You're beginning to sound like some old negative stuck in their ways council workers I remember managing, who would reel off hundreds of obscure reasons why they could not do something and not one reason why they could.

You break the board up into manageable pieces - 10 seconds, then give it a tap before taking it out the room. The smaller bits go in a bucket or gorilla tub - 30 seconds, then out the room. Use mist or a bag/cloth to cover things as necessary.

Anyone not involved in the clear-up does not go through the room - this is either planned beforehand or they wait or get on with something else - that's a standard H&S requirement anyway irrespective of the dust.

 

[noseall]

You're beginning to sound like some old negative stuck in their ways council workers I remember managing, who would reel off hundreds of obscure reasons why they could not do something and not one reason why they could.

A little bit, yes.
It's mostly a time/cost factor both of which supercede anything on domestic jobs, when talking to customers.
It's difficult to contain ALL the dust, especially if you have made assurances to a vulnerable customer that you will. I'm more inclined to ask them to move ot fir a couple of weeks.
We had to skim a hall stairs and landing (scrape the artex back first) and it was a bastad. No windows to open, and people in and out of doors all day.
Impossible to keep all the dust contained.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

Genuine question, to woody mostly.

If youre method statement states...

" The doors will be closed, occupants warned, area misted, dust extraction used" or something along those lines. Nothing extravagant, and nothing unreasonable. All a method statement needs to show is that someone has thought about it .... and that has the bonus of demonstrating that someone actually knows what they are doing. It's literally no more than 30 minutes to write it down.

What happens if a small amount of dust breaks your quarantined area ?

If the customer needs to avoid dust, the best advice is to advise them to conside moving out whilst any work is in progress.

 

[noseall]

What happens if a small amount of dust breaks your quarantined area ?

100% it will happen.

If you tie yourself up with all the unreasonable promises that Woody would have you chained to, then you are going to be in a heap if trouble.
I'd tell them to take a short holiday. It would be cheaper and more enjoyable.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I'm allergic to pretty much everything, probably oxygen. I just take a 10mg Loratadine tablet (non-prescription, normally for hay fever). Wonderful, I can live like a normal person.

Definitely don't start being a pain by asking the people you employ to work carefully or whatever. Any decent tradesperson will take reasonable steps to not trash your house. Any sensible person will down tools and leave if you start making unreasonable requests.

Artex is normally just rubbed to knock the tips off, often with half a house brick or similar. It's not dusty at all. Then just plaster over it.

 

[PotatoSoup]

I've been taking bonding off various walls and have knocked down several walls in my house and it was all very dusty. I almost coughed up a lung with the bonding dust - horrible stuff!

The polythene sheet idea to cover doorways (without doors) worked well as did closing every door in the house I could and throwing a towel down like a draft excluder under each one to keep the dust contained. (I don't have a dust allergy so the towel thing might not work well enough for you.)

But the most helpful thing I found was working quickly with a mask on and then leaving time for the dust to settle - about 6 hours. Then being really careful with the clean up:
I avoided hoovering because it spewed dust out of the vents (this was with our ordinary vacuum - you can rent a proper vacuum that would keep the dust from blowing out but I'd have needed it for an age given I work at a snails pace so didn't go down that path). Instead, I'd pick up the big bits and put them gently into rubble sacks. Then I went round with a bowl of water (refilled a huge number of times) and used a wet cloth to pick up all the smaller bits and to wipe everything down. I emptied the worst of the debris I collected on the cloth into a rubble bag and I emptied the bowl of water into a big plant pot filled (with a hole in the bottom) filled with a bit of soil and a few stones and weeds (it was lying around - I didn't specifically hunt out weeds) to filter out the worst of the stuff my cloth was picking up. Then I hosed the dirty water away as it escaped the pot.

If I decided I really needed to use a dustpan and brush then I soaked the bristles of the brush (ran it under the tap for a minute) and this stopped a significant amount of dust from pluming up but I still wouldn't sweep if you can avoid it. If you're sensitive to chemical products at all, I used diluted white vinegar to get the floor clean - it gets plaster up pretty well too. Obviously, you would never expect a professional to do any of that - this was in my house with walls etc I'd knocked down so I was happy to spend ages on it.

Hope it goes well, whatever you decide to do.

 

[noseall]

But the most helpful thing I found was working quickly with a mask on

Yep, speed is your friend. On board so far...

then leaving time for the dust to settle - about 6 hours.

WTF!

 

[^woody^]

Genuine question, to woody mostly.

If youre method statement states...


What happens if a small amount of dust breaks your quarantined area ?

If the customer needs to avoid dust, the best advice is to advise them to conside moving out whilst any work is in progress.

Is it reasonable for the client to move out - the costs, the practicalities? They will still come back to a house that must be dust-free.
What are the costs of that (financial and personal) compared to the costs of reasonable precautions?

The hazards must be identified, the risks of things going wrong and the outcomes if they do go wrong. It does not mean spending lots of time risk assessing to the nth degree, just being reasonable and pragmatic. So you identify the hazards (dust) and then assess the risks (dirty carpets, allergy) and the outcome (carpet clean, illness, hospital, off work - whatever).

The key things here is that the risks must be assessed and properly managed.
It's alright some builder saying "you'll need to move out because were not good enough to stop all the dust getting out", but then how is that dust going to be cleaned up to allow the allergic client to come back? Or haven't they thought of that?

So there needs to be a plan of how to deal with the dust - whether the client is there or not.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

Is it reasonable for the client to move out - the costs, the practicalities? They will still come back to a house that must be dust-free.
What are the costs of that (financial and personal) compared to the costs of reasonable precautions?

The hazards must be identified, the risks of things going wrong and the outcomes if they do go wrong. It does not mean spending lots of time risk assessing to the nth degree, just being reasonable and pragmatic. So you identify the hazards (dust) and then assess the risks (dirty carpets, allergy) and the outcome (carpet clean, illness, hospital, off work - whatever).

The key things here is that the risks must be assessed and properly managed.
It's alright some builder saying "you'll need to move out because were not good enough to stop all the dust getting out", but then how is that dust going to be cleaned up to allow the allergic client to come back? Or haven't they thought of that?

So there needs to be a plan of how to deal with the dust - whether the client is there or not.

So there's going to be dust.

Why try and convince the customer there won't be.

You can minimise it as much as possible but it will still happen. If the customer has severe allergies the best health and safety measure would be to tell him the truth, and the choices. Promising him no dust is wrong

 

[^woody^]

So there's going to be dust.

Why try and convince the customer there won't be.

You can minimise it as much as possible but it will still happen. If the customer has severe allergies the best health and safety measure would be to tell him the truth, and the choices. Promising him no dust is wrong

There clearly will be dust who said there wont be? But that dust can be managed - reduced and contained. And it does not mean the property must be vacated.

Dust can be managed, simply and cheaply, with little impact to the builders or client. I'm not receptive to any statements to the contrary as I've got RAMs going back years from contractor tenders showing how they will manage the dust on the various jobs they were tendering for. The contractors that could not demonstrate this never got the jobs.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

I'd much prefer any builder said. I will take all sensible precautions, but there will still be dust. If it's a major problem then it's best not to be here. Rather than pretending otherwise.

That way I have a choice.

I have never known any building job not cause dust. A method statement doesn't prevent dust.

 

[robinbanks]

I almost coughed up a lung with the bonding dust

You should have bought a better mask

I avoided hoovering because it spewed dust out of the vents

Buy a longer hoover pipe and put the hoover outside

If I decided I really needed to use a dustpan and brush

Use a longer handled brush, so youre not in the cloud, wet the dust before you sweep it up and don't move the brush quickly. Use a vacuum cleaner instead

then I soaked the bristles of the brush (ran it under the tap for a minute)

Erk, sounds quite wastefu lof water. Might have been better to leave it soaking in a tub?

sanding down an artex ceiling

Employ water lots more; soak the materials you remove, use wet cutting, wet vacs etc. Ther are wet approaches to removing artex too.

Power tools and dry materials shouldn't be mixed