Curse you, 1950’s man!

At the end of all this remodeling, and because summer is fast approaching, I’d thought to see what it would take to get our heater replaced, and to add an air conditioner. I know, it’s not all that environmentally friendly to use air conditioning. We both work in an office upstairs in our small condo, though, so it’s a necessity for a couple of weeks every summer, if not for a full month. We’d been getting by with a portable unit, but it wouldn’t even touch the heat of last summer. So, I figured I’d have somebody tell me what it’d take to get an a/c put in, and to replace this behemoth of a 1960’s heater while they were at it.

Just one problem. See the shiny pipe? See the shiny coating on the shiny pipe? See the tape, which was holding the shiny coating in place? Well, here’s the scoop: the shiny coating inside is just plain steel ducting. The shiny coating on the outside, and the tape? Oh, those are just asbestos. Yup. Each and every duct is wrapped in asbestos, which, in turn, has been wrapped in shiny paper. And, to seal each section of asbestos “cardboard” together, they used asbestos tape, of course!

So, the heater project is going to run us $3,200 more than it would have, if we’d not had to replace the bright ideas of 1950’s man. And who was this man? You know: the man who said, “let’s see if this rock burns,” and then, when it wouldn’t, decided it was a good thing to make into insulation?

I don’t know who he was, but he owes me an air conditioner.

On the flip side of this whole thing, and just as a matter of passing interest and “isn’t that creepy”-ness … if we’d lived in the county next door, we wouldn’t have to replace any of the asbestos at all. You see, the county next door falls under a different set of regulations regarding asbestos. We’ll tell ourselves that it isn’t because they’re darker-skinned over there. Yes. We’ll tell ourselves that.

Truthfully, we’re not legally obligated to replace all of it, just the bits which are exposed to the heater area. However, if you’ve ever blown across the mouth of a straw which was immersed in liquid, you’ve noticed that air moving past a small opening creates a vacuum, sucking your soda up the straw. It’s the same effect as opening two windows on the same side of your car – the window in front exhausts air from the vehicle, sucking air in the rear window. Because of this wonder of physics, any crack in the asbestos tape will let air beneath the asbestos, provided that there are small gaps in the ducting. Thus, any gap in the ducting will be sucking air in past the oh-so-dry-and-dusty asbestos fibers, and will end up depositing those fibers into our living space.

So, we’re replacing all of the ducting we can get to. This will leave about 15 feet of ducting which is enclosed in the floor / ceiling between the first and second floors. There’s not much we can do about that, unless we want to tear out the ceiling. So, we’re going to live with that risk for a while, if not indefinitely.

Our only recompense is that we’ll end up with a decent heater for next Winter.

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