Deleading

[themotionsick.livejournal.com]

I am curious about deleading a home in Somerville. Has anyone had any experience with deleading their home? How long did it take? Did you go through full removal or encapsulation? What did it cost? Did you have a positive experience with your deleader? Did you have a post-deleading inspection to determine the success of the operation?

Thanks.

Comments

[beezy515.livejournal.com]

I had the house tested for lead by an inspector from The Lead Lab, Inc., which is based in Belmont. I did some home renovations after that and removed the paint myself, but never had the place professionally deleaded by an abatement company. The inspector tested all of the surfaces for lead and gave me a report for the entire apartment. He answered all of my questions and included a lot of print outs and other info with the report. The dining room had the most badly chipping paint, but did not have high levels of lead, because the wood trim had initially been covered with varnish, not paint, as was the style in the early 1900s. The inspector also gave me good advice about doing renovations on my own and easily convinced me never to eat anything (tomatoes or other vegetables) grown in the soil around my house, as the soil is contaminated from lead that has leached into the soil from the exterior house paint.

[kglue.livejournal.com]

Friends who have veggie gardens in Somerville have used the following UMass lab to test if their soil was contaminated: http://www.umass.edu/plsoils/soiltest/

... so a garden may not be out of the question, depending on how much confidence you have in these tests and how accurate they represent the soil around your home.

[themotionsick.livejournal.com]

I've seen multiple people recommend Ron Alpert from the Lead Lab, but I can't find good contact info. Do you have it handy? Thanks!

[beezy515.livejournal.com]

The phone number for The Lead lab is 617-489-5409.

[themotionsick.livejournal.com]

Thanks a ton!

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

We used the Lead Lab too (we haven't done the actual deleading yet as we just bought the house a week ago, but we had the initial inspection). I agree that the inspection was thorough and helpful. We didn't have Ron Alpert but his protege Dave Nabreskie (er...it's spelled something like that), who was also excellent. (And has both two young children and experience buying houses in this area, so he understands both the risk and the budgeting sides of the deleading process pretty clearly and can put things in perspective.)

When tomatoes are not a vegetable.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

The general advice regarding lead contamination is that it is reasonably safe to eat tomatoes and other fruits, but not to eat vegetables grown in such soil.

[ceo]

I also used Ron Albert (and highly recommend him), did the interior deleading myself under the moderate-risk protocol, and had our cedar-shingle siding removed and replaced professionally. (I could have just had the siding scraped, but it would then still have lead paint on it, and it needed replacing soon anyway.)

Lead paint that is firmly attached and can't be chewed is just fine as long as you leave it alone. The big hazard with lead paint is inhaling the dust, and being lead, it's heavy and doesn't go away easily. So scraping lead paint can easily create a much bigger hazard than previously existed.

Because of this, there are three kinds of deleading per the Massachusetts Lead Law. Low-risk deleading is basically covering it up with encapsulating paint, wallpaper, paneling etc. This requires you to get a booklet from the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and send back a completed quiz. Moderate-risk involves removing casings, windowsills etc. ad replacing them. This requires taking a one-day course, and you have to cover the floors with plastic and go through an elaborate cleanup protocol. Occupants must move out for the duration. High-risk is scraping paint; licensed deleaders only.

In my experience, it's hard to do encapsulation without it looking like crap, as the stuff is pretty thick (and has to be applied to a specific thickness) and lead-painted surfaces generally have several layers of paint on them already. A professional can probably do a better job than I did.

You need to get the job inspected again in order to get it certified. The inspector will take dust wipes and inspect the surfaces.

We ended up spending about 55K on the project, but a huge part of that was replacing the siding. If we'd just had the siding scraped, that would have run about $14K. I highly recommend the deleaders we used, Alpine Environmental in Chelmsford.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine also highly recommends Alpine. They're first on our list of people to call when we get around to it...

Problems

[masswich.livejournal.com]

We used Alpine for a relatively minor deleading recently. Good quality carpentry, cared about the look of the final product. But wouldn't use them again.

Why not? They failed the dust wipe tests (the test you need to prove the house doesn't have lead anymore so you can get back in) several times. We ended up in a hotel for an extra 2 weeks above what we had planned for. They did cover the cost of it, but the inconvenience was too much to take.

I have generally heard its a good idea to clean an extra time, even after you have a "clean" house, because the samples are only taken in a few places and there still could be lead kicking around. Cleaning lead also requires special techniques or its useless. You need to use disposable cloth/paper towels for every couple of square feet and preferably also use a phosphate-based cleaner like TSP. If you use a mop you're just moving the lead around the floor.