Lead is a metal that was commonly used in the construction of homes before the 1980’s. However, exposure to lead can cause brain and nerve damage, gearing and speech problems, headaches, reproductive problems, high blood pressure, memory problems, and more.
As you can see, it is incredibly important to make sure that your home is free of lead paint. In order to have the lead in your home removed, you must hire a specialized Environmental Protection Agency certified lead remover. When hiring a lead abatement contractor to remove the lead in your home, it’s important to read reviews of the company to make sure that they are trusted and good quality lead abatement providers. Some lead abatement companies cut corners in order to save money, which will end up with you and your family being put at risk for lead poisoning.
The average cost to have a lead abatement performed on your home is around $10,000. Most lead abatement contractors will charge around $8 to $15 or every square foot in the home that needs to be abated. The different types of lead paint removal will each cost somewhat different due to the amount of work that goes into each one. There are three different types of lead removal, including encapsulation, enclosure, and full removal.
Lead encapsulation is the easiest and most affordable option to control the lead in your home. Instead of fully removing the lead, workers will paint over the lead based paint with a special kind of bonding seal. This coating will keep your family safe from the lead paint temporarily, but will eventually wear away, leaving the people in your home exposed to lead again.
Another type of lead control that is similar to the aforementioned method is the enclosure method. This method is a bit more reliable than the previously mentioned method. While encapsulation uses a paint like substance to cover the lead, enclosure completely covers the lead surface with a new surface. For example, new drywall will be put over the old, lead covered drywall. Obviously this has some downsides, such as bulking up the interior of your home. However, your family will not have to worry about lead poisoning unless they remove the surfaces covered the lead surfaces.
Another option for controlling the lead in your home is to have it completely removed. This is one of the most complicated and expensive methods, as it is a full lead abatement. However, this is one of the only ways that you can be sure that your family will never be exposed to lead, as long as the contractors do their job properly. There are many different ways a lead abatement contractor might go about removing the lead based paint in your home, including wet hand scraping and wire brushing. Sometimes they will also use a heat gun to strip the paint and then hand scrape it off. A lead abatement contractor should never burn the lead based paint, torch it, sand it without a HEPA filter attached to the sander, use abrasive blaster, or power wash the lead paint away. All of these methods could lead to your home being filled with more free lead than there was before the abatement.
The most radical method in removing lead is the complete replacement method. If you have a door that was painted over with lead paint, it would be fully removed from your home and replaced with a new door. This method can not be used for everything, especially walls, since many people do not want all of their walls ripped out and demolishing walls with lead paint on them is a very precarious and possibly dangerous process. Therefore, this method only works for windows, doors, woodwork, and other easily removable aspects of a home.
If you have lead in your home, be sure to contact a lead abatement company as soon as possible to have it removed in one of these ways.
