Using the Yeovil site
Yeovil is among the seven Somerset Council sites that take cement-bonded sheet asbestos and asbestos-containing material from the home. Book beforehand and state the quantity and number of visits. The monthly allowance is eight 50-litre sacks across up to four visits, and beyond it you pay £19.30 a sheet. Wrapping is strict: sealed double plastic, no holes, with protective clothing and cleaning cloths inside the package. Staff can't help you unload. Somerset Council's rules.
Yeovil's houses and what they tell you
Much of the town grew around the Westland works. The company bought about 75 acres of farmland north of the factory for a garden village of some 500 houses, planned in culs-de-sac by the local practice Petter and Warren, which Yeovil's history site places in the early 1920s (Westland garden village). Elsewhere, the land around Larkhill Road and Preston Road was built over from the 1940s onwards (Preston Townsend).
That gives you a rough idea of when much of Yeovil went up, but not what is inside. HSE's rule of thumb is that nothing built after 2000 is likely to contain asbestos, so anything earlier deserves a check before work. Even then, a street's age isn't the age of its garage roof, flue or ceiling coating, and only a sample or a survey settles it.
What to do next
- One suspect material: get it tested
- Opening up walls, floors or ceilings: get a survey
- A garage or shed roof: read the roofs guide
- More than a tip run: who can do what