Asbestos Awareness Week – November 26 to 30

The first house that we owned in Australia was built in the 1950’s with fibreboard siding. When we had an inspection done on the house we were informed that the siding contained asbestos, a very dangerous and potentially deadly material.

Australia is having Asbestos Awareness Week from the 26 – 30 November, 2012.

There are still a very significant number of buildings in Australia that contain this dangerous material and significant care must be taken when dealing with it. Here are some tips that are offered by the Asbestos Awareness web-site.

  • You can’t tell whether building materials contain asbestos just by looking at them!
  • If you are in doubt, it is best to assume that you are dealing with asbestos and take every precaution
  • The safest way to manage the removal of asbestos is to hire a licensed asbestos removal contractor
  • Where asbestos fibres are loose and not bonded into building materials, you must use a professional licensed asbestos removal service
  • There are government regulations and your local council may also have policies regarding the removal of asbestos

There are many other good resources on their site and if you are concerned about asbestos or need to deal with it then check it out…

What’s That Smell?

We had a look at a house a few weekends ago that from the photos on the real estate site didn’t look too bad. The backyard actually looked like it had quite a nice outdoor living area …

Unfortunately though the first thing to hit you when you stepped outside in the yard wasn’t the nice outback veranda, but rather we were overwhelmed by the stench of dog poo!

I don’t think that these people ever picked up after their dog or dogs for all the years they lived there. It was certainly the overwhelming memory that we took from the house when we left that day, and didn’t really encourage us to want to go back and have another look…

So a bit of advice if you are selling your house, clean up the crap!