First post - help with flooring decisions please

[NeilP77]

Hi all - I'm new to the joys of managing an old house having recently bought an 1860 Victorian Terrace in Worcestershire. No major issues so far (touch wood) but I seem to have fallen down a rabbit hole in regards to what i need to do with my downstairs flooring, so any help or thoughts would be extremely welcome!

The situation is...... I currently have some utterly horrible, cheap vinyl tiles that run from my living room through my dining room and into my kitchen. They are a very poor quality, have been fitted terribly and it appears the wrong glue has been used as it hasn't properly set - I get occasional spots of brown gunk popping up between tiles when there has been particularly heavy footfall in one area. Underneath these are some 70's tiles that have just come back testing positive for asbestos (however the adhesive did NOT contain asbestos, just the tile). Underneath these, I believe there are the original quarry tiles (although i don't know what condition they are in and removing the asbestos ones could end up damaging the quarry tiles I understand). I'm very unsure about where i go next. It feels as if my options are:

1. Remove both sets of tiles to expose the quarry tiles and see what condition they are in. I've been told that i can remove the asbestos ones as long as I'm wearing PPE and have had a quote for £250+VAT to collect and dispose of them. I'm thinking that restoring the original quarry tiles underneath might be a nice thing to do.
2. Remove the current cheap tiles and lay some new floating flooring (i.e. wood or laminate) over the top of the asbestos tiles.
3. Remove the current cheap tiles, use some self leveller and then add some luxury vinyl tiles on top (i'm not keen on this idea at all).

I'm not aware of any damp issues in the property - there is a DPC consisting of two layers of engineering bricks and I understand the need to manage moisture and condensation in the building through ventilation and a dehumidifier. But I'm concerned about messing with the house's eco-system and sending moisture from the floor into the walls, by using the wrong flooring if that makes sense? With any of the above options should i be including a damp proof membrane or is that going to cause problems?

Apologies if there are some silly and naive questions here - I'm on a big learning curve and want to make sure I'm making the right decisions and not causing any problems.

Thanks in advance

 

[Cubist]

First of all can you advise whether the all the affected floors are solid? Most Victorian terraces have suspended wooden floors in the living spaces with solid floors reserved typically for kitchens - bathrooms would have been later additions and usually to the rear of the building. My reason for asking is that suspended wooden floors have frequently been removed and replaced with concrete and the likely presence of a suitable DPM may be dubious. If your house had wooden floors at some time in the past theres a better than reasonable chance you will find old air-bricks at the front and rear of the house in the walls a little above ground level. If you cannot find any such then theres a good chance the floors have always been solid.

Regardless, it sounds like those vinyl tiles, together with that rather odd adhesive need to go, as do the asbestos tiles beneath. Oddly, the still semi fluid adhesive coating may be a blessing in disguise as this could help to reduce the risk of asbestos fibres breaking loose and circulating in any air movement. Before doing anything more though can I ask are there any small people or animal residents at the property? If so, it may be wise to keep them away from the property while the tiles are removed and to keep the tiles covered in the meantime.

 

[NeilP77]

Hi Cubist - a very helpful answer thank you so much. So I don't know for sure what the history of the floor is in all honesty. Currently my front room floor is raised slightly compared to my dining room and I believe this is just a chipboard floating floor (with the terrible tiles stuck on top, but no asbestos tiles). Then the dining room is where the asbestos tiles are under the terrible new tiles and covering the quarry tiles. What's under that, I don't know. The kitchen is actually an extension from the 70's which has different hard tiles and different terrible vinyl stuck badly on top! My bathroom is actually upstairs. What i can say is that I do have airbricks in the front of the house which open into a space under the front room floor- this sub space then runs under the front room and into a small cupboard which is in my dining room and sits under my stairs - interestingly the floor in this cupboard is a few brick courses lower than the rest of the ground floor, and is likely lower than the ground level outside. But this is the only area like this. I hope I've described that ok?!

 

[NeilP77]

Oh and in response to the follow up question - no little people, but two small furry creatures live in the house yes

 

[Cubist]

The front room then will still have a suspended wooden floor and it should be easy enough to strip off the offending tiles and the chipboard. This will most likely reveal the original wooden plank floorboards that would have been used in the front room 'parlour'.The room immediately behind would often be called a kitchen and may have had solid floors installed when it was built but the air-bricks to the front of the house would usually be accompanied by others at the rear to encourage/support air-flow beneath the wooden floors. You can confirm whether wooden or solid with a simple test - bang something heavy on the floor, dull thud=solid, hollow echo=wood.

 

[NeilP77]

Hi and thanks again Cubist. So the airibricks at the front are accompanied by a 'missing' brick at the other end - in the cupboard under my stairs (where the front room meets the dining room or 'parlour' - this missing brick is in the wall at the end of the living room under the floor and then there is a drop to the section that is lower than the outside wall as described above. The dining room floor itself is solid though i believe and there are no airbricks on the other side of the house. It's quite hard to explain sorry! I believe that the dining room (which is the one of most concern) is a solid floor based on your test and from what i can see (but i dont know if this is original or not). So my question is whether it would cause me problems to put a damp proof membrane on top of the asbestos tiles before laying a new wooden floor? Thanks in advance

 

[Cubist]

I would never bury a potential problem for someone else to deal with in the future - particularly a possibly dangerous material that could be a threat to life. These asbestos based tiles MUST be safely removed and disposed of using the council approved services in your area. Once that has been done, and assuming you find no evidence of a DPM at the perimeter of the dining room floor then it would be sensible to install a suitable membrane over the floor before then laying a floating wooden floor over it.