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Insurance Company
MARCOR's collection system captured and filtered water containing minute asbestos fibers
Project Details
- Client: Insurance Company
- Contaminants: Asbestos
- Regulatory Agency: Department of Natural Resource Environmental Ecology (DNREC)
- Contract Value: Approximately $2 Million
Related Services
Background
Before removing the asbestos-containing materials, MARCOR technicians had to demolish the ceilings and associated fixtures.
An insurance company contracted MARCOR to demolish suspended ceilings, ductwork, and electrical components and then to perform extensive asbestos abatement for concrete decks on all 17 floors of a bank building in Wilmington, Delaware. Floors one through four were 14,000 square feet, and floors five and above covered 12,000 square feet. The decks with sprayed-on asbestos were inverted, with pan-poured concrete at 12 feet above the finished floor. Apparently a sealer had been used over the asbestos-treated concrete or had been added with the spray-on asbestos, posing a serious, atypical complication to the abatement process. Asbestos floor tile (about 4,000 square feet per floor) also had to be removed. Since the building was occupied, MARCOR provided educational talks on asbestos as a public service for the occupants' peace of mind.
Job Description
Most of the abatement work was performed above occupied floors, but mechanical rooms on six floors had to be abated on weekends only, since they were in use during the week. Bulk removal of asbestos-containing materials followed standard procedures, but fine cleaning by hand was almost impossible. MARCOR solved the problem by utilizing state-of-the-art, 10,000 psi water-jet washers for fine cleaning. To accomplish this, two workers on scaffolds directed the pulsed-jet washer nozzles as millions of controlled, tiny slugs of water struck and cleaned the surface. Multiple cracks in floors and around columns necessitated tedious precautionary measures and ongoing monitoring to ensure safe containment of the asbestos-laden water.
A MARCOR-designed, custom water collection system (connected to a six-inch Guzzler™ vacuum hose) carried the asbestos- contaminated water to a settling tank from 18 stories above the streets of Wilmington through a rigid pipe attached to the outside of the building. The six-inch pipe channeled the water to the street-level Guzzler, which was enclosed in an insulated plywood structure for sound control. The collected water was then carefully filtered through a series of five-micron filters in order to meet the strict DNREC requirements for discharge into the city sewer system. MARCOR took care of obtaining the necessary permit.
For additional information, call MARCOR's corporate headquarters at 1-800-547-0128 or send email to info@marcor.com.
