We are preparing a major remodel of the home we purchased. We have removed wallpaper in the hallway and guest bathroom and thats when it occured to us that what if there is lead paint in here? The house was built in 1955 and pretty much all of the walls are plaster. There is one main wall section that will be removed. What do i need to or don't need to do?????

Alot Research lead paint safe practices for a starter.

You can get lead paint test swabs at any home store. That will at least tell you if there is lead paint present.

There are massive amounts of controls and regulations concerning lead paint removal. So many so in fact that the regulations are impossible to follow. The fines for improper removal of lead paint are equally massive - upwards of $30,000 per day with no limit.

However, all those regulations only apply to a professional that you hire. If you choose to remove it yourself you can do whatever you want. Frankly, most of the dangers are blown way out of proportion - use a good filter mask and wear some coveralls and you should be fine.

You should also know that lead is much more of a danger to young children (particularily babies) than it is to adults. That's because much more of the lead a baby ingests is incorporated into their rapidly growing body, and that lead typically accumulates in the brain where it's believed to slow brain development and result in lower IQs.

An adult incorporates much less of the lead he/she ingests into their body because their body isn't growing any more.

You should also know that since your house was built before the first latex paints were introduced in 1959, you plaster walls were almost certainly first painted with a linseed oil based primer and linseed oil based paint. At that time, I was common for people to move into houses with plaster walls, and then wait a month or two for the alkalinity in the plaster to subside before painting the walls with oil based primer and paint. However, what I've found in my own building, if the plaster had more hydrated lime in it, or the primer and painting was done a little too soon, the primer wouldn't stick all that well to the plaster. In that case, you MIGHT find that you can basically separate the paint from the plaster with a wide sharp wood chisel. Just cut through the paint with a utility knife and then use the point of the utility knife blade to lift up on the paint film over the plaster. If it's not sticking well, you'll be able to take the paint off the wall relatively easily with the point of the utility knife. Then, when room allows, use a wood chisel to take it off much faster.

And, in my experience, some places will be just the opposite where you can only get the paint off the plaster with a sharp paint scraper, thereby creating a lot of paint dust to inhale.

Several points the owner of every plaster walled house should be aware of:

1. The reason oil based primers and paints deteriorate and lose their adhesion when applied to a highly alkaline surface is because of a chemical reaction called "saponification". What happens is the strong alkali will convert animal fats and vegetable oils (like Palm and Olive oils from which the Palmolive Company got it's name) into soap. Exactly the same thing happens to linseed oil when you apply a linseed oil based primer or paint to fresh concrete, plaster or brick mortar, all of which are highly alkaline. That reaction transforms the oil into soap, and that's what wrecks the adhesion of the primer to the substrate. In my own building, when repairing nail holes, I cut a square through the paint around each nail hole and remove the paint from inside that square before I do anything else. If I didn't do that, then I could continue pushing a razor in between the plaster and paint layer to remove all the paint from the wall. By cutting the square, I limit the amount of paint I take off to the area of that square.

2. Concrete, brick mortar and lime based plaster all gradually lose their alkalinity with age. With concrete it takes about two years compared with 2 or 3 months with lime based plaster. The reason for this is because all these materials are made with hydrated lime(AKA: calcium hydroxide or Ca(OH)2) and it's those -OH groups bonded to the Calcium atom that make hydrated lime alkaline. But, CO2 from the air reacts with the calcium hydroxide to make CaCO3 (aka: calcium carbonate or "limestone") and a molecule of water vapour. As the hydrated lime in the plaster, concrete or mortar is gradually converted into limestone, the alkalinity of the plaster, concrete or mortar subsides to the point where it won't saponify an oil based paint any more.

And, if you were to heat that limestone, it would transform into a white powder called "quicklime" or CaO. If you then mix that quicklime with water, you get hydrated lime again. That cycle is called the "Lime Cycle".

http://www.graymont.com/what_is_lime.shtml

(Never ever never mix quicklime with water unless you're wearing heavy leather gloves and you have a safe place to put the mixing container down on. The reaction between water and quicklime to form hydrated lime is so exothermic that you won't be able to hold on to the mixing container with bare hands. And, don't mix the two in anything except a ceramic or metal mixing container that can tolerate the heat produced. Back in the day, plasterers would mix quicklime in water at the end of the day to make the "lime putty" they'd need the following day. Once mixed, they'd leave the mixture to cool down in the wheel barrow overnight.)

3. Never replace plaster with drywall if you can avoid it. Plaster is very much heavier than drywall. Imagine you have a source of noise on one side of a wall and a noise "meter" on the other side of that wall. The "Mass Law" of accoustics says that for every doubling of either:

a. the mass per unit area of the wall, or

b. the frequency of the sound waves hitting the wall,

the intensity of the sound wave measured on the other side of the wall will be 6 decibels less, or roughly 1/4 of the sound energy at the lower wall mass or noise frequency.

So, heavier walls make for quieter buildings and greater privacy.

But, human hearing isn't linear. We hear quiet sounds much better than we hear loud sounds. So, even though a sound pressure level meter will show a 75 percent reduction in the noise level, the apparent reduction in noise level to a person listening on the other side of the wall won't seem to be nearly as much as the meter indicates. Also, we hear sound in the 2000 to 3000 hz range the loudest, and so doubling the frequency of the noise from 3000 to 6000 hz will result in a greater decrease in the apparant noise level because our ears aren't as sensitive to 6000 Hz sound as they are to 3000 Hz sound.

New condos and hotels that have 3/8 inch drywall hung on steel studs create noise complaints because people in neighboring condos or rooms can hear each other talking, making love and arguing. 1950's style plaster walls between $500K condos or $800 per night hotel rooms would prevent almost all of those noise complaints. Thankfully, almost all apartment blocks are built with concrete block fire separation walls around each vertical "stack" of apartments, so in an apartment block no one ever complains about the noise coming from next door, but only about the noise from the apartment above or below. If you live in an apartment block with precast concrete floors, you'd have to have a heavy metal rock band living above or below you to hear any noise from their apartment.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

short answer: if any of the paint was made before 1976, you have lead in your paint.

so, you have lead in your paint.

take all precautions. generate a negative pressure in the house with a big ol' fan to draw the dust out, wear N95 respirators, sand as absolutely little as possible, and use solvent or chemical paint removers (try the soy stuff, all the methylene chloride stuff eats your liver as quickly as paint) as much as you can.

don't vacuum up the dust with a standard vacuum if you can get one with a HEPA filter, and especially don't contaminate your nice house carpet vacuum. brooms are nice. dump any dust outside in a bag, tie it, and check with the local officials to see if they need it dumped in a HazMat collection point. most communities have them monthly or quarterly now.

and if you don't have to remove paint, but can instead repaint the surface, that's OK. new paint encapsulates the old stuff... until it breaks down. removal is permanent, but encapsulation is used all the time, too.

the whole idea is, don't spread the lead.

quote:

Originally posted by swschrad:


take all precautions. generate a negative pressure in the house with a big ol' fan to draw the dust out,

Yeah - Thanks to the latest rules and regs you can't do this one. (Well actually, a DIY homeowner can - they can eat lead if they want to as far as regs are concerned). But, if ANYONE you hired stuck a fan in a window to aid in removing the dust from the house while removing lead paint, the fines would run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Far more healthy to follow the current guidelines: Completely seal the room to be demo'd, Turn off any A/C or air flow, Build an 'air lock' for any entry and exit to the area, completely cover yourself head to toe in protective gear and then proceed to die of heat stroke.

I agree with the post above. A huge draw fan is a big mistake. First you isolating the dust, while minimizing that dust as well. Then a complete clean up, and disposal also rank high on the list. But this is just the Readers Digest version. Working safely requires a good read or online homework, for sure.
PS one addendum, the year the change over came into effect was 1978, but even that was sketchy as of then that current store inventory across the good olde US of A was allowed to be sold off, if I recall from my lead abatement classes, that is. So in actuality lead based paint was available long after that.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CommonwealthSparky,

the pros win... oh, wait, there is no contest here.

ScaryTown verse 2... EPA testing has found elevated levels of lead in lawns and gardens along major highways, from back in the old days when they amped cheap gasoline with tetraethyl lead. that ended in the late 60s.

if you're a garden freak, you might want to test your dirt, too. any road where there was either lots of traffic, or lots of waiting for red lights, could be a source of lead.

True about the leaded gas thing, for sure. The great news is that residual lead readings from auto gas burning has been decreasing every year since the introduction of unleaded gas. Heck, I seem to remember more from that dang course than I thought.
Along those same lines painted scrapped off the outside of houses, [trim, soffit, etc.] does add to the lead content of soils. I still cringe when I see that old porch or garage door on grandmas house getting scraped.