Hear from Our Customers
Melrose Park sits right on the Philadelphia city line, and the housing stock reflects that — dense, character-filled, and old. The median construction year here is 1954, and nearly half of all homes were built before 1950. That’s not a minor detail. That’s a near-guarantee that asbestos-containing materials are present somewhere in the building, whether it’s the pipe insulation wrapping your boiler, the 9×9 floor tiles in the basement, the textured ceiling in the back bedroom, or the plaster walls you’re about to demo for a kitchen update.
The risk isn’t always visible, and it isn’t always urgent — but it is real. Asbestos fibers don’t announce themselves. They don’t smell or look different from safe materials. The only way to know is to test, and the only way to remove it legally in Pennsylvania is to hire a licensed abatement contractor. What you get on the other side of that process is straightforward: a home you can renovate, sell, or simply live in without that question mark hanging over it.
For the significant number of Melrose Park residents who work from home — ZIP 19027 tracks well above the national average for remote work — indoor air quality isn’t an abstract concern. It’s your daily environment. Getting this handled means you’re not breathing uncertainty every time you walk past that old ceiling tile or cracked pipe wrap.
We’ve been doing this work in Montgomery County for twenty years. That’s twenty years of working inside the pre-war colonials, mid-century ranches, and postwar bungalows that define Melrose Park and the surrounding Cheltenham Township communities like Elkins Park, Wyncote, and Cheltenham Village. We know what these homes look like from the inside, and we know where to look.
We’re fully licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, bonded, insured, and EPA/HUD compliant. We have a certified lead inspector and risk assessor on staff — relevant here because homes built in the 1940s and 1950s often carry both asbestos and lead-based paint, and you don’t want to solve one problem while ignoring the other. One call covers testing, abatement, demolition, mold remediation, waterproofing, and cleanup. You don’t have to manage four separate contractors to get through one renovation.
We’re available 24 hours a day, offer free estimates, and give cash discounts. Not because we’re running a promotion — but because that’s how we prefer to operate.
It starts with a call. You describe what’s going on — a renovation you’re planning, a material a contractor flagged, a home inspection that raised a concern — and we figure out together what the next step actually needs to be. Sometimes that’s a full inspection. Sometimes it’s targeted sampling of a specific material. We don’t push more than the situation calls for.
If testing confirms asbestos-containing materials, we build a removal plan around your timeline and your home. In Melrose Park, that means navigating Cheltenham Township’s permit requirements — all applications now go through the township’s online OpenGov system, and paper submissions are no longer accepted as of early 2025. Pennsylvania DEP also requires a minimum five-day advance notice before friable asbestos removal begins. We handle that notification process. You don’t have to become a regulatory expert to get your project moving.
On the job itself, we set up negative air pressure containment and run HEPA filtration throughout the work area to prevent fibers from migrating to other parts of your home. When the removal is complete, we conduct clearance testing before anything gets opened back up. That clearance documentation is yours to keep — useful for permit records, real estate disclosures, or simply your own peace of mind. The job isn’t done until the air test confirms it’s done.
Ready to get started?
Asbestos abatement isn’t one-size-fits-all, especially in a community like Melrose Park where a single home might have pipe insulation from the 1940s, vinyl floor tiles from the 1960s, and a popcorn ceiling applied sometime in the 1970s. Each material type has its own handling requirements, and a thorough abatement contractor accounts for all of them — not just the one that’s obviously visible.
We handle the full scope: initial inspection and sampling, lab testing, licensed removal, proper disposal at an approved facility (Montgomery County does not accept asbestos at its household hazardous waste events — a licensed contractor with disposal access is legally required), and post-removal clearance testing. If the project involves demolition, mold, lead, or waterproofing needs, those can be folded into the same project. You’re not managing a relay race between separate vendors.
For Melrose Park homeowners in the middle of a real estate transaction — and with median listing prices around $420,000 in this market, there’s real money at stake — we can move quickly. Buyer inspections, seller disclosures, and lender requirements all create compressed timelines. We understand that, and our emergency response availability exists for exactly those situations. Whether you’re a homeowner, a general contractor who hit something unexpected mid-demo, or a property manager dealing with a building that’s changing hands, the process is the same: one call, one team, one clean outcome.
If your home was built before 1980 — and in Melrose Park, the odds are very high that it was — asbestos testing before any renovation work is not just a good idea, it’s legally relevant. Pennsylvania requires that any contractor disturbing materials in a pre-1980 structure treat suspected materials as asbestos-containing unless testing proves otherwise. That means your general contractor may not be able to legally proceed until a licensed inspector has cleared the area.
In practical terms, the materials most commonly flagged in Melrose Park’s housing stock include pipe and duct insulation around older boilers and furnaces, 9×9 floor tiles (a near-universal feature of 1950s and 1960s kitchens and basements), textured ceiling finishes applied before 1980, and older plaster and joint compound. Testing is non-invasive, relatively fast, and gives you a clear answer before any demo begins — which is far better than discovering the problem after drywall is already on the floor.
For most residential jobs in the Melrose Park area — a single room, a section of pipe insulation, or a basement floor tile removal — the abatement work itself typically takes one to three days. What adds time to the overall project timeline is the regulatory notification requirement: Pennsylvania DEP requires a minimum five-day advance notice before friable asbestos removal begins. That clock starts when we file the notification, not when you call us.
So realistically, from the point of confirmed testing results to a cleared and documented job completion, you’re looking at roughly one to two weeks for a standard residential project. If your situation is urgent — a real estate closing, a contractor waiting to proceed, or a damaged material that’s actively deteriorating — we can work with your timeline and make sure the notification process doesn’t create unnecessary delays. Emergency response availability means we’re not telling you to wait three weeks for a scheduling slot.
It depends on the scope and location of the work. For contained, localized removal — a section of pipe insulation in a utility room, floor tiles in a basement — it’s often possible for occupants to remain in unaffected areas of the home, particularly if the work area is properly sealed and under negative air pressure. For larger-scale projects involving multiple rooms or materials throughout the living space, temporary relocation is the safer and more practical choice.
We’ll give you a straight answer on this before the job starts, based on what we’re actually removing and where it is in your home. If you’re a Melrose Park resident who works from home — and a significant share of this community does — the disruption question matters more than it might for someone who’s out of the house all day. We factor that into how we plan and sequence the work. The goal is to minimize your displacement without cutting corners on containment.
There are two separate regulatory layers to be aware of. At the state level, Pennsylvania DEP requires a minimum five-day advance notification before the removal of friable asbestos that exceeds three square feet or three linear feet. We file that notification as the licensed abatement contractor — not the homeowner — and it’s a non-negotiable step before work begins on qualifying projects.
At the township level, Cheltenham Township requires permits for a range of renovation activities that commonly trigger asbestos abatement: interior renovations, kitchen and bathroom remodels, demolitions, roofing, and siding work. As of February 2025, Cheltenham Township moved entirely to an online permit submission system through their OpenGov platform — paper applications are no longer accepted. If you’re planning a project in Melrose Park that requires both a township renovation permit and asbestos abatement, the sequencing matters. We can walk you through what needs to happen in what order so your project doesn’t stall on a paperwork issue.
For most residential asbestos abatement jobs — a room of floor tiles, a section of pipe insulation, or a single ceiling area — costs typically fall in the range of $1,200 to $3,500. Larger or more complex projects, like whole-house abatement prior to a major renovation or full pipe insulation removal throughout an older home, can run $10,000 to $30,000 or more depending on the scope and materials involved.
In Melrose Park specifically, where the median home was built in 1954 and a substantial portion of the housing stock predates World War II, it’s not uncommon for an inspection to reveal asbestos in multiple locations — floor tiles, pipe wrap, and ceiling finishes all in the same home. That doesn’t automatically mean a massive project cost, but it does mean the initial inspection and testing phase is important for scoping the job accurately. We offer free estimates, and we give you a real number based on what’s actually there — not a lowball figure that grows after we’ve started. Cash discounts are available, which can make a meaningful difference on mid-to-large-scale projects.
Asbestos that is intact and undisturbed is generally considered low-risk. The danger comes from disturbance — when materials are cut, broken, sanded, or deteriorate on their own, fibers become airborne and can be inhaled. So if you have asbestos floor tiles that are in good condition under a rug, or pipe insulation that’s fully intact and sealed, the immediate risk is lower than it would be for damaged or crumbling material.
That said, “not planning to renovate right now” and “never going to disturb this material” are two different things. Homes age. Pipe insulation deteriorates. Ceiling tiles crack. And in Melrose Park, where the average home is over 70 years old and many properties haven’t seen a full renovation in decades, materials that were stable ten years ago may not be stable today. Pennsylvania ranks fourth in the country for mesothelioma and asbestos-related deaths, and the disease has a latency period of 20 to 50 years. If you’ve lived in a pre-1980 home for a long time and haven’t had it inspected, knowing what’s there — and what condition it’s in — is simply useful information to have.
Local Resources
Useful Links
Other Services we provide in Melrose Park
