Canadian HAZ-MAT Environmental

We hired this company to clean out and abate asbestos in an existing crawl space. They were thoroughly professional, with excellent technical skills, friendly knowledgeable staff, and frequent communication and updates.
We felt that we were in the hands of people who cared about their work and our job.

The asbestos industry can be incredibly overwhelming. Some of the bigger companies providing these services rely on fear-mongering and intimidation, producing client reports that make it sound like you have to remediate everything or tear down your house in order to feel 'safe'. Do your due diligence (or keep reading this review) to get it straight once and for all.

I purchased a house in Victoria. Anyone who knows Victoria knows that there is asbestos in almost every house. This is not a problem (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise) unless you 'disturb' the asbestos. In my case, I was disturbing the asbestos because I was renovating the kitchen and bathrooms.

The first essential step, when you know you will need to disturb asbestos, is to have an asbestos survey done. This is essentially hiring an asbestos company that will come out and test random areas of the house, to produce a report that identifies where the asbestos is, what kind of asbestos it is and what the protocol for handling the asbestos is, for contractors and homeowners involved.

The report also details other items, such as lead paint, mercury, vermiculite (they may charge extra for those samples). Samples add up quite quickly. I was originally quoted 5-7 samples and they walked out with 21, so keep an eye on scope here. I should also note that the company that I chose to do my sampling (Hazpro) was not the same company I chose to do the remediation (Canadian Haz-Mat Environmental).

Canadian Haz-Mat Environmental is a fairly new company. After calling several larger companies to get quotes and timelines for remediation, some repeatedly warned me to stay away from this smaller shop, due to their inexperience, implying they are "probably not certified" and there must be a reason that they are "not busy like we are". Due to these comments, I conducted further due diligence, contacting Work Safe BC to ensure they were indeed registered (and they were).

Because of the negative commentary, I lost respect for these larger firms, who were attempting to monopolize the industry by tearing down the competition by using several scare tactics, indicating I 'absolutely had to' remediate the entire house (+10k$ of work) and not to trust these smaller companies as their companies employed better expertise ("we've been doing this for years and we've never heard of these guys"). These larger companies started off by having clients (like me) give them the opportunity to prove they are capable and competent. So I decided to entrust Canadian Haz-Mat Environmental with my project, and was I ever fortunate.

To start, they were ready to begin immediately, while others were 3-4 weeks out.
They did not rely on intimidation techniques, and they did not want to add to my initial scope of work.
They understood what I needed to do for my project, and made suggestions on how to save money with their protocol.
They took the time to explain every small detail for each question I brought up - and I brought up many.
They were incredibly accommodating, allowing the ability for me to add to scope as they progressed, based on my plumber's needs.
They were professional, affordable and honest people.

I would highly recommend going to Canadian Haz-Mat Environmental for your needs and skip the 'big-box' types. This boutique shop can do everything with integrity, and honesty.