Make a cast on old pipes

It is true what they say. Having a house is a constant source of work. An old house probably generates additional issues, especially if owners after owners have been playing around with trends, personal taste and whatever. A big house with a complex structure will also generate quite some tasks.

I think we got jackpot of complexity and infinite amount of tasks to deal with. 

In this case the fault is somewhat ours. 

When we moved in 2012, we relied on a quite cheap/old house incompetent building company, that helped us with the major renovation we did. 

One day, one pipe in the basement started to drip water. We looked up and thought that the pipe for some reason just broke.

Some of the workers we had, took and broke the insulation around to pipe, to check its state. 

It turned out that the issue was due to the fact that the radiator had been removed at the end of the pipe, and with a change of water pressure, the water of course started to go out of the open pipe.

As the insulation was broken, they took some modern one and just wrapped it around the old pipe.

The pipe with its modern insulation

Nothing strange with it, except that the "cut" around the old insulation has looked like crap and well, I hadn't had major plans to do anything about it (well, after 9 years, what do you expect... that this is prio 1?) for a while.

Close up around the fracture in the old insulation

I have recently had a visit of a building engineer who, when checking other issues with the house, looked at this and told me: "Arianna, you need to fix this asap".

It turns out that such old insulation is usually full with asbestos, and that is ok until one breaks and touchs the parts. 

Now, I have been there fixing the laundry for 9 years, so I suspect that, if any asbestos, I have had some exposure to it (although I have never touched for any reason that part of the pipe).

Nevertheless, she recommended to buy some plaster rolls, that I suspect are usually used for molding plaster items or even broken limbs.

Starting to roll the wet plaster rolls

Without knowing what I was exactly doing, I dripped the plaster roll, one by one, in cold water. 

I took them up and started to roll them around the pipe.

I wasn't very prepared and the floor got a bit messy

I wans't really prepared, so plaster started to drip from the pipe a bit everywhere. Eventually I put some form of floor cover and that made life easier. Luckily it is reasonable easy to clean plaster up.

At the beginning my technique was very much suboptimal. It turned a bit better by the end, although when comparing with the old insulation (which probably had plaster rolled around it too), one sees an abyss of different. The old ones are smooth and even and perfect. What hands for doing such a job!

The critical point that was supposed to be sealed

By using the plaster rolls, I am basically sealing the asbestos risky point and, as a bonus, I am also making the modern insulation looks a bit more like the old one.

The final result

It wasn't easy to make it even there

Another point got sealed as well, since I was at it

Considering this was the first time I used anything like that, I am quite happy of the result. The old insulation has leaked a bit color on the plaster, as of course, it got wet. But it should be enough to paint it a bit. In theory I should use lime paint on it, but since those are two micro spots that needs some adjustment, one of us should be able to just paint with whatever we have around. 

So, that's the next step. Problem is that now when I look at the pipes, I just see spots where I would like to preeventively patch all of this...