One Day in Northmead: A Fibro Garage With a Super Six Roof, Gone by Knock-Off

The Blue Garage: Fibro Walls, Super Six Roof, Zero Doubt

Some jobs need testing to know what you’re dealing with. This wasn’t one of them. The corrugated grey sheet on this Northmead garage is Super Six — the standard asbestos-cement roof profile on half of Sydney’s older garages and sheds — and the flat blue-painted sheets on the walls are fibro of the same era. Paint changes the colour; it doesn’t change the material.

That makes the whole structure a licensed Class B removal, not a knock-it-over demolition job. The owner wanted the lot gone — roof, walls, frame and roller door — with the slab staying for what comes next.

Why an Asbestos Garage Is a Method Job, Not a Muscle Job

The whole discipline of asbestos garage demolition is keeping the sheets whole. A fibro panel that comes off in one piece, gets wrapped and travels flat releases next to nothing. The same panel snapped over a knee, dropped into a trailer or smashed by a machine is how a backyard gets contaminated — and how a cheap job becomes an expensive one.

So the day ran in a fixed order. Ground sheeting down first — heavy plastic across the work area and along the side path, so nothing touched bare soil. Then the Super Six came off the way it always should: fixings out, each sheet wet down, lifted whole and carried — never slid, never dropped — down the sheeted path to the wrapping area. Then the walls, panel by panel, the same way. Only once the structure was bare timber did the frame and roller door come down as ordinary demolition.

Wrapped On Site, Weighed at the Gate, Docketed

Every sheet ended the day the same way: stacked on heavy plastic, double-wrapped, labelled as asbestos waste and loaded for an EPA-licensed facility — where the load is weighed and a disposal docket issued. That docket, plus the independent clearance of the work area, is the paper trail that says this garage left the property lawfully. It’s what a future buyer’s conveyancer, a council or an insurer will want to see, and it’s included, not optional.

One Day: Quoted in the Morning, a Washed Slab by Knock-Off

This is what a well-run single-garage job looks like: quoted off the morning site visit with a written fixed price, then — once the SafeWork paperwork and program lined up — a crew of three plus a supervisor, one day on site. Roof off, walls off, frame down, waste wrapped and gone, the work area cleared, and the slab washed off and left clean for whatever the owner does next — new garage, carport, or nothing at all.

A job like this in Sydney typically lands in the $9,000–$11,000 range: licensed crew, full containment, disposal by weight (asbestos-cement is heavy), independent clearance and the dockets, all in. Smaller garages and roof-only scopes come in well under that — the cost guide has the current ranges — and if the slab needs to go too, that’s demolition scope we price in the same quote.

Lessons From This Job

1. Paint hides fibro; it doesn’t fix it. A blue garage is still an asbestos garage. If it went up before 1990 and the sheet profile looks like this one, price it as licensed work from the first phone call.

2. The side path is part of the method. Where the sheets travel matters as much as how they come off. Sheeting the carry route is the difference between a clean job and fibre tracked across a lawn.

3. Roof and walls together beat two separate jobs. One mobilisation, one containment setup, one disposal run, one clearance. Splitting an all-asbestos garage into “roof now, walls later” pays for everything twice.

4. “Done” should include the slab washed off. The handback standard is a surface you can stand on and plan from — not a footprint of debris.

Got One of These in the Backyard?

Send a photo of the roof and one of the walls to 0418 882 285. If it’s the garage we think it is, you’ll get a fixed written price for the licensed removal — and if you want the slab gone or the space cleared out as well, we’ll price the whole picture in one go.