01 / Local knowledge

Two Booms, Two Kinds of Asbestos

Timmins is older than it looks. The Porcupine gold rush of 1909 built the town, and the mines — Hollinger, Dome, McIntyre — built the housing. The Hollinger houses in the city's core, the company streets in Schumacher below the McIntyre headframe, the older blocks of South Porcupine: these are 1910s–30s homes, many of them small and frame-built, with plaster walls, wood-and-coal heat later converted to oil, and boiler and pipe insulation of the kind that is almost always asbestos.

The second boom was Kidd Creek. When Texas Gulf's discovery turned into the world's largest base-metal mine in the late 1960s, Timmins grew fast through the 1970s — Mountjoy filled in, the subdivisions off Airport Road and along Riverside went up, and the city's housing count jumped in a decade. That era's product list is different but no better: stipple ceilings, drywall joint compound, vinyl floor tile with black mastic, and vermiculite in the attic.

Most Timmins homes belong to one of these two eras. Very few of them have been through a proper asbestos survey.

02 / Local knowledge

Forty Below Changes the Math on Attics

Timmins winters are the coldest in the service area, and that shows up in the attic in two ways.

First, more vermiculite. It was sold as the easy answer to a heating bill, and in a city where January routinely sees -35°C, a lot of people bought it — both at construction and as a top-up in the 70s and 80s. A house built in 1925 can have 1978 vermiculite in the attic.

Second, more reasons to go up there. Ice damming, frost buildup on the underside of the roof deck, bathroom fans that were never ducted outside, the annual conversation about adding insulation — every one of them puts a homeowner or a contractor in the attic, and every one of them stops when vermiculite turns up.

The answer isn't to work around it. It's to test it, remove it under proper Type 3 containment, and re-insulate to a level that actually suits a Timmins winter — R-60 or better. The house ends up warmer than it was and the disclosure item is gone. Learn more →

03 / Local knowledge

What We Handle in Timmins and the Porcupine

  • Vermiculite attic removal — 1970s Mountjoy and Airport Road subdivisions, and older homes that were topped up. Learn more →
  • Boiler and pipe insulation in the Hollinger houses, Schumacher and the old South Porcupine blocks. Learn more →
  • Stipple ceilings, floor tile and mastic, drywall compound in the Kidd Creek-era housing.
  • Pre-renovation, pre-sale and pre-purchase testing with accredited lab analysis. Rush available; plan for shipping time to the lab from Timmins. Learn more →
  • Designated substances surveys for commercial buildings and demolition — common with the older downtown stock and mine-related properties. Learn more →
  • Oil tank removal — basement and buried tanks in the pre-war neighbourhoods and at camps. Learn more →
  • Mould in attics and basements, often alongside vermiculite work. Learn more →

Communities covered from Timmins: Schumacher, South Porcupine, Porcupine, Mountjoy, Connaught, Whitney, Hoyle, Kamiskotia, and camps on Porcupine Lake, Kamiskotia Lake, Frederick House and the Mattagami. Iroquois Falls, Matheson and Cochrane are on their own page. Learn more →

04 / Local knowledge

The Distance Problem, and How We Plan Around It

Timmins is three hours from Sudbury and eight from Toronto, and abatement crews with the equipment for Type 3 work are not on every corner. The result — and anyone who has tried to book this work here knows it — is that quotes take weeks to arrive, jobs get pushed, and "we'll be up next month" becomes next season.

We plan for the distance instead of pretending it isn't there. That means grouping Timmins-area jobs so a crew mobilizes with a full schedule rather than for a single attic, giving you a realistic date instead of an optimistic one, and pricing travel and disposal transparently so there are no surprises. If you have flexibility on timing, say so — it usually gets you a better number.

05 / Local knowledge

What It Costs in Timmins

  • Testing: $400–$700 all-in for a targeted test; $600–$1,500 for a pre-renovation survey. Allow a couple of extra days for lab shipping.
  • Small contained removal (pipe wrap, one ceiling, one floor): roughly $1,500–$4,500.
  • Vermiculite attic: roughly $6,000–$13,000 for a typical Timmins bungalow, more for larger attics. Re-insulation to R-60 quoted separately and worth doing at the same time.
  • Whole-house or pre-demolition: $10,000 and up.
  • Timmins note: travel and disposal distance sit at the higher end of the region. Grouped jobs and flexible dates bring it down.

Get a realistic quote and a real date — Call +1 289-805-3319

Call +1 289-805-3319 ↗

06 / Common questions

FAQs

How long will I wait for a crew in Timmins?

It depends on the season and how many jobs are queued in the Porcupine. Testing can usually be arranged within a week or two. Removal is scheduled in blocks so a crew arrives with a full slate — you'll be given a realistic window when you book, and flexibility on your end shortens it.

My house is a Hollinger house from the 1920s. What should I expect?

Plaster walls, possibly with asbestos in the finish coat; original or early pipe and boiler insulation if the heating system hasn't been fully replaced; and possibly vermiculite added to the attic decades after the house was built. A pre-renovation survey is the right first step — these houses are small, so the survey is quick and the abatement scope is usually manageable.

Is vermiculite common in the 1970s Mountjoy subdivisions?

Yes. That era and that winter climate are the peak of vermiculite use. If you're planning to add insulation or fix an ice-dam problem, have the attic checked before anyone goes up.

Do you do commercial and demolition surveys in Timmins?

Yes — designated substances surveys for commercial buildings, multi-unit residential and demolition projects, covering asbestos, lead, silica, mercury and the other designated substances Ontario requires owners to identify before tendering work.

Do you cover Iroquois Falls, Matheson and Cochrane?

Yes, on their own page — the Abitibi mill closure changed the housing picture in Iroquois Falls in ways worth reading about. Learn more →