Lead-Safe Rules for Floor Work in Pre-1978 Homes

Why this matters

Flooring crews do not think of themselves as paint contractors, which is exactly why lead catches them. A new floor means pulling the painted base and shoe. A refinish means sanding a floor that has a painted border, or a porch floor that was painted for sixty years. In a house built before 1978 either job can disturb lead-based paint, and lead dust from a floor job lands on the one surface a crawling child spends the day on. The EPA rule that governs it is specific about who must be certified and how the work is done, and a shop that has not mapped its flooring work onto that rule is likely already out of compliance on routine jobs.

Safety first: what to do when you meet paint

When a job in a pre-1978 house will cut, scrape, sand, pry or demolish a painted surface, including painted base, shoe, thresholds, stair risers or a painted floor:

• Do not dry sand, power sand or plane it, and do not use a torch or a heat gun on it, until the paint is tested or the work is set up as lead-safe work.
• Keep occupants, especially children under 6 and pregnant women, out of the work area.
• Do not dry sweep or use a shop vacuum on paint chips or dust; leave them for a HEPA vacuum and wet cleaning.

The lead-safe procedure for flooring jobs, step by step, is The Lead-Safe Floor Work SOP. This card is about when the rules apply and why.

Where lead meets a floor job

• Painted base, shoe and casing removed for new flooring, or scraped and pried at the floor line. The most common flooring contact with lead paint, and the one crews overlook.
• Painted wood floors: porches, attics, back stairs, and whole floors painted in older houses.
• Painted borders around the edges of a room where a rug once covered the center, often under later finishes.
• Painted thresholds, stair risers and stringers on stair and transition work.
• Old finishes and stains. Some older coatings on floors contained lead. Lead-based paint under the rule means paint or other surface coatings over the federal lead threshold, so a coating is not exempt for being clear; test it when the age and history say it could be.

Where else lead hides in an older house is in Lead Paint - Where It Hides in an Older House.

The EPA RRP rule, as it reaches flooring

The Renovation, Repair and Painting rule (40 CFR 745 Subpart E) applies to renovation for compensation in target housing (housing built before 1978, with exclusions for housing for the elderly or disabled where no child under 6 lives or is expected, and for zero-bedroom dwellings) and in child-occupied facilities built before 1978. EPA runs it federally; a number of states are EPA-authorized to run their own program, and an authorized state's program can be stricter. The rule's own summary is EPA Lead RRP Rule for Contractors; what matters for floor work:

• Who. The firm is certified (by EPA or the authorized state), and a certified renovator is assigned to the job, directs the lead-safe work and does the cleaning verification.
• Before work. The owner and occupants get EPA's Renovate Right pamphlet no more than 60 days before work begins, with written acknowledgment.
• The minor repair and maintenance exception. Work that disturbs 6 sq ft or less of painted surface per room inside (20 sq ft outside) is excepted, but the exception does not apply to window replacement, to demolition of painted surface areas, or to any job using a prohibited practice.
• Prohibited practices. Open-flame burning or torching; machine sanding, grinding, planing, needle guns, abrasive blasting or sandblasting unless the machine has HEPA exhaust control; and heat guns at 1100 F or higher. A floor sander on a painted border is the second item.
• Work practices. Containment with plastic sheeting, signs, HVAC isolation, HEPA vacuuming and wet cleaning, then cleaning verification of the floor with wet disposable cloths compared against EPA's verification card.
• Records. Kept for 3 years.

Testing can take a component out of the rule. A certified renovator using an EPA-recognized test kit, or a certified lead inspector or risk assessor, can establish that a component is not lead-based paint. Each component is its own test; the base being negative says nothing about the window casing.

OSHA protects the crew separately

The RRP rule protects occupants. The crew is protected by OSHA's lead standard for construction, 29 CFR 1926.62, which applies whether or not RRP does, including in a house built after 1978 with older salvaged trim. Its permissible exposure limit is 50 micrograms per cubic meter as an 8-hour average, with an action level of 30. Until the shop has monitoring that shows otherwise, the standard treats tasks such as manual scraping and sanding, and power-tool work on lead paint, as presumed-exposure tasks, which brings interim respiratory protection under a written 1910.134 program (applied to construction by 29 CFR 1926.103), protective clothing, hand-washing facilities and training. Clothes and boots that leave the job dusty carry lead into the truck and the crew's homes.

Worked example: a bedroom floor and its painted trim

A 1954 house. New luxury vinyl plank in a 12 ft by 14 ft bedroom. The base is painted 3-1/2 in colonial base with painted 3/4 in shoe, both nailed, with caulk at the top. The plan as sold: pull base and shoe, lay the floor, reinstall the base, new shoe.

Does the exception apply? The room's perimeter is 2 times (12 plus 14), or 52 ft, less a 3 ft door opening: 49 ft of trim. Counting the painted face of the trim removed:

• Base: 49 ft times 3.5/12 ft is about 14.3 sq ft.
• Shoe: 49 ft times 0.75/12 ft is about 3.1 sq ft.
• Together: about 17.4 sq ft.

Check: 14.3 plus 3.1 is 17.4, and 17.4 sq ft is nearly three times the 6 sq ft limit. The base alone, at 14.3, is more than double it. Pulling the painted base takes this job past the minor repair limit on area alone. The shoe by itself is about 3.1 sq ft, under 6 by area, but removing painted trim can also be read as demolition of painted surface area, which the exception excludes whatever the size. Whether pulling and resetting trim counts as demolition is a question to settle with your authorized state program or EPA's published guidance before relying on it; the shop default is to treat it as covered.

Option 1: test first. The certified renovator tests the base and the shoe with an EPA-recognized kit, each component separately. If both test negative, the rule does not apply to them and the floor job proceeds with ordinary dust control. Write the kit, the result and the locations on the job record.

Option 2: lead-safe work. If either tests positive, or the shop does not test, the job runs as RRP work: pamphlet delivered and acknowledged, the room contained with the floor covered in plastic and the doorway sealed, the HVAC vents in the room closed and covered, signs posted. The caulk line is scored with a knife before prying so the paint film breaks cleanly rather than tearing off the wall; trim comes off with a flat bar, misted, with no sanding of the edges. Old shoe is bagged in the work area. After the floor is in and trim is reset, the room is HEPA vacuumed and wet cleaned, and the certified renovator runs cleaning verification on the floor before containment comes down.

What the customer hears. "Your house is from before 1978, and taking up this trim disturbs old paint. We test it first. If it has lead, we contain the room and clean to a standard the EPA sets, and nobody but the crew goes in until we have checked the floor."

What the job file has to show

An RRP job is judged later from paper, often after a complaint or a child's blood test, and the 3 years of record keeping is the shop's only evidence of what happened. For a flooring job that means:

• The signed pamphlet acknowledgment, or the documented delivery if the occupant would not sign, dated within the 60-day window.
• The firm's certification number and the certified renovator's name and certificate, and which crew members the renovator trained on the job.
• Test results by component (base, shoe, threshold, floor border), with the kit or inspector, and the location of each test.
• The work practices actually used: containment extent, signs, vent covering, the removal method, waste handling.
• The cleaning verification result for the floor, including any area that failed the card on the first wipe and was re-cleaned.

A job file with those five items lets the shop answer "what did you do in that bedroom" two years later. Without them the answer is a crew member's memory.

When the answer changes

• A refinish of a floor with a painted border. Machine sanding that paint without HEPA exhaust control is a prohibited practice, so the sanding plan itself changes, and the border area usually exceeds 6 sq ft in any room. See related: Sanding Machines and Grit Sequences.
• A house built in 1978 or later. It is not target housing and the RRP rule does not reach it, though OSHA's lead standard still applies to the crew if old painted material is involved.
• A daycare or preschool in an older building. It can be a child-occupied facility under the rule even though it is not housing.
• A child in the home with an elevated blood lead level. Local health department orders can impose requirements beyond the RRP rule; ask before quoting.

References

• EPA 40 CFR 745 Subpart E, Renovation, Repair and Painting Program; Renovate Right pamphlet
• OSHA 29 CFR 1926.62, Lead in Construction; 29 CFR 1910.134, Respiratory Protection
• Your EPA-authorized state's lead renovation program, where one exists
• See related: EPA Lead RRP Rule for Contractors; Lead Paint - Where It Hides in an Older House; The Lead-Safe Floor Work SOP