The short version
- The rule applies to paid work disturbing painted surfaces in housing built before 1978.
- Floor sanding reaches painted surfaces more often than people expect, because the edger runs to the baseboard and the shoe molding.
- 40 CFR 745.85(a)(3) restricts machines that remove coatings through high speed operation unless they carry containment and HEPA collection at the point of generation.
- The small job exemption is six square feet of painted surface per room, and a floor is never that small.
- 60.5 percent of the housing in our published dataset at /data/ predates 1978, and 45 of Philadelphia's 132 neighborhoods are above 90 percent.
Why a clear finished floor still triggers a rule about paint
Because the job is not only the field of the floor: the edger reaches the baseboard, the shoe molding and the door casing, and in older houses those carry many layers of paint.
A floor finished with polyurethane is not a painted surface, and if nothing painted is disturbed anywhere in the job the rule is not triggered. That is a narrower situation than it sounds, because the perimeter of every room is trim, and trim in this housing stock is painted.
So in practice most sanding jobs in pre-1978 housing here fall inside the rule. Treating that as an exception is how a crew ends up out of compliance without noticing.
The rule also is not about whether lead is actually present. Pre-1978 housing is treated as covered unless lead is ruled out by an approved determination. Age is the trigger, not a test result.
The question is not whether your floor has paint on it. It is whether anything painted gets disturbed anywhere in the job, and the edger decides that.
What the text actually restricts
It prohibits machines that remove coatings through high speed operation on painted surfaces unless the machine has containment and a HEPA vacuum collecting dust where it is generated.
The section is 40 CFR 745.85(a)(3), and it is specific about equipment rather than outcome. It names sanding, grinding, power planing and abrasive blasting, and it allows them only with containment and HEPA collection at the point of generation.
Read plainly, that is a description of how the sanding rig has to be assembled in an older house. It is the reason a properly set up crew arrives with extraction attached rather than a shop vacuum in the hallway.
It also explains why the honest version of dustless is a description and not a promise. The equipment the rule requires is the same equipment that makes a job low dust, and neither the rule nor the equipment claims zero.
How much of this region is covered
Most of it, and in the city almost all of it, which is why we treat the rule as the default condition of the work rather than a special case.
The dataset we published at /data/ covers 635 towns and Philadelphia neighborhoods with the American Community Survey 2023 five year estimates. Across the whole service area, 60.5 percent of 3,899,409 units predate 1978.
Philadelphia itself is 82.8 percent, and 45 of its 132 residential neighborhoods are above 90 percent. In those neighborhoods, a crew that treats the lead rule as an exception is out of compliance on nearly every job it takes.
The share is published per town and per neighborhood, so you can look up your own before anyone quotes you. That is the point of publishing it.
| Area | Share |
|---|---|
| Whole service area, 3,899,409 units | 60.5 percent |
| City of Philadelphia | 82.8 percent |
| Philadelphia neighborhoods above 90 percent | 45 of 132 |
What containment looks like in your house
The work area is closed off with plastic at the doorways, vents are covered, belongings are removed or wrapped, and a warning sign goes up until the cleanup has been verified.
Containment is practical, visible work. Doorways out of the work area are sealed with plastic sheeting, with a flap for the crew to pass through. Heating and cooling vents inside the area are covered so the system does not carry dust through the ducts.
Furniture and objects come out, or are covered and sealed where they cannot be moved. For a floor job the rooms are empty anyway, which makes this easier than it is for most renovation work.
A sign is posted at the entrance to keep people out of the work area. That includes the people who live there. For the days the sanding is under way, those rooms are closed, and children and pets stay elsewhere in the house.
Who has to be certified, and what you are given beforehand
The rule requires the firm to be certified by the Environmental Protection Agency, the job to be directed by a certified renovator, and the owner to receive the Renovate Right pamphlet before work starts.
Certification attaches to the company and to a person. The firm holds a certificate from the Environmental Protection Agency, and each job is directed by a renovator who has completed the required training. You can ask to see both, and a firm that works in old houses should expect the question.
Before the work begins, the contractor gives the owner and the occupants a pamphlet published by the agency, titled Renovate Right, and keeps a record that it was delivered. It explains the hazard and the precautions in plain language.
The obligation sits with the contractor. A homeowner does not have to enforce the rule. What a homeowner can do is ask how the job will be set up, and listen for a specific answer.
The useful question is short: what is the sander connected to, and how are the doorways sealed. A crew that does this every week answers in one sentence.
What cleanup and verification involve
After the work, the area is cleaned with a HEPA vacuum and wet wiping, and the result is checked against a verification card before the containment comes down.
Cleanup under the rule follows a sequence. Debris and plastic are collected and bagged. Surfaces are vacuumed with a HEPA vacuum, then wiped with damp cloths, working from the top of the room down.
Verification is the step people have not heard of. The certified renovator wipes the cleaned surfaces with a disposable cloth and compares it with a reference card. If the cloth is darker than the card, that area is cleaned again and checked again.
Only then do the sign and the plastic come down.
When the rule can be ruled out
A pre-1978 house is treated as covered unless a certified inspector or risk assessor has determined in writing that the surfaces being disturbed are free of lead based paint, or a certified renovator has tested them with a recognized kit.
Age is the trigger. There are two ways out. One is a written determination by a certified lead inspector or risk assessor that the components to be disturbed do not contain lead based paint. The other is testing of each affected surface by a certified renovator using a test kit recognized by the agency.
In practice few homeowners have such a report, and testing every painted surface around a room takes time. Most floor jobs in older housing simply proceed under the rule, which is the simpler route.
If you do have a lead inspection report from a purchase or a rental certification, tell us. It may change how the job is set up, and it belongs in the file either way.
What the rule does not cover
It does not cover work you do yourself in your own home, housing built in 1978 or later, or jobs that disturb no painted surface.
The rule applies to work done for compensation. A homeowner sanding their own floor in the house they live in is outside it. Rental property is different: a landlord working on a rented unit is covered, since the work is part of a business.
Being exempt does not make the dust harmless. If you sand your own floors in an old house, the same precautions are worth taking: seal the room, collect dust at the machine, clean with a HEPA vacuum and damp cloths, and keep children and anyone who is pregnant out of the house until it is clean.
Housing built from 1978 onward is outside the rule. In the dataset we publish at /data/, 216 of the 635 towns and neighborhoods have a median home built in 1980 or later, and in those the rule applies to a minority of houses.
