The Asbestos Taskforce estimates that each home will be reduced to 10 cubic metres of rubble, filling about 17 trucks of contaminated material to be dumped in the asbestos pit at West Belconnen. Each has a traffic management plan approved by the Work Safe ACT, which details truck movements at the demolition site and how they will get to and from the tip.

The first trucks have a long journey from Wanniassa.

The demolition is beginning slowly with five pilot houses, but the taskforce anticipates that once it gears up to six houses a week, 20 trucks a day, or 100 a week, will make their way via approved routes. Trucks will be covered but not marked.

On Monday, Work Safe ACT said uncovering six bags worth of loose-fill asbestos in the demolition at Sternberg Crescent, Wanniassa, had justified the expense of the buyback program.

Neighbours watched as the creaking arm of the long reach excavator made the first strike into the roof of the four-bedroom house, as Work Safety Commissioner Mark McCabe said there was far more toxic friable asbestos than expected in the home, originally cleaned under the 1980s Commonwealth cleanup.

Six bags, each slightly larger than a grocery bag, were half filled by asbestos removalists in line with regulations before the demolition began.

"Six bags is a lot of material," Mr McCabe said. "In cases there were big clumps of it sitting on the noggins in the wall cavity. That is trillions of fibres."

Taskforce head Andrew Kefford said by the time the houses were demolished and material loaded on to trucks, any remaining contamination would be "glued" to the housing debris.

Houses are cleaned before demolition, with internal walls and ceilings removed and asbestos fibres vacuumed up, sealed in heavy duty impermeable bags and disposed of in secured containers at Mugga Lane, where the pure asbestos is kept.

Tip workers would wear protective suits and masks, with air monitoring initially of every delivery, but less often if no detectable asbestos was found.

Robson Environmental monitors asbestos fibres at the tip, including from asbestos contaminated soil at the North Weston Pond site in the Molonglo Valley and the Fluffy houses dumped in private demolitions. Hazardous materials manager Ged Keane said he had yet to detect fibres over the safety threshold. Air monitoring equipment was also mounted in the cabin of the excavator driver, who was closest to the material, on the fence line surrounding the site, on the trick weighbridge and on the transit route in the tip.

But Mr Keane said it was rare in any case to pick up a concentration of fibres in the outdoor air. A study had shown that even in fire damaged houses when asbestos board was exploded by fire, fibres were diluted to background levels, and in the case of the Canberra Fluffy demolitions levels were at a much lower level than that he said.

He was confident that "only the highest safety standards are being enforced".

Mr Kefford said the Fluffy homes would be dumped across different clay-lined parts of the secured site, "filling in valleys".

After each load, the rear tailgate and subframe of the trucks would be hosed with a "water cannon", and at the end of each day the tipper bed would also be hosed. As they left the site, trucks would travel over an automated wheel wash.

Resident Warren Fitzpatrick said he was glad to see his suburb would soon be rid of the toxic legacy.

"They have to go and I'll be glad they're gone certainly," he said.

"It's been going for 40 minutes or so and we are down to the back wall. I am going to have a new view shortly to the Mr Fluffy house behind it."