The process to make the elaborate meth lab north of Sydney habitable again was no small or cheap feat.

"That job was $250,000 by the time it was finished," said Robert Gale, Sydney-based operations manager and hygienist.

This is a glimpse into the booming cleaning and remediation industry that has prospered on the back of Australia's ice epidemic.

What used to be a niche market is now lucrative with many businesses tuning their skills in the field to take advantage of the upward trend in meth lab busts in rural and suburban areas.

In 2013-14, 744 drug labs were busted across the country, almost double that of a decade earlier, according to the Australian Crime Commission.

Once a drug lab is uncovered, the local council is notified and it then falls to the home owner to remediate the home of its chemical contamination.

A hygienist is employed to swab the property to record the contamination levels before quotes are sought from remediation companies on what it will cost to make the place liveable again.

Ahmad Merhi has been in the meth lab cleaning business since 2010, when the workload was about five jobs per year.

Now the company remediates an average of 100 drug labs annually across Australia and New Zealand.

The head technician from Living Fresh says clandestine labs aren't only found in backyard sheds, kitchens and discreet rural blocks.

He recently cleaned a lab in an "elite class" apartment building, fit with a concierge, on top of bustling Sydney shopping centre.

Thinking back on some of the worst cases he has come across, Mr Merhi remembers a house that had turned yellow from the iodine used in the chemical cocktail to manufacture methylamphetamine.

"There were coke cans on the kitchen bench that were yellow," he said.

"It was like someone walked into this house and sprayed painted it."

Some cooks go to unusual lengths to cover their tracks – like covering tap fittings and door handles in plastic to combat the corrosion that comes from makeshift labs – but it's often the innocent home owners left to grapple with the consequences.

Mr Merhi spoke of one man left with a $25,000 remediation bill after the tenant in the granny flat below his home produced meth and the chemicals seeped up through his wooden floorboards.

The costs to reverse the effects of drug labs vary but they are high enough to push people to employ their own cleaning methods.

However, experts warn using general cleaners or painting over surfaces, doesn't fix the problem and only puts the next round of tenants at risk.

A quote from Living Fresh, which uses a decontamination foam over demolition, for a standard two bedroom unit can be range anywhere between $15,000-$20,000. Quotes can go into the hundreds of thousands of dollars when demolition is involved.

"It's very profitable," Mr Merhi said of the industry.

That is on top of employing a hygienist.

Mr Gale has recorded chemical readings in the thousands of micrograms, where the standard is 5 micrograms, from inside homes used as drug labs.

"Once you get to the levels in the 1000s, you just can't clean it. It is very resilient," he said.

He estimates his workplace has dealt with about 30 drug labs in the past two years, compared with none about four or five years ago.

With an increasing number of current and new businesses seeking meth lab clean up training, Scott McFadzen estimates there are now 50 companies in Australia equipped to do the job.

Mr McFadzen, the Specialised Cleaning and Restoration Industry Association (SCRIA) president, said five years ago there were only a handful of businesses equipped to clean drug houses.

DRUG LAB BUSTS IN NSW

2014 - 99

2013 - 115

2012 - 98

2011 - 93

2010 - 96

2009 - 67

2008 - 55