So we had our lovely new home tested for radon, and unfortunately it came out as high (5.9, with 4.0 being the max acceptable.)
With a little one and another one on the way, we will want to mitigate. Do you have any experience to share?
It differs from region to region but around here its basically call a professional and watch your wallet bleed to one degree or another. The approach is from both fronts. One is to seal the basement and foundation so less radon enters. The second is to install a fan in the roof to suck out what does enter. How your house is built, when, what materials, what standards and more can effect just how expensive that can get. One friend with the standard PA 1960s crackerbox got off fairly cheap (about a grand). Another with an older 1900-1915 house went in around 8 grand and the problem wasn’t really totally solved.
Try one fix and retest and then escalate from there. Pick a starting point based on the age and style of the house.
what region of the US are you in?
I don’t have any experience, but my reading is that a basement fan (not attic) is sufficient remediation. I assume a professional would be a better source, but depending on where you live and the experiences of your neighbors, it might be worth a second test to be sure.
Goodness! A grand we can do-- I’d hope it’s not too crazy much more. We are in Maryland, and I gather high radon is pretty normal in the area.
It’s a 1947 brick Cape Cod with a finished walk-out basement and bedrooms on the upper floor/attic. We have a sump pump, if that matters.
They’ll put a cover over the sump pump hole and caulk it in, which plumbers grumble about but I think it’s good. Keeps shit from rolling in there and getting caught in the pipe and seems safer for kids.
My realtor told me to insist I get the mitigation done by the previous owners before I bought the house, because when I went to sell it someone will make me pay for it so I’d better have someone else pay for it. Made enough sense. I didn’t get a say in how it was done and I guess when they went to put in the “not too ugly” option, there was a problem so they went full-ugly. Now I have a big white pipe coming out of my basement and up to the roof where it’s attached just below the gutter. Ugly as sin and the neighbor actually commented on it once that she didn’t like it. Sheesh.
Anyway, I think it cost them like $1500 to do. I don’t keep it on, fwiw (there’s a fan inside the white pipe and a siwtch to turn it on. When the fan is on, the pressure in the basement is even with the pressure outside and that keeps the radon out, I guess). But I don’t have any kids living here and I don’t spend much time in the basement and the pipe is right underneath my bed so I don’t want to hear it.
I second that the sump will get sealed. We did ours for various reasons and we’re lucky - no radon beyond what you would expect as background normal from here. I would look into
a) A couple professional estimates especially if you can swing them for free. It will give you an idea of plan of attack and you can always consider if you want/can do some of the work yourself. But it will give you some data to go by.
b) Look into if the previous owner can be made to pay. If it is a common problem in your area, there may be provisions that the house should have been tested before you bought it. I would also check with neighbors and see if their houses had a problem and fix. This gives you two things - an idea what may be involved for you and evidence that the previous owner should have suspected a problem and notified you of it.
Details vary place to place but those two look like good starting places for you.
PS – your reading is high and for the long-term health of your family you do need to address it but don’t panic yet. Readings over 100 aren’t that uncommon and I’ve heard of some over 1000. If memory serves the rule of thumb is that long term exposure over years raises your risk of some lung issues roughly 15% for every 3 picocuries over 4 (your target really is to get under 2). Right now, with the rate you have, even over the course of months — think of it as walking through a smokey dive bar. Not really a good thing but far from a reason to increase your life insurance policy.
I had this come up back in 2009 when I relocated for work. It didn’t cost me anything, my new employer footed the bills. The remediation method was, as someone else already mentioned, sealing the sump and installing a vent pipe with a fan to exhaust air from the cellar.
The average radon exposure level in the United States is 1.3 pCi/L. The average radon exposure level in Warren County in Ohio is 4.8 pCi/L, with 43% of the indoor air tested being higher than 4.0 pCi/L (The level at which the EPA recommends remediation) with another 25% being above 2.0 pCi/L.
When I sold my home there I had it remediated after the test. I’d have preferred to skip the test, and just remediate without it on general principles, because remediation is cheap, and helps even if the levels are down in the 2.0 pCi/L range, but I wasn’t paying for it, and the relocation company did it their way, test, remediation, retest. The whole thing came to less than $700, and the testing ended up being more expensive than the fix.
The house I grew up in, in Pennsylvania, was similarly in a high-radon area. When we sold the house after Mom died, radon testing was required and it did indeed turn up high levels. I think we gave the buyer money back at closing so they could deal with it however they like.
We all spent a LOT of time in that basement growing up, and Mom had a home office there after we all moved out. She did in fact die of lung cancer - she smoked for 55 years, though I imagine the radon didn’t help. I haven’t lived there in nearly 30 years and I’m still alive ;).
For the OP: if you’ve got a full walk-out basement, venting might be easier (I’m guessing, anyway) since you wouldn’t necessarily have to run a pipe all the way through the house or up the outside of it to the roof. I might be wrong about that.
I had never thought of the sump pump issue, actually. I think our current house was tested before we moved in (we tested our old place a while before we sold; it’s not required per the contracts in our state).
To clarify, they aren’t ventilating your cellar - they’re pulling a small vacuum underneath the slab. This prevents radon from seeping up through the slab into your basement, and instead blows it out through that vent pipe. It’s an important distinction because if that vent were running 24/7 sucking heated/cooled air from the living space of your basement (and consequently drawing outside air into your home through every crack and crevice), your HVAC bills would get pretty hefty.
I had one of these systems installed in my current house by the seller; it’s a pretty standard system, and IIRC the cost was $750. The system took readings from 4.something down to 1.something. We’ve been retesting ever couple of years, and it’s still working fine 10 years later.
What Machine Elf said. Mine cost about $850, but at the time my Health Savings Program from work covered part of the cost.
Also, sealing a cover over a sump pump is absolutely essential. The state website said 90% of radon comes up through the open sump pump.
According to my state radon office (your state probably has one), radon varies season to season. I had four tests done (3 with the little kits you buy at hardware, and once with the machine). I tested twice after the test. THey recommended testing yearly, but I moved on after the first year. They also told me if you smoke your risk is high, and if you don’t it’s not so high.
FWIW, the two previous owners of my house were heavy smokers and died of lung cancer.
I know zilch about radon, but wanted to say congrats on the upcoming arrival!
We ran into this when selling our house. It sucked. Again, options vary from place to place. Our option #1 was to drill several holes through our concrete basement floor and install a big-ass fan to circulate air under the house and out an installed vent. Turned out the dirt under the house was too compact for that to work.
Option #2 was to install an air exchanger that was basically a big-ass fan that sucked all the air out of the basement and replaced it with outside air. There is a heat exchanger so we don’t lose too much expensive heat out the vent. That ended up being our only option and cost us $2500 or so.
I know you’re using a figure of speech, but there’s an industrial fan supplier named Big Ass Fans. It’s not just a clever name, it’s an accurate description.