Last night I was talking with a friend whose opinions I value. We frequently have some good-spirited debates although we generally agree on most things. He recommended that we have a radon test done if we haven't had one in awhile. He mentioned that there are inexpensive home test kits that you can buy at Lowes or Home Depot for about $15. You simply place the radon detector in the lowest level of your house for several days and then mail it to a laboratory for analysis in a prepaid envelope. They test it and send you the results in the mail. Pretty simple.I learned today that the highest average radon concentrations in the United States are found in Iowa and in the Appalachian Mountain areas in southeastern Pennsylvania. I also learned that, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking, causing 21,000 lung cancer deaths per year in the U.S.
Testing for radon is common in our area in residential real estate transactions. I recall that when we sold our last house we had to have a radon remediation system installed as a condition of sale. Our current house passed the radon test and we haven't had it tested since. Now seems like a good time to test again. Thanks M!
We had a radon remediation system put into our house, and we deal with unintended consequences. Since the system is basically a fan that sucks the air out of the basement and out of the house, it creates a negative pressure situation in our basement.
ReplyDeleteSo in order for the air pressure to stabilize, the air needs to come from somewhere, and in our case, it comes from the chimney. As a result, if our oil furnace is burning while the radon fan is on, the exhaust gets sucked back into the basement and distributed through the house via the heating vents.
As a fix, we turn the radon fan off when the temperature falls below 35 degrees.
If you should find that you need to add a new radon remediation system to your house, you might want to ask about putting in some time of air return to mitigate any negative pressure.