It’s not always obvious which areas of a home will need radon mitigation, especially when multiple foundation types are involved. The best way to lower radon levels is to create suction under every area of the house. However, we can get away with only treating certain portions of a home in some situations. To help inform our mitigation decisions, we’ve started using EcoTracker digital radon monitors during bids and installs. Let’s look at how we used EcoTracker to inform our mitigation process on a split-level home with at least one addition.
To start, we scattered four sensors around the house to get an idea of the home’s radon levels. We placed our first EcoTracker in the well room under the front step and shut the door to isolate the area. A well room like this is not a spot that someone would necessarily test, which is where having these monitors can be useful.
We put another EcoTracker in the lowest livable area, the basement.
We put another one in the kitchen.
Our last EcoTracker went in the entryway off the kitchen.
We left the sensors out for a while before checking the radon levels in the four areas of the house.
The averages during the time we tested were:
Well room: 6.5 pCi/L
Basement: 2.7 pCi/L
Kitchen 1.6 pCi/L
Entryway: 2.1 pCi/L
The house had four different foundations that would need to be treated to create suction under the entire home. However, the levels were highest in the well room and basement, right next to each other. Because we could treat both areas with a single system, we decided to start there and take a phased approach. If treating those areas alone effectively lowered radon levels, additional work would be unnecessary.
We started with mitigating the well room, where our levels were highest and found that helped us create pressure field extension out into the basement as well. So we decided to stop there and monitor the radon levels.
We let the EcoTrackers run for a few weeks and got the following results:
Well room: 0.7 pCi/L
Basement: 0.6 pCi/L
Kitchen: 0.6 pCi/L
Entryway: 0.8 pCi/L
By mitigating the well room alone, we were able to get radon levels in the entire house below 1 pCi/L. We did not have to do any additional work.
EcoTracker is not a CRM, so we recommend following up with an Air Chek test kit.
If you’d like to get your radon levels as low as possible, contact us to schedule a free estimate.
