Radon Blog: See You Later Nashville

It looks like my two + year foray into the radon business in Nashville is coming to an end this month. There is just not enough radon work here to keep me busy. It's not so much the lack of work - I did turn down a lot of work that was located too far out of my local territory of Central Tennessee to be profitable - it's that the work that I did get turned out to be losing ventures.

Many of the homes in this part of the country are so poorly designed for ventilation, that they don't need a radon system. What they need is a major remodeling job on the first floor of their house, or better yet, a new house. I've never seen so many radon infested homes that were built directly over bare dirt. Often, if there was a concrete surface on the lowest level, it was directly on dirt with no gravel-layer, so the only hope of radon reduction was to recommend an energy recovery ventilator-and that only works if the radon levels are at 15 pCi/L or lower.

Since most homeowners don't want to spend the kind of major money it takes to fix a radon-house over bare dirt, we just didn't get the work after they balked at my initial estimate. If I lowered my price to get the job we frequently lost money on the job due to the amount of work and materials involved to fix the problem. Of course we couldn't continue.

My favorite job experience was one I did up in Brentwood in 2010. A newer mansion-sized mega home with a concrete basement and thick gravel underlayer. I installed the system, painted the outside pipe to match the house. The radon test came back at an awesome .5 pCi/L. That's how you build homes!

What do they say? If you don't try anything, you will never fail. Well, I gave it a shot. I am going to miss the friendly, polite people (compared to most places anyway) and the live music scene and I can't say that I am not disappointed. I picked the wrong business this time.

I will be moving to West Palm Beach in January to work in an unrelated business. It's been fun.I'll be back once in a while to visit my empty house, which I have been unable to sell in the current market.

Good Times - Nashville 2011