Green Hills Crawlspace

I traveled up to Green Hills today to measure out this crawlspace. Although the owner did a nice job of laying down some thick plastic, radon levels remained unchanged in the living space above. Since radon measured below 15.0 pCi/L, I will propose the installation of a heat recovery ventilator (air exchanger).

Long Term Test Results

Here is the latest long term test result from one of our clients in Columbia, TN from the Spring of 2010. Their original radon level was around 30+ if I recall correctly. I remember this client watched my every move the entire 8 hours or so it took to do the work, and the attic during the last phase of installation was about 110 degrees. It definitely was a job I was hoping we passed the first time. They had scored about 1.5 on the short term test, thankfully, but the recent results from the the long term test (91 days to 12 months) showed even lower radon scores!

A Beautiful Thing.....

I got the radon test results back from that recent job with the really tight soil-the one with the curious cat?

Anyways I got the radon down to below a .5, super-good results for a house like this. Now I can get paid!!!

Radon Inquiries

Thank you for your recent radon inquiries. I had to leave town for a while on business, but should return by June 1st for good. Sorry about that!

K.A.

Home Improvement

Links:
Wipe Out Winter's Damage to Your Home

Grand Ole Opry

Went to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time ever last night, and I got lucky because Jason Aldean showed up at the end. He belted out 3 of his hits, The Truth, Crazy Town, and My Kinda' Party. Gee whiz, he wasn't even on the program. There were a bunch of senior citizens there. I think they were in a state of shock after this guy played. We also saw Connie Smith, Ricky Skaggs, John Conlee, Luke Bryan, Diamond Rio and Jimmy Dickens. Don't ask me who the rest of those guys are, because I generally have no knowledge of country music. Oh, by the way, I also have no radon work to speak of this week. Maybe better luck next week.

Tight Soil

I had some follow-up work Saturday, as I returned to check on our installation from last week, and it was in need of a phase II for sure. I ended up working on that all day. I had done my best to avoid this client originally, as I know the neighborhood to have no gravel under the homes, which means very difficult to lower the radon.

I had tried to refer them to another mitigator last Fall. When they called recently after the long winter and said nothing had been done yet, I decided to finally take the job, as they have young kids that spend a lot of time in the basement-and I know radon is especially bad for kids during the growth stages.

After the phase I installation, despite the lack of air flow under the floor, radon testing showed that levels had been brought down by about two thirds-from a 27 pCi/L to an 8, but it was still twice the EPA recommended limit. I added another suction point Saturday, in the floor of the bathroom closet, and joined it to the existing pipe.

If radon is still over the limit, I will recommend an energy recovery ventilator. It might get weird though, because that's about another $1,000, but our work is guaranteed. So do I just return the 50% they gave me already and call it a loss, or hit them up for another grand that they probably don't have? I don't know. I did know this job would be tough or impossible.

That's about all that can be done here. I will keep you posted.

                                                         Very little airflow here...........

 The curious cat

Prepare for emergency surgery

We're basically sucking dirt.....I removed another 30 lbs or so

Plastic surgery and we have a 3-way connector

Now where to put the hole in the closet?

This looks like a good spot to slip a pipe above and through the bathroom ceiling....

....and into the bathroom closet

Good news...it looks like we have some gravel underlayer in this part of the basement!

How to join 2 pipes that don't quite line up, vertically to horizontally........

Drop the pipe in about 2 inches and mark the spot

Measure the distance from the proposed pipe connection.......

 .....to the floor

Double-check the amount of distance the pipe drops into the hole.

Total the distance plus the 2 inches extra and cut to fit.

It's a perfect fit!

Remember to caulk around the pipe entrance in the floor.

Now we just need to join the new pipe to the original one.

Remember to add plenty of support brackets.

We have a connection.