One of the inspections we did on the house during escrow was for radon. Having always lived in places without basements, I didn’t even know what it was. So I had to look it up.

It’s an odorless, naturally occuring, radioactive gas that comes from the ground (earth farts?) in certain pockets. It can collect at unhealthy levels in houses, especially ones with basements. It’s hazardous at some levels, especially for people with other risk factors (like smokers, which sadly, the people who lived here before us were). It’s a known carcinogen for lung cancer.

We got the radon test back in April (which was optional, but recommended by our realtor) and braced ourselves for the news, good or bad. As it turns out, the house had very high radon levels. The below shows the acceptable level of 4.0 pCi/l, and the house measured way above that, as high as 16 at some times, with an average of 11.6 pCi/l.

Yikes! After a mini-panic to absorb the news and to consider the hazardous state of the home, I did some research to see what we were dealing with. As it turns out, radon is seriously no bueno, especially living in it day in, day out. However, it’s fairly easily mitigated. The fix involves having engineers dig a hole in the basement and route the gas away through a pressurized fan that runs 24/7. In addition to installing the pipe and the fan, they also provide a monitor that continuously tells you how many of these earth farts are collecting in your home.

The cost of installing a radon mitigation system is about $1600. That is a lot of money when you are doing a ton of other fixes, but not much when you consider you are removing a known carcinogen. It was a no-brainer that we were going to have it done. We negotiated a price reduction to the house by $1600, so the sellers basically paid for it. I wish that for their sake, they had installed it when they moved in.

The system was installed this week. It’s pretty unobtrusive and discreet in a out of the way corner of the basement. Here’s what it  looks like from the outside:

It’s another weird tube coming out of the house, but considering its benefits, it’s acceptable, even beautiful. The measurement of the radon gas in the house after installing the mitigation system was 0.5 pCi/l (down from an average of 11, with a standard benchmark of 4).