Just bought our home 4 months ago. It tested positive for radon (but
just barely). The seller agreed to install an active radon reducer
fan-type. It runs all the time, sucking air from under the basement
slab. After recent testing, the radon leven was very very low.

I see is that there are many large cracks in the floor. Around the
outside edge runs a gap at least a quarter inch. Then there are
several shrinkage cracks also very large.

If I were to seal every one of these cracks with urethane calk and
thus make the basement airtight, would the radon problem go away?

Or can radon leach through concrete block and floors? I sure would
like to shut off that noisy 24-7 fan and convert it to a basement
bathroom vent to the outside.

46erjoe wrote:
Just bought our home 4 months ago. It tested positive for radon (but
just barely). The seller agreed to install an active radon reducer
fan-type. It runs all the time, sucking air from under the basement
slab. After recent testing, the radon leven was very very low.

I see is that there are many large cracks in the floor. Around the
outside edge runs a gap at least a quarter inch. Then there are
several shrinkage cracks also very large.

If I were to seal every one of these cracks with urethane calk and
thus make the basement airtight, would the radon problem go away?

Or can radon leach through concrete block and floors? I sure would
like to shut off that noisy 24-7 fan and convert it to a basement
bathroom vent to the outside.


If you could cure radon with a caulk gun, do you think people would be
installing systems like the one you have?

no, the problem will continue.
radon is unhealthy so only replace the noisy fan with a quiet one.
search for radon at energy federation:
http://www.energyfederation.org/cons...th/30_406_1304

46erjoe wrote:
Just bought our home 4 months ago. It tested positive for radon (but
just barely). The seller agreed to install an active radon reducer
fan-type. It runs all the time, sucking air from under the basement
slab. After recent testing, the radon leven was very very low.

I see is that there are many large cracks in the floor. Around the
outside edge runs a gap at least a quarter inch. Then there are
several shrinkage cracks also very large.

If I were to seal every one of these cracks with urethane calk and
thus make the basement airtight, would the radon problem go away?

Or can radon leach through concrete block and floors? I sure would
like to shut off that noisy 24-7 fan and convert it to a basement
bathroom vent to the outside.

46erjoe wrote:

If I were to seal every one of these cracks with urethane calk and
thus make the basement airtight, would the radon problem go away?

It might, if there were a vapor barrier under the slab.

Or can radon leach through concrete block and floors?

Sure, but you might put poly film on the floor with carpet over that
and poly film on the walls with foamboard over that.

Nick

On 22 Jun 2006 19:43:45 -0700, "buffalobill"
wrote:

no, the problem will continue.
radon is unhealthy so only replace the noisy fan with a quiet one.

Is this a case where a squirrel cage fan would be better because it
is, aiui, quieter? Or is their capacity too low? Or some other
problem.

If you have a sump pump the radon can leach in via the sump pump pit.

Sealing the cracks can help but it probably wont get you as low as the 24/7
fan you have now.

"46erjoe" wrote in message
...
Just bought our home 4 months ago. It tested positive for radon (but
just barely). The seller agreed to install an active radon reducer
fan-type. It runs all the time, sucking air from under the basement
slab. After recent testing, the radon leven was very very low.

I see is that there are many large cracks in the floor. Around the
outside edge runs a gap at least a quarter inch. Then there are
several shrinkage cracks also very large.

If I were to seal every one of these cracks with urethane calk and
thus make the basement airtight, would the radon problem go away?

Or can radon leach through concrete block and floors? I sure would
like to shut off that noisy 24-7 fan and convert it to a basement
bathroom vent to the outside.

The installers sealed the sump pump well with urethane foam.

What I hear you folks saying is that yes, radon can pass through walls
and floors... bend steel with his bare hands, and who ...

Radon evacuation systems suck!


On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:11:57 -0600, "Jay Stootzmann"
wrotF:

If you have a sump pump the radon can leach in via the sump pump pit.

Sealing the cracks can help but it probably wont get you as low as the 24/7
fan you have now.

"46erjoe" wrote in message
.. .
Just bought our home 4 months ago. It tested positive for radon (but
just barely). The seller agreed to install an active radon reducer
fan-type. It runs all the time, sucking air from under the basement
slab. After recent testing, the radon leven was very very low.

I see is that there are many large cracks in the floor. Around the
outside edge runs a gap at least a quarter inch. Then there are
several shrinkage cracks also very large.

If I were to seal every one of these cracks with urethane calk and
thus make the basement airtight, would the radon problem go away?

Or can radon leach through concrete block and floors? I sure would
like to shut off that noisy 24-7 fan and convert it to a basement
bathroom vent to the outside.

46erjoe wrote:
The installers sealed the sump pump well with urethane foam.

What I hear you folks saying is that yes, radon can pass through walls
and floors

If the radon level was "just barely" over limit with large cracks in
the floor, then yes, sealing the large cracks thoroughly will very
likely reduce the radon level below the EPA recommended remediation
level.

Are you a non-smoker? Do you spend only occasional time in the
basement? You could just turn the fan off and stop worrying about it.
Impartial researchers and medical people with no monetary incentive to
fuel the scare campaign are skeptical of the radon hysteria.

Ether Jones wrote:
46erjoe wrote:
The installers sealed the sump pump well with urethane foam.

What I hear you folks saying is that yes, radon can pass through walls
and floors

If the radon level was "just barely" over limit with large cracks in
the floor, then yes, sealing the large cracks thoroughly will very
likely reduce the radon level below the EPA recommended remediation
level.

Are you a non-smoker? Do you spend only occasional time in the
basement? You could just turn the fan off and stop worrying about it.
Impartial researchers and medical people with no monetary incentive to
fuel the scare campaign are skeptical of the radon hysteria.

The radon should be well below 4 pc/l If not you should fix it and just
get a quieter fan. Remember, the fan may be an anoyance but radon can
kill you. Caulk if you need to but can you afford to be a skeptic??

tmurf.1 wrote:

Remember, the fan may be an anoyance but radon can kill you.

Says who? The radon remediation industry?

Do a little research. Follow the money.

tmurf.1 wrote:

The radon should be well below 4 pc/l...

So you might buy a few test kits and turn off the fan, then run it 12 hours
per day if it's more than 4, then 6 if it's less than 4 or 18 if more, and
so on. With noise as the issue, you might replace the fan with a long-life
light bulb at the bottom of a tall chimney.

The EPA says a non-smoker continuously exposed to 4 pCi/l has a lifetime risk
of dying of lung cancer of 73 in 10,000, ie odds of 139 to 1. At 1.25 (close
to the 1.3 average indoor level) it's down to 23/10K, ie 435:1. At 0.4 (the
average outdoor level), it's 23/100K, ie 4,348:1. So why stop at 4? Will an
electronic air filter help? The EPA plans to do more research on that.

The NSC gives 2:1 (men) and 3:1 (women) odds for contracting heart disease,
3:1 for contracting diabetes, 228:1 for death as a car occupant, 1,310:1
for death by medical complications, 4,857:1 for death as a bicyle rider,
12,417:1 for legal intervention involving firearm discharge, 55,597:1 for
death by legal execution, 56,439:1 for death by lightning, 286,537:1 for
ignition or melting of nightwear, 372,498:1 for death by contact with
venemous spiders, 413,887:1 for death by flood, and 1,241,661:1 for death
by contact with venemous snakes or lizards.

Nick

wrote:

The EPA says a non-smoker continuously exposed to 4 pCi/l

The key word there is "continuously". Unless you sleep in the
basement and plan to stay in this house for 30 years, I wouldn't worry
about 4pCi/l

BTW, are all of EPA's other recommendations sensible and unaffected by
politics and money?

Ether Jones wrote:

wrote:

The EPA says a non-smoker continuously exposed to 4 pCi/l has a lifetime risk
of dying of lung cancer of 73 in 10,000, ie odds of 139 to 1. At 1.25 (close
to the 1.3 average indoor level) it's down to 23/10K, ie 435:1. At 0.4 (the
average outdoor level), it's 23/100K, ie 4,348:1. So why stop at 4? Will an
electronic air filter help? The EPA plans to do more research on that.

The key word there is "continuously". Unless you sleep in the basement
and plan to stay in this house for 30 years, I wouldn't worry about 4pCi/l

I would, based on the death statistics.

BTW, are all of EPA's other recommendations sensible and unaffected by
politics and money?

Dunno, but it seems to me this standard should be tightened,
based on the risk and the cost of the fix.

Nick

Ether Jones wrote:

The key word there is "continuously". Unless you sleep in the basement
and plan to stay in this house for 30 years, I wouldn't worry about 4pCi/l

I would, based on the death statistics.

Figures don't lie, but liars can figure.

Follow the money.

... it seems to me this standard should be tightened,
based on the risk and the cost of the fix.

Perhaps we should pass a national law requiring all automobile drivers
to wear crash helmets, based on the risk and the cost of the fix.

The lifetime odds of dying from radon at 4 pCi/l (139:1 for a non-smoker)
are about half the odds of death in a car (228:1), so it's strange that
we've spent double to avoid auto deaths, as PE Drew Gillett points out...

Ah a subject dear to my heart from a former life. (I assisted Terry Brennan
and EPA in some of the PA and NJ original house testing and helped
develop the mitigation methods and courses for radon. The highest house
I dealt with was 400pC/l (successfully reduced below 4, and the highest
exposure I saw was over 10000 pC/l in air above an open well in a basement.)

...The risk for smokers and radon is multiplicative of their smoking risk,
i.e. smokers should definitely not live in a high radon house and vice-
versa (high radon houses should not be sold or rented to smokers).

One of the problems is that the data indicate that if radon were to be
federally controlled to levels consistent with risk from other hazards,
it would have to be at below the outdoor level (which varies with height
above ground. "Your mother told you not to lie on the grass. Why didn't
you listen?")

The 4 was picked as a reasonable level to obtain for a reasonable cost
for a reasonable number of homes without panicking the public or busting
the budget... not that based on the hazard and the risk and the cost of
mitigation to that level... we should indeed be controlling it to below
.4 pC/l for the average public.

The scary part is the 10000 to 40000 excess lung cancer deaths per year.
on the order of car accidents, etc. If we can put $2000 airbags in cars,
we ought to be able to put $2000 radon systems in houses for similar
reductions in premature death...

Sealing by itself is not effective, but is necessary and helpful in
conjunction with other methods, sub-slab suction, air to air htx and
submembrane suction and passive stacks.

Rather than run the fan intermittently (which would still allow some
radon in), just run it continuously at a speed (controlled) enough to
maintain the delta pressure across the floor so all airflow is out of
the building (in southern climes this gets into a moisture problem,
but not typically.)

The EPA is apparently still looking into electronic air cleaners, which
can't reduce the gas concentration but can reduce the solid daughters of
radon particles in house dust that get into our lungs and cause problems.
I like the Envirosept charged-media filter, which uses a lot less power
(under 2 watts) than a HEPA filter.

Nick

If your a smoker you dont care about your health or early death!

True radon makes lung cancer more likely if you smoke

but smokers dont care....

or they wouldnt smoke.......

ANYONE WHO SMOKES TODAY DOESNT HAVE THEIR HEAD SCREWED ON RIGHT1

wrote:

If your a smoker you dont care about your health or early death!

True radon makes lung cancer more likely if you smoke

We've been discussing NON-smokers, who are about twice as likely to die
of lung cancer than in an auto accident, with odds of 139:1 vs 228:1,
in a house with a radon mitigation system that maintains the indoor
level at the EPA-recommended max pCi/l limit.

Based on death statistics and Drew's description of how the 4 pCi/l limit
was picked, it seems to me that homeowners should try harder to achieve
lower radon concentrations, in order to reduce this serious risk.

Nick

wrote:
wrote:

If your a smoker you dont care about your health or early death!

True radon makes lung cancer more likely if you smoke

We've been discussing NON-smokers, who are about twice as likely to die
of lung cancer than in an auto accident, with odds of 139:1 vs 228:1,
in a house with a radon mitigation system that maintains the indoor
level at the EPA-recommended max pCi/l limit.

Based on death statistics and Drew's description of how the 4 pCi/l limit
was picked, it seems to me that homeowners should try harder to achieve
lower radon concentrations, in order to reduce this serious risk.

Nick

go check the info, the rate of lung cancer for smokers in high radon
are like 4 times either smoking or radon. combo rate is bad but smokers
are risk takers to begin with and really dont care.

sadly till they get cancer and are dying...

thus my on comment rant about smokers

wrote:

We've been discussing NON-smokers, who are about twice as likely to die
of lung cancer than in an auto accident, with odds of 139:1 vs 228:1,
in a house with a radon mitigation system that maintains the indoor
level at the EPA-recommended max pCi/l limit.

Based on death statistics and Drew's description of how the 4 pCi/l limit
was picked, it seems to me that homeowners should try harder to achieve
lower radon concentrations, in order to reduce this serious risk.

It's not a "serious risk".

Results from Radon tests performed in the basement are not indicative
of Radon levels in the rest of the house.

Unless you live in the basement, and plan to stay in the house for 30
years, find something else to worry about.

Ether Jones wrote:

wrote:

We've been discussing NON-smokers, who are about twice as likely to die
of lung cancer than in an auto accident, with odds of 139:1 vs 228:1,
in a house with a radon mitigation system that maintains the indoor
level at the EPA-recommended max pCi/l limit.

Based on death statistics and Drew's description of how the 4 pCi/l limit
was picked, it seems to me that homeowners should try harder to achieve
lower radon concentrations, in order to reduce this serious risk.

It's not a "serious risk".

I disagree.

Results from Radon tests performed in the basement are not indicative
of Radon levels in the rest of the house.

Who said anything about basements?

Nick

Who said anything about basements?

Nick

all radon tests are done in basements

Charlie Morgan wrote:
On 27 Jun 2006 05:02:51 -0700, "
wrote:



Who said anything about basements?

Nick

all radon tests are done in basements

Only because that is the point of entry. If you have radon in the
basement, you want to remove it at that point so that it does not waft
it's way up through the rest of the structure.

CWM

older homes leak so much air, and radon is heavier than air...

its probably not a issue unless you live in the basement.

anyone concerned can do a radon test upstairs. usually the normal
opening and closing of doors windows furnace venting etc dissapate
radon.

when testing they demand the home be sealed for the week of the
test....

life is full of risks, test the upstairs, I had a friend do that in a
home with a number of over 8 in basement, upstairs the number was near
background.

she still plans on getting a radon control system someday befor she
sells, but her basement is storage only so she isnt concerned

Furnace and chimney flues create negative pressure so does weather
changes when low pressure fronts come thru.

plus stuff tends to go from higher pressure under ground to lower
pressure ambient air pressure, add cracks or voids just makes it worse

wrote:

when testing they demand the home be sealed for the week of the test....

Nope. The standard procedure around here is to continue living in the
house as you normally do. If that means opening the windows on a cool
summer day, then so be it.

46erjoe wrote:
Just bought our home 4 months ago. It tested positive for radon (but
just barely). The seller agreed to install an active radon reducer
fan-type. It runs all the time, sucking air from under the basement
slab. After recent testing, the radon leven was very very low.

I see is that there are many large cracks in the floor. Around the
outside edge runs a gap at least a quarter inch. Then there are
several shrinkage cracks also very large.

If I were to seal every one of these cracks with urethane calk and
thus make the basement airtight, would the radon problem go away?

Or can radon leach through concrete block and floors? I sure would
like to shut off that noisy 24-7 fan and convert it to a basement
bathroom vent to the outside.

Concrete is pretty porous, which is why moisture seeps through it, so
radon does too. But, companies sell the same kind of waterproofing
sealing paint they use to waterproof the concrete for radon-proofing as
well, as I discovered from searching the web. Of course, you need to
plug the cracks too. But in the case of a barely positive test, that
might be enough to knock it down below the legal radon limit (4 ppm,
isn't it?).

Ether Jones wrote:
tmurf.1 wrote:

Remember, the fan may be an anoyance but radon can kill you.

Says who? The radon remediation industry?

Do a little research. Follow the money.

Well, as a general rule of thumb, the government tends to get involved
with things at a risk of 1/100,000 per person per year, which is of
course not the kind of risk an individual gets worried about, but works
out to 3,000 deaths per year in the whole US. And that works out to the
4 pci/l limit for radon, so it's pretty much standard by the book. Of
course, that's based on worst case, i.e. spending essentially all your
time in the basement, so most people are actually at less risk.

wrote:
Charlie Morgan wrote:
On 27 Jun 2006 05:02:51 -0700, "
wrote:



Who said anything about basements?

Nick

all radon tests are done in basements

Only because that is the point of entry. If you have radon in the
basement, you want to remove it at that point so that it does not waft
it's way up through the rest of the structure.

CWM

older homes leak so much air, and radon is heavier than air...

its probably not a issue unless you live in the basement.

Yeah, typically the upstairs has basically zero radon, which is why
they always test in the basement, and you have to keep it sealed up for
the time of the test, to get the worst case measurement. The original
poster said he was just barely positive, so you can assume the upstairs
is probably not a problem. Does the law require you to do something
about the radon in all cases, or is it just a limitation for selling
the house? Just to make sure you don't stick the next guy, who keeps
his kids chained up in the basement, with a Hidden Killer?


anyone concerned can do a radon test upstairs. usually the normal
opening and closing of doors windows furnace venting etc dissapate
radon.

when testing they demand the home be sealed for the week of the
test....

life is full of risks, test the upstairs, I had a friend do that in a
home with a number of over 8 in basement, upstairs the number was near
background.

she still plans on getting a radon control system someday befor she
sells, but her basement is storage only so she isnt concerned

Ether Jones wrote:
wrote:

when testing they demand the home be sealed for the week of the test....

Nope. The standard procedure around here is to continue living in the
house as you normally do. If that means opening the windows on a cool
summer day, then so be it.

The tests the housing inspectors do around here, and the ones they sell
in Home Depot, just want the basement sealed, as much as possible.

z wrote:

... as a general rule of thumb, the government tends to get involved
with things at a risk of 1/100,000 per person per year...

The NSC lists lifetime odds of auto death as 228:1 and yearly odds
as 17,625:1, 77.3 times less. The EPA lists lifetime odds of radon
death as 137:1 for non-smokers at 4 pCi/l, so the yearly odds might
be 77.3x137 = 10589:1, about 10X more than your 1/100000 risk and
twice the auto risk, so why aren't we doing more about it?

Nick

wrote:
z wrote:

... as a general rule of thumb, the government tends to get involved
with things at a risk of 1/100,000 per person per year...

The NSC lists lifetime odds of auto death as 228:1 and yearly odds
as 17,625:1, 77.3 times less. The EPA lists lifetime odds of radon
death as 137:1 for non-smokers at 4 pCi/l, so the yearly odds might
be 77.3x137 = 10589:1, about 10X more than your 1/100000 risk and
twice the auto risk, so why aren't we doing more about it?

The same reason we don't have a national law requiring all occupants of
an automobile to wear crash helmets (just think! if it could save just
one life, wouldn't it be worth it? NO. ).

At some point, cost/benefit doesn't make sense.

Your radon statistics are for a person CONSTANTLY EXPOSED to 4pCi/l for
DECADES. Even then, the stats are arguable. The supporting data is far
less verifiable than for auto deaths.

If you don't live in your basement, or you aren't planning to live in
that house for decades, stop worrying about it.

wrote:
z wrote:

... as a general rule of thumb, the government tends to get involved
with things at a risk of 1/100,000 per person per year...

The NSC lists lifetime odds of auto death as 228:1 and yearly odds
as 17,625:1, 77.3 times less. The EPA lists lifetime odds of radon
death as 137:1 for non-smokers at 4 pCi/l, so the yearly odds might
be 77.3x137 = 10589:1, about 10X more than your 1/100000 risk and
twice the auto risk, so why aren't we doing more about it?

Nick

You're right, it was 1/10,000 per year, I remembered my own post and
calculations wrong. D'oh!!!