In short, radon is a colorless odorless gas. \u00a0Why is it that everything that wants to kill us is either colorless and odorless or furry and brown? \u00a0 Radon is produced as a result of the decay of uranium which is in soil, rock and water. Normally it seeps out of the ground and dissipates in the air where it does us no real harm with a half-life of only 3.8 days (unlike furry brown\u00a0things which don’t dissipate and have much longer half-lives). \u00a0It can cause problems when it seeps out of the ground and is trapped, say, under the concrete slab in your basement looking for a way in. \u00a0Once inside the living space of your home, when radon is inhaled, it breaks down further and emits an alpha particle, which I’ve read can strike a lung cell and cause cell death or worse, damage. \u00a0If a cell is damaged in a particular way, it can cause cancer. \u00a0As I am not a “nukular scientist” I won’t go into any more detail at the risk of confirming that I am a fool to those readers who already suspect it. \u00a0 \u00a0Statistically, however, the data is clear: \u00a016% of lung cancers in Canada are caused by radon, as compared with 83% caused by smoking (Health Canada).<\/p>\n
If the radon is under the floor of your basement, how does it get into the house? Unfortunately, it’s a very sneaky gas. \u00a0It can seep right through concrete but usually prefers to enter through cracks or the seams between your basement walls and floor; or any openings like those left for plumbing cleanouts. \u00a0As many of you know, \u00a0we spent about five\u00a0years renovating our Bergen home which included sealing it from top to bottom and adding a heat exchanger to keep the air fresh while reducing the amount of lost energy. \u00a0Normally when it’s cold outside and your furnace comes on to heat your cold toes, that warm air rises and looks to escape through your ceiling (stack effect)… \u00a0Even the wind blowing on one side of your home can create a lower pressure area on the other side of your home pulling valuable warm air from inside the house. \u00a0 All of that escaping air creates a slight negative pressure in your home and must be replaced by air from elsewhere. \u00a0Since most of our homes are relatively well sealed, that makeup air has to come from somewhere\u00a0so it gets pulled from the under slab in your basement through the cracks and openings I mentioned above.<\/p>\n
At first I thought I would measure the radon in our home. \u00a0We have a heat recovery ventilator and \u00a0I figured that since the air is being exchanged quite frequently, it would not be an issue. \u00a0So I bought an electronic radon detector for about $250 and put it in the basement. \u00a0There are a few different varieties of detectors. \u00a0The less expensive ones are the type you put in your basement for three to six\u00a0months and then mail away to a lab where they are analyzed and the results mailed back to you. \u00a0These can be had for approximately\u00a0$20 but I wanted something a little more interactive so I went with the electronic version that can give a very approximate number within 24 hours and more accurate data as time goes on.<\/p>\n
In Canada, radon is measured using “becquerels per cubic meter”. \u00a0The World Health Organization recommends a national guideline of 100 bq\/m3. \u00a0Health Canada has set our\u00a0guideline at 200 bq\/m3.<\/p>\n
Within 24 hours, the first reading that came back from our detector was 446 bq\/m3. \u00a0Since this is a very rough number as a first reading, I decided to give it a week to get something closer to accurate. \u00a0Well, seven\u00a0days later, the reading was substantially higher: \u00a01031 bq\/m3.<\/p>\n
![\"1031\"](\"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/1031-213x300.png\")
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More than five times what Health Canada recommends as the upper limit, and more than ten times what the World Health Organization recommends.<\/p>\n
I decided then that it was time to do something. \u00a0My goal was to get our readings below 100 bq\/m3. \u00a0I read up on mitigation methods and it looked promising. \u00a0The best way to mitigate the problem is before the house is built but obviously that’s not an option for us, so I had to look at a retrofit solution. \u00a0 It turns out the way this is done is by installing a fan outside the home (or in the attic) to suck air through a hole in the concrete slab and blow it up and away from the home. \u00a0The theory is that the gravel underneath your basement floor is fairly porous, so even creating a negative pressure zone in one corner will eventually suck the radon from all over the slab. \u00a0 Normally a radon contractor will be happy to come into your home and install such a thing for $3000 or so. \u00a0In our case, a plumber already left a convenient hole in our floor exposing the gravel at\u00a0the bottom\u00a0through which\u00a0\u00a0we were mining for radon.<\/p>\n
![\"img_20161113_093509\"](\"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/IMG_20161113_093509-225x300.jpg\")
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I knew that I could probably seal the hole and maybe reduce the radon levels a bit but I also suspect that it wouldn’t be significant enough given the various effects of air pressure during the heating months or windy months. \u00a0I like to think I’m a fairly handy guy (how did Red Green put it? \u00a0“If the women don’t find you handsome, at least let them find you handy!”), I decided the right thing to do was to follow the recommended mitigation method and install the fan. \u00a0The fan itself was $300 plus another $100\u00a0in PVC pipes and fittings. \u00a0 The fan needs to be mounted outside of the living space. \u00a0You don’t want it inside the living space because the other side of the fan is pushing high concentrations of radon gas and a small leak will have you back to mining for radon again. \u00a0 It took about 6 hours of work but I finally had the fan hooked up outside the house and powered it up for the first time. \u00a0I reset the detector and waited.<\/p>\n
24 hours later, the first reading came in. \u00a038 bq\/m3. \u00a0I was cautiously optimistic. \u00a0A week later, it read 2 bq\/m3.<\/p>\n
![\"2\"](\"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/2-225x300.jpg\")
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Now the drawbacks. \u00a0The fan is fairly loud when it’s running; especially at the top of the 4″ PVC pipe that’s sticking up the side of the house. \u00a0It’s also fairly ugly. \u00a0While the fan is fairly energy efficient, it does consume 82 watts which is about $50\/year in electricity.<\/p>\n
Over the next year, I’m going to experiment by running the fan periodically. \u00a0I’ll start with a 50% duty cycle and adjust up or down depending on the readings. \u00a0Since the fan noise isn’t significant inside the house, I’ll start by running it primarily at night and less during the day. \u00a0 Ideally, I would have one of the very expensive detectors that can hook to a computer so I can add some more intelligent automation behind the process as is my nature. \u00a0I suspect I’ll be able to get by with running the fan far less during the summer ‘window open’ months. \u00a0 Only the data will tell me.<\/p>\n
Now back to figuring\u00a0out what piece of technology will let me address the furry brown things.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some folks at work were talking about their radon detectors the other day. Since I’m a sucker for gathering data, I was curious and did some reading. I’m usually not one for crackpot science and ‘radon’ just sounds like it would fit right in. The first link I get when I type “radon” into Google… Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drivel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beer.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}