Why You Should Consistently Test For Radon When Buying A House!

Thank goodness we learned something from buying our first house and chose to pay a few hundred dollars for radon testing this time around. As part of our new home’s inspection, we paid a local radon company to conduct a multi-day test to ensure that dangerous levels of radon are not present (for any locals who are wondering who we used, we went with Radon Ease, because they do not remediate, they only test- so there is nothing in it for them to find radon).

Sure sufficient the readings came back above a 4… which means there were dangerous levels of radon present in the home – sufficient to call for professional remediation as the solution. But instead of that 2K investment falling on our shoulders, since we tested during inspection the sellers kindly agreed to fully remediate for us – and even did a follow up test to determine that the radon issue had been fully resolved. Talk about a money saver!

But let us rewind to the good ol’ days when we learned our radon lesson the hard way. We opted not to pay the few hundred beans to have our first house tested during inspection, and simply used a $15 test from Home Depot once we moved in. Horror of all horrors, our house was teeming with highly unsafe amounts of lung-cancer-causing radon (akin to smoking around five packs of cigarettes a day!) – which left us scrambling to pay thousands of dollars to remediate things without the assist of the sellers (since we skipped that test option at inspection). It involved installing a semi-elaborate system in our crawl space that vents up through the house and out the roof to suck in and direct all of the naturally occurring radon from under our house through the pipe instead of letting it hang out in the inside air that we breathe. Tres annoying. But effective. Here is more info on that debacle (and on radon testing and remediation in general).

Long story short, we considered it to be a (somewhat pricey) learning experience and we are so glad we officially tested things this time around during our inspection period! The strong new is that results came back suuuper low after mitigation (around .5, which is remarkable – even lower than outside air). So to anyone living in Virginia (which is especially known for dangerous radon levels) or anywhere else with radon issues, we certainly recommend testing your house. Click here to see if your county lies in one of the red “danger zones” from the EPA’s map, pictured above. Even if it is well past inspection or moving day, you can buy charcoal test kits at places like Lowe’s or Home Depot and it can save you (and your babies, pets, and family members) from inhaling the equivalent of a carton of cigarettes a day. Le gross.

Have any of you dealt with the house bummer that is radon? Let us commiserate.

Map image courtesy of the EPA.

Psst- We went nursery crashing again over on BabyCenter. Click here to see that charming baby bedroom.