Radon Potential with Home Inspections
Alder Creek Radon Gas Pros, Serving areas of Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph, Stratford, Cambridge, Goderich, Woodstock and Southwestern Ontario. Radon Potential with Home Inspections The home purchase is one of the most important purchases you will make in your life time, therefore the home inspection is a very important aspect of this purchase. However, the inspection is only a visual inspection and not invasive. In most cases, the inspector can find hidden troubles of the home and inform you of these defects. By looking at the way the home is structured and the internal functions of the home, an extra set of eyes can report on many of these areas of the home to inform clients of defects normally not found by an untrained eye. During the home inspection, odour in the home can be detected. If so, Alder Creek Radon Gas Pros can help eliminate the odours and bacteria left behind from the previous owners with Ozone shock treatments. Alder Creek Radon Gas Pros can also can install a Terminator in the furnace duct system to help eliminate toxins in the air of the home. Radon testing should also be part of the home inspection process. When having this test completed in the home this should be completed by a licensed and qualified person. Alder Creek Radon Gas Pros carries this license. Alder Creek is a member of CARST which is the governing body for Radon. http://www.c-nrpp.ca
What is Radon?
Radon is the natural radioactive element uranium and is present everywhere in rocks and soil. The radio active decay of uranium produces radium, which in turn decays to Radon, a radiocative colourless and odourless inert gas. As it is a gas, it can move easily through bedrock and soil and escape into the outdoor air or seep into a home or building. All soil contains uranium, so Radon is present in all types of soils. Radon that moves from the ground to the outdoor is rapidly diluted to low concentrations and is not a health concern. The air pressure inside a building is lower than in the soil surrounding the foundation. This draws in the gases, including Radon , through openings in the foundation where it is in contact with the ground. This includes construction joints, gaps, around service pipes and support posts, floor drains and sums, cracks in foundation walls, and in floor slabs, and in openings in concrete block walls. Once inside the building, Radon can accumulate to high levels and becomes a long term health concern. Although High Radon concentrations are associated with some geological formations, types of soil, housing tye, and foundation construction vary so much from place to place that “Radon Potential maps” are poor indicators of the Radon concentration in an individual home. Even similar houses next to each other can vary different average Radon concentrations. The only way to know if a home has a high Radon concentration is to measure the Radon Concentration.
Radon Potential
Over the last few years I have had the opportunity to test several homes in area’s of Waterloo Region and surrounding. The Radon Content in Waterloo Region and the surrounding area shows consistent with the Ontario map which was supplied by Health Canada. Every home has Radon. The key is the amount of Radon Content in the soils under the homes and building we live and work in. The threshold limit for Radon according to health Canada is 200Bq/m3. The lowest test I have completed was 27Bq/m3. The highest is well beyond the 200Bq/m3 limit. Radon is directly related to more than 3200 deaths per year in Canada alone. Of all the tests I have completed, only one falls into the guarded category. The balance fall into the high and elevated areas. The tests should be completed in areas of concrete slab – soil contact, and where people and pets live in these areas for 4 or more hours per day.
