Radon Mitigation
Radon fans run around the clock for years and then stop, and because nothing else in the house changes, almost nobody notices. The U-tube gauge on the pipe exists so that you can — level columns mean no suction. In Minnesota we also see cold-weather failures: condensate frozen in an exterior fan, a discharge iced over, a pipe that sags and fills with water. And we see a lot of post-2009 houses where the passive pipe was never fitted with a fan or tested. In every case we measure before we quote, because the reading tells you what is actually broken.
A radon fan runs every minute of every day for years, and when it stops nothing in the house changes. The basement looks the same, there is no smell and no alarm. The only sign is the U-tube gauge on the pipe: with the fan pulling, the fluid sits at two different heights; with it stopped, the columns level out. Checking it takes five seconds, and the start of every heating season is a good habit.
Minnesota adds failure modes that milder states rarely see. Condensate freezes inside an exterior fan housing. Ice builds up on a discharge until it partly blocks the pipe. A horizontal pipe run with too little slope fills with water that freezes into a plug. Fans on exposed exterior walls work harder through a long winter. When we repair a system with any of these problems, the fix usually involves rerouting or re-sloping the pipe, not just replacing the fan.
Houses built since June 2009 have a passive radon pipe from under the slab to the attic. Without a fan it works only by natural draft, which is strongest in the coldest weather and weakest the rest of the year. If a test shows the passive system is not enough, activating it — a fan on the attic section of the pipe, an electrical connection and a gauge — is usually a short job. We check the pipe from slab to roof first, because a passive pipe that was cut, capped or buried during construction changes the plan.
Some systems were undersized for the fill under the slab, have a suction point cut off by a later addition, or discharge somewhere they should not — beside a window or under the eaves. A new fan will not fix a design problem. We test the house, measure suction across the slab and tell you plainly whether you are looking at a worn part or a system that needs rethinking.
Every repair starts with a reading, so the price is based on what is actually wrong, and ends with a retest to show the number came down. If the diagnosis points to a new design, it gets priced as a mitigation system, not as a repair.
How long does it take? A straight fan replacement is a short visit. Anything that turns out to be a design problem rather than a worn part is priced as the work it actually is.
These usually come up in the same conversation:
A second test once the system has been running. Included with every install, and available on its own for a system nobody has checked.
Learn More →The standard fix for a Twin Cities basement or slab: suction under the floor, the gaps sealed, a fan outside the living space and a discharge above the roof — built for a Minnesota winter.
Learn More →A continuous monitor in the lowest lived-in level for at least 48 hours, logging every hour — a curve you can read, not one number that might be a fluke.
Learn More →Free · No Obligation
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