A radon mitigation system has both indoor and outdoor components. One of the indoor components is the ventilation pipe, which usually runs the entire height of the house and doesn’t stop until it’s above the roof. Some may wonder why that pipe needs to be so tall.
Radon is a heavy gas. It’s 7.5 times as heavy as air, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A gas this heavy “is easily influenced by air movements and pressure,” the EPA says. Therefore, it’s important to keep radon away from the home, and away from heating and cooling systems, to keep it from being pulled back into the house and recirculated throughout the building.
The EPA also does not allow for discharging radon gas at ground levels “because of the possibility of children being exposed to high radon levels,” the agency says. “The concentration of radon gas at the discharge point can be tens of thousands of picocuries per minute.”
However, when radon gas is ventilated to a point above the roof, radon concentrations decrease dramatically. They quickly drop to “background levels”, which are much lower and safe to be around.
SRE HomeServices does radon measurement and testing and installs radon mitigation systems in 10 counties in Nebraska. For more information, call us at 402-970-1350.