DC metro area -- 1 in 3 houses has radon.

14:05 - right. wealthy=radon. are you a f*cking idiot?

The entire dc area is full of radon especially McLean, great falls, Bethesda, Arlington, Potomac

There is nothing to stop you from testing 4x or more a year and most systems have a lifetime guarantee. Buy the house. Everyone has radon, if they say they don't , they haven't tested for it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walk away
Do not even consider a radon level above 4

It costs $1000 to remediate. You would decline an otherwise great house, presumably worth 400 or much more times that amount, over $1000?

Yes
Radon is dangerous. Even if you can remediate, you might need to remediate again, but this is an odorless gas that is dangerous and you do not want to find out that the levels have gone up again without you knowing it. There really are a lot of houses on the market. Stay away from the ones built on asbestos and laden with lead

Both of the homes I have lived in have radon mediation units in them and you likely find that many of your friends homes have them as well. Even if you found a home that tested low, it could test high at a later time. Install the remediation system and have it retested. Visit the EPA.gov site for more information.

Anonymous wrote:Walk away
Do not even consider a radon level above 4

It costs $1000 to remediate. You would decline an otherwise great house, presumably worth 400 or much more times that amount, over $1000?

Walk away
Do not even consider a radon level above 4

Anonymous wrote:^ how long ago? Meaning, did the results last? What was done?

About a month ago, they installed a 4" pipe down to the gravel underneath the basement foundation and bring it up through the roof. The fan unit blow air continuously out from underneath the concrete slab. It's guaranteed to stay below 4...but usually gets it down to much lower than 1.0

We used http://www.radonremediation.com/?gclid=CO_xoID_8rgCFUdo7AodjQ8ACA

OP, thanks for the replies! Would you mind sharing the name of the company you used for your remediation?

OP we bought a house earlier this summer with radon level of 21. We were surprised (it has a walk-out basement so we didn't expect radon to be an issue) but did not consider walking over it. You could just as easily have high radon in the next house you find. Everyone I talked to in our neighborhood has had high levels (but none as high as ours!) and a realtor friend told me there is generally high radon in the area.

We had a remediation system installed which brought the level down to 0.4 pretty much immediately (we tested 72 hours after installation). It is guaranteed for the life of the building--meaning even if we sell the company guarantees the level will be below 4 as long as we don't break it. It cost us $1100 which we got a credit from the sellers for. The estimates we got were all around $1000 give or take and we were very happy with the company we used. It took them about 4 hours to install. My feeling was that it wouldn't have been worth walking on a house we really liked on a relatively easy fix that we could ask the sellers to pay for.

Good question. Radon is a naturally occurring gas and can be anywhere. Please visit http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html for more information. If your purchase contract calls for a radon test, the seller may be responsible for the remediation depending upon the structure of your contract. After the remediation unit is installed, they should retest to verify. Read the information from the EPA and you should be more comfortable. There are no radon free zones that I am aware of nor would I ever attest to one as radon levels could increase at any point.

^ how long ago? Meaning, did the results last? What was done?

long term radon level in my house was 8.7 and decreased to 0.6 after remediation - cost was about $900 - took about 3 hours.

We were about to purchase a home when we found out the radon was 5.9. Its the middle of a very humid summer but my understanding is that the worse time for radon is the winter when the ground is frozen. We are planing on doing the remediation but I think despite that I still wonder whether its worth it to buy this home. Are there radon free areas in the DC metro area? And if so, isn't it a matter of time before they might have radon too?