Avoiding Radiant Heating Floors to Install Radon Mitigation System, Farmington, NH

Monday, August 21st, 2023 by Travis Kellogg

Challenge

A homeowner in Farmington, New Hampshire built their home in 2022. They have a unique feature installed in their home to keep it warm in the winter. They had either electric wires or hot water pipes installed under the concrete slab in their basement. These wires or pipes will heat up due to electrical current or warmed water and radiate heat throughout the home. With this system installed, the area under the concrete slab is almost entirely occupied by the wires and pipes.

After the home was built and was inspected by an inspector, a radon test was performed in the home. The tests indicated that the home had higher than normal radon levels and the homeowners should think about installing a radon mitigation system. The homeowners had just spent a lot of money building and furnishing the home so it wasn't in their budget to install anything at that moment.

After almost a year of living in the home, they decided to start researching about installing a radon mitigation system into the home. While looking for a company, they found some companies didn't want to help them install a radon system because of the positioning of their radiant heating. The system is expensive and hard to repair so most companies wouldn't want to take on the extra risk of potentially damaging the system. The homeowner called EFS and our Design Specialist Jason Vachon met with the homeowner tested the basement for radon and began designing a radon system to lower the radon levels inside the home.

Solution

The radon test results came back with an average of 17.3 pCi/L. Our Design Specialist Jason Vachon designed a radon mitigation system to be installed in the home. When designing the system, Jason had to make some notes to our installation team that would aid them in the installation of this radon system installation. For the installation of this radon mitigation system, our team had to be extra careful during installation because of the radiant floors beneath the slab in the basement. The pipes/wire snake up and down and leave little room for our team to install our 3" extraction point. To install the extraction point the team had to bring a thermal imaging camera so they could figure out where each thermal line was so they could avoid them. Once they found a spot where they could create the extraction point and avoid the under-slab heating system the team drilled the extraction point and installed our 3" PVC pipe. Once the extraction point was installed they then continued installing the system like normal. We fed the PVC pipe to the exterior of the home. Then we installed our radon fan to the side of the home and then connected our PVC pipe to the fan and then vented the system above the roofline of the home.

The homeowners were very happy with the installation of the Radon Mitigation System and very impressed with EFS being able to do what other companies said they wouldn't do.