Managing Radon: Essential Advice for Sealed Crawl Spaces

Unlock the secrets to safely managing radon in your crawl space and protect your family from this invisible threat! Did you know that sealing your crawl space can inadvertently trap radon, increasing your risk of lung cancer? Michael Church, our expert from Crawl Space Ninja, sheds light on this critical issue in our latest episode. He breaks down how traditional open crawl spaces naturally ventilate radon and what changes when you encapsulate. Learn why ongoing radon testing is crucial and discover practical solutions like foundation vent fans and sub membrane depressurization systems that ensure your home stays safe and radon-free.

Join us for this vital discussion as Michael shares actionable advice for anyone planning a crawl space encapsulation. Understand the importance of not sealing all vents and how to properly install a dehumidifier and fan to maintain healthy air flow. Michael also dives into the nuances of soil gases and how they can affect your home beyond just radon. Don't miss this episode, packed with expert insights and tips to ensure your crawl space encapsulation project safeguards your home and health effectively.

Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!

Need help: https://crawlspaceninja.com or https://diy.crawlspaceninja.com

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hey, michael Church, crawl Space Ninja. Today we're continuing our Crawl Space Misconception series and today I want to talk to you about radon. Radon is one of those things that you cannot smell, even though people say you can. It's odorless, tasteless, you can't see it. So how do you know you have it and what's the proper way to address it? So if you have a house with an open crawl space in other words, the vents are open, the air can travel in and out and all that sort of thing it's kind of like having the windows open in your house you probably don't have a radon problem in the house because the crawl space is naturally ventilating the radon outside. But one of the things that can happen if you decide to seal, or what we call crawl space encapsulation, you can seal up all the vents and then that radon has nowhere to go but up into your home. Now, keep in mind you cannot smell radon. The only way to determine if you have radon or not is with an ongoing radon test kit. There's electrical kits that you can purchase, and I'll put a link to one down below and there's also some DIY kits where you leave them out in your house for a couple of days and then you send it off to a lab and they tell you how many picocuries of radon per liter there are and all that kind of stuff. Remember, you want to be under four, not at four under four according to the EPA and they go as far as to say two or less is better. Obviously, less radon is better. Okay, if you had zero, that's better, but unfortunately we can't always accomplish zero. So what you don't want to do is you don't want to encapsulate the crawl space and create a radon problem. So our methodologies for encapsulating the crawl space is we seal all the vents but one, install that dehumidifier to control humidity and then install that foundation vent fan, according to EPA recommendations, to blow one CFM of air out for every 50 square feet in order to draw soil gases out of the crawl space, just like when your crawl space was open or vented prior to encapsulation. It gives that soil gas the opportunity to be pushed outside the house before it has a chance to go up into your home. A lot of our competition. They will seal all of the vents and only allow the soil gases to go up.

Speaker 0: 2:13

Another thing you need to know is there's more to soil gases than just radon. There's methane, there's different odors, there's different things like that that can build up in an encapsulated crawl space. So you want to make sure you push that air out of the crawl space, even if you have a radon problem. You can do what's called a sub membrane depressurization system. I've done some videos about that if you want to check them out.

Speaker 0: 2:36

But basically what that means is you run a pipe under the plastic and you have it run to a radon fan which pushes the air out from under the plastic before it has a chance to even enter the crawl space, much less enter your home. So don't go with a full encapsulation without some type of ventilation, because you don't wanna take a risk of building up radon in your home and causing what is now considered the number one cause of lung cancer among non-smokers and the number two cause of lung cancer among everyone. So we don't want that to be a problem for you. So make sure you address radon properly. I'm Michael Church Crawl Space Ninja. We hope you make it a happy and blessed day and we'll see you later.