Radon Mitigation in Needham, MA

A radon mitigation system gives the gas a way out of your house that is not through your living space. Pipe, fan, sealed entry points, and a way to confirm it is working. If you have a test result in hand and you are in Needham, we can look at it.

What radon actually is, without the scare

Radon is a gas that comes up out of the ground and gets into houses through the lowest level. You cannot smell it or see it. At high enough levels over long enough it is genuinely bad for you, which is why testing exists.

The reason we lead with testing rather than selling: your neighbour’s number is not your number. Houses fifty feet apart test differently. Get your own.

How the system works

The common approach is sub-slab depressurization. We core the slab, put a pipe into the material under it, run that pipe out and up, and put a fan on it. The fan pulls a slight vacuum under the slab so the gas goes up the pipe instead of into the basement. Then we seal the obvious entry points, the floor wall joint and any open sump, so the system is pulling from under the slab and not from your basement air.

Crawl spaces work a bit differently. The membrane becomes part of the system and we draw from underneath it.

Testing before and after

We test, we install, we test again. That second test is the whole point, and you should insist on it from anyone you hire.

603 holds a state radon measurement certification, RMS-113966.

What we will not promise you

We will not guarantee a specific radon number unless we put that number in writing for your house.

Plenty of outfits will promise you a level over the phone. We would rather test your house, install the system, test again, and show you where it actually landed. If a specific result matters to you, and for a real estate closing it usually does, get it in writing before the work starts. From us or from anybody else.

The warranty

Radon mitigation carries a 10 year warranty on system integrity and components. That covers the system. It is not a guarantee of a radon level, for the reason above.

Questions we get

My house is new. Do I still need to test?
Yes. Construction age does not tell you what is under the slab.

Is the fan loud?
You should hear a low hum at most. If a system is noisy or rattling, something is wrong with it and it is worth a call.

Does it run all the time?
Yes, continuously. Turning it off means it is not doing anything.

What about radon in water?
That is a separate test and a separate system from the air side. If you are on a private well it is worth asking about.

I am selling. How fast can this happen?
Tell us the closing date when you call. Most installs are a day.

Reading your test result

Situation	What it means	What happens next
Short-term test came back high	A snapshot, and worth acting on	Confirm, then look at the house for a system layout
Two tests disagree	Normal. Radon moves with weather and season	Longer test, or treat the higher reading as the planning number
Buyer or seller needs a number	There is a deadline attached	Tell us the closing date when you call
Finished basement, no test yet	People spend hours in that room	Test before you spend anything else on the space
Crawl space rather than a slab	Different system design	The membrane becomes part of the system
On a private well	Water is a separate pathway from air	Separate test, separate system if needed

How the job runs

It starts with a number. If you already have a test result, bring it. If you do not, that is where we begin, because there is no sense designing a system for a house nobody has measured.

Then somebody looks at the house. Where the slab is, where the pipe can run, where the fan can sit so you are not listening to it in the room above. That layout is most of the job and it is why we do not quote it over the phone.

On install day the slab gets cored, the pipe goes in and runs out and up, the fan goes on it, and the obvious entry points get sealed so the system is pulling from under the slab rather than out of your basement.

Then we test again. That second test is the point of the whole exercise, and you should insist on it from anybody you hire, us included.

The Needham number that should change how you think about this

In March 2010 Needham took extensive flood damage: one flood insurance claim and 231 disaster claims, 99 percent of which were outside the mapped FEMA flood zone (Town of Needham Hazard Mitigation Plan).

Read that again, because it is the most useful fact on this page. Almost none of the damage happened where the flood map said flooding happens. The town’s five repetitive-loss properties, all single-family homes, are also all outside the mapped flood zone.

If you have ever been told your house is fine because it is not in a flood zone, Needham’s own record is the counter-example.

Why that happens here

Most wet basements have nothing to do with a river. They are about water in the soil beside the wall, and Needham’s soil data explains a lot.

A densic restrictive layer sits under about 14 percent of the town, and lithic bedrock restricts another 9 percent, with Hollis soils hitting bedrock at a representative 38 to 41 centimetres (USDA NRCS soil survey, clipped to the Needham boundary). That is barely more than a foot down in places.

Water coming down through the soil stops at that layer and moves sideways. Drainage class backs it up: 12.6 percent of the town is very poorly drained and 15.7 percent of its acreage carries soils rated hydric.

Needham’s own plan is blunt about what that means, naming soils that drain poorly as a constraint on development.

Where the town has already spent money

Town staff named the recurring trouble spots, including Hunnewell Street, where catch basins and culvert capacity were judged inadequate and the town designed a larger drainage pipe at a cost of $75,000.

Needham sits entirely inside the Charles River watershed and is bordered on three sides by the Charles, and it is covered by just two USGS quadrangles, Natick to the west and Newton to the east.

Needham is the furthest south we go. That is town-scale mapping above, not a verdict on your address, and the look is free.

What our customers say

Very knowledgable and responsive to any questions for our radon mitigation. The actual onsite team on day of instillation was fantastic (and saved us money!) Follow up radon testing passed with flying colors- highly recommended.

Lin Kampf, Google review, 5 stars

That is one of more than 240 Google reviews. We would rather you read them than take our word for anything on this page.

Related pages for Needham

Book a free inspection in Needham

Somebody comes out, looks at the actual space, and tells you straight what it needs and what it does not. You get a written number for a defined scope. No two hour pitch, because we would rather be at the next house.

If you are looking for a team that isn’t going to treat you like another number, we would be happy to give you an estimate free of charge. We don’t cut corners. We stand behind our work. We care.

Call 603-610-1770 or book your free inspection. We cover Needham and the surrounding towns from our shop in East Kingston, New Hampshire.

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