Radon Mitigation in Billerica, 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 Billerica, 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.

Billerica is ninth in Massachusetts for repeat flood losses

That is not a figure of speech. Fifty-one structures in Billerica have experienced repetitive flood losses, and as of 2019 the town ranked ninth in the state for NFIP repetitive flood loss (Town of Billerica Open Space and Recreation Plan / Hazard Mitigation planning).

The Concord River is a large part of why. It has reached or exceeded its 10-year flood elevation of 114 feet almost every year since 1957, and because the floodplain here is broad and flat, it crests slowly and stays up for days rather than hours. The western bank between Route 4 and Route 3A has historically flooded in a way that affects homes.

Worth knowing: the town’s Flood Plain District boundaries still rest on a 1973 floodplain index map plus FEMA revisions. A map drawn in 1973 describes a town that has been built on for fifty years since.

Severe rainstorms hit twice in August 2023, causing flooding in several parts of town and, in the town’s own words, highlighting weaknesses in the current stormwater system.

What the soil does

Billerica’s ground is coarse in large parts and wet in others. Of the acreage carrying a drainage rating, 26.9 percent is excessively drained and 26.0 percent well drained, but 17 percent is very poorly drained (USDA NRCS soil survey, clipped to the Billerica town boundary). By hydrologic soil group, 37.2 percent of the town is group D or dual-D, which is the slowest-infiltrating classification there is.

The town’s own read splits it into four soil associations: Windsor-Hinckley about 40 percent, Essex-Scituate about 35 percent, Paxton-Woodbridge-Hollis about 15 percent, and muck and marsh about 10 percent.

Most of Billerica sits between 80 and 150 feet of elevation, with only about five percent above 250 feet, so there is not much fall to work with in most of the town. Broad belts of stratified sand and gravel straddle the Concord and the Shawsheen.

Over 800 acres of wetland sit across three watersheds. Heavy rains regularly wash sediment and rock onto roads, which the town lists by name.

That is the town-scale picture. Your street is a different question and we answer it by turning up, free.

What our customers say

They were great to work with! Very accommodating scheduling around our last minute closing date changes so that we could get our radon system in prior to us moving in. Chris was able to get our system in within a few hours, even working through some not so great weather. Thanks to Jana, Chris and Brandon for the extra help!

Amelia Gage, 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 Billerica

Book a free inspection in Billerica

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 Billerica and the surrounding towns from our shop in East Kingston, New Hampshire.

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