Radon Mitigation in Haverhill, 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 Haverhill, 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.

Haverhill sits on the tidal Merrimack

Haverhill, Essex County, on the north bank of the Merrimack, and the tidal reach runs up to here. That is the first thing worth knowing about water in this city.

The surficial mapping for the city has been reproduced exactly from the USGS 1:24,000 database, and one result stands out: no fine-grained stratified deposits are mapped at the surface anywhere in the city. What is there is till and coarser stratified material over bedrock, with a shallow-bedrock overlay across part of it.

The USDA NRCS soil survey records a densic layer in the major mapped components, which is the compacted till that water will not readily pass through.

What the city says about its own flooding

Haverhill’s hazard planning documents confirm its combined sewer overflows, its floodplain extent, its Floodplain Overlay District, and specific historical events including August 2023 and May 2006. The Merrimack is gauged here by NOAA at BATM3.

The city’s own soils description and its watershed and tributary record are in the same documents, along with its named hills.

Till, bedrock, and wet basements

Put the pieces together and you get a fairly clear picture of why basements get wet in this city, and it is not usually the river.

Where till or bedrock sits close to the surface, water coming down through the soil hits it and turns sideways. It follows the path of least resistance until something interrupts it. A foundation wall, or the joint where a foundation wall meets a floor, is exactly that kind of interruption. That is why the fix is so often about giving water a better route than the one it found through your wall.

Haverhill is just over the state line from us and we work both sides of that border every week, so this is not a town we visit occasionally.

What none of the above tells us is what is happening at your address. City-scale mapping is a starting point and it is where we start. The free inspection is where we finish.

Till thickness, and the shallow-bedrock ground

The USGS surficial materials map database distinguishes thin till from thick till, and that distinction is doing real work here. Thin till over bedrock gives water very little room before it meets something it cannot pass through. The shallow-bedrock overlay marks where that situation is most pronounced across the city.

Haverhill also carries 2.66 square miles of water, and the surficial units are mapped beneath the Merrimack and the ponds as well as under the dry land, so the percentages describe the substrate rather than just the buildable ground.

The city’s named hills matter for the same reason slope always does. Water that lands on a hill does not stay there, and the houses that deal with it are the ones downhill.

What our customers say

603 team did a great job on our radon mitigation system. From quoting to install it was quick and easy! The install team did great work and the system has work as promised!

Adam Baldauf, 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 Haverhill

Book a free inspection in Haverhill

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

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