101–110 of 170 posts
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$149 for https://www.bettergeiger.com/product-list/p/better-geiger-ra...
I'm mildly disappointed that banana is not listed as option for test material
I think the core of the explanation given is correct but some of the adjacent details need adjustment. The important part is: "Clothes dryers are very effective at making statically charged surfaces. (Dryer sheets help.) So when radon and its temporary decay products are blown through the dryer, electrically-polarized molecules tend to be attracted to the charged surfaces" What that commenter misses is that nearly al…
We had this issue in the Midwest (central Illinois). Can’t remember exactly why, but radon would accumulate in the basements. Had to have sensors and ventilation for it.
Because the rock formations in some areas are more prone to production of Radon gas which slowly diffuses through the soil. Basements in those areas tend to have Radon infiltration. It is obviously very slow but the basement is a low point and often not well ventilated which can allow the Radon to accumulate. Poured slabs are less permeable, not a low point, and tend to have better ventilation either intentionally or…
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GPT-4 get's this wrong...There is still hope for humans...
At least lay the blame correctly: humans get this wrong and they write it all over the internet and we then train our models on incorrect information. An astonishing amount of what we each believe is plain wrong, especially when we have little stories about it.
I think the core of the explanation given is correct but some of the adjacent details need adjustment. The important part is: "Clothes dryers are very effective at making statically charged surfaces. (Dryer sheets help.) So when radon and its temporary decay products are blown through the dryer, electrically-polarized molecules tend to be attracted to the charged surfaces" What that commenter misses is that nearly al…
> hobbyist grade detectors (Geiger tubes) are not sensitive to alpha but they are highly sensitive to beta and a little sensitivity to gamma. This was part of the reason why it took so long to discover the cause of Alexander Litvinenko's death by Polonium-210 poisoning. Doctors (and later detectives) had suspected some form of radiation poisoning, but the early tests used Geiger counters and came back negative. But P…
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We had such a remediation done recently, in Alberta close to the rocky mountains. Costs were around $2,000 CAD to install a sub-slab depressurization system (i.e. a fan that pulls air from below the house and vents it away from the house). Radon values dropped from around 500 Bq/m3 to less than 20 Bq/m3.
Those systems must be new. The classic solution is to install drain pipes before pouring the slab, so one can imagine how difficult it would be using 1980's construction techniques to retroactively add piping below a finished house. We also had to dig trenches to lay natural gas lines, but we have a way to do those with horizontal boring techniques (of course then people who didn't know what they were doing put them…
Before going with active depressurization, start by installing a sealed sump cover, caulking the basement wall-to-floor joint, and caulking all the cracks in the basement walls, in that order. If that doesn't get the number down where you want it, drill the subslab access hole and install the ventilation piping to the outdoors, but don't install the fan in the middle. Only of those fail to get adequate results, install the fan.
It's really simple and quite cheap. I don't think we ever did a job that was over $1000. Costs of running the fans were pennies a month, and Fantech still sells the classic FR-100 fan all these years later, though there are even quieter options now.
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It can be an issue everywhere, Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, after smoking.
I'm in the middle of moving from Texas to New England. In Texas, Radon is such a "not a problem", that I've never considered it before our move. In New England, our basement tested above the "safe" limit (iirc, 4 somethings), so we are having a venterlator installed for ~$1.4k. In the south, Radon "can" be an issue, but it simply isn't an issue. In New England, it is often an issue.
...but if you ever get annoyed by the whir of the fan, unplug it for a month and do an alpha-track monitor. (Or get a continuous monitor, they're cheap now!) There's every chance that simply having the cracks caulked and the piping in place, might do the trick all on its own, with no need for active depressurization.
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It’s outside though, so the radon wouldn’t normally accumulate unless something weird happens. Seems like this is the sort of thing you’d want experts to look at.
It is a road, though, and we know all sorts of things already accumulate via stormwater runoff.
That's the thing about the uranium decay series. Just after radium, it has this gaseous stage called radon, which doesn't matter one whit when it's sealed into a rock; an atom of radon in the middle of a piece of granite just sits there for a few days and then goes right on into being lead.
But if it's near the surface of a grain of sand or something, that radium turns into radon and the radon escapes into the surrounding air. And it goes wherever the air goes for the next day or two, before turning into lead.
So if that radon is in the runoff, it just fizzes out like any other dissolved gas, and blows around in the air along with all the other gases that make up the air, exactly like any other radon that had an escape route when it was created. There's radon in the air everywhere, right now, a brief stop on the decay chain that is otherwise all solids. And those atoms of radon are undergoing alpha decay all the time, turning into atoms of lead, minuscule bits of dust popping into existence, everywhere.
I haven't read much on physics before. My favourite thing to do on these stack overflow sites (or on specific tags) is to go to Questions -> sort by score, and just read through the top questions and answers. It's a bit hidden away because they want to steer people to the active questions, not to established ones.
> they want to steer people to the active questions why?
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It’s outside though, so the radon wouldn’t normally accumulate unless something weird happens. Seems like this is the sort of thing you’d want experts to look at.
>It’s outside though, so the radon wouldn’t normally accumulate Well, no more than any other heavier-than-air gas, like say, fog.
Radon forms very slowly.