This is a well timed post! We just bought a house two months ago. Everything was going swimmingly until inspection time rolled around. The house is only a year old, so we didn't expect anything major. Until the inspector looked at the radon monitor and said "oh wow." We had a level of 27! Yikes. Almost made me want to pull out of the deal.
However, they put in a radon fan and it's doing the job pretty well. I am closely monitoring it with the Airthings + monitor. I've really liked the monitor so far. Some thoughts:
- I see a strong correlation with rain like you do. I'm averaging around 3.5, but it jumps up to 7-8 for a day or so after a rain. I'm also wondering if the radon has a harder time getting through the wet ground, so more of it makes its way into my basement since the area below it is dry.
- I ran a 48 hour charcoal test. Over that 48 hour period, my airthings was showing a 3.6 average. The charcoal test came in at 2.1. So, I'm interested to know if the monitor is always 1.5 higher. Have you done a charcoal test with yours to compare?
- I've also noticed a relationship between air pressure in the basement and radon. As you can see, there certainly appears to be a correlation between higher pressure and higher radon. I would think it should be opposite of this. Lower pressure providing an easier path for radon to leak in, but obviously I'm wrong :-)
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