Why Your Radon Levels Peak in Winter
The Cold Truth About Indoor Air
The arrival of winter means cozy evenings and keeping the cold air outside where it belongs. We seal our windows, turn up the heat, and happily hibernate. But this very effort to stay warm creates a dangerous phenomenon inside your home: The Stack Effect, which can cause your radon levels to peak right when you are spending the most time indoors.
Radon is the leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers. If you haven't tested your home, or if you tested in a different season, winter is the time to pay attention.
What is Radon and Where Does it Come From?
Radon is an invisible, odorless, and tasteless radioactive gas. It is naturally formed by the breakdown of uranium soil found in rocks, soil, and water. As it breaks down, it seeps out of the ground and into the air. While harmless outdoors, it becomes hazardous when trapped inside an enclosed space where it can accumulate to dangerous levels.
The Stack Effect
When you turn on your furnace to fight the winter chill, you are essentially turning your home into a giant chimney, driving the stack effect. Here's how it works:
- Warm Air Rises: Heated air inside your home is less dense than the cold outside air. This warm air naturally rises and escapes through upper-level openings, such as attic vents, chimneys, and cracks near the roofline.
- Negative Pressure: As the warm air escapes from the top, it creates a powerful vacuum of negative pressure in the lower parts of your home such as the basement or crawl space.
- The Suction: This negative pressure aggressively sucks replacement air from the path of least resistance, which is often the soil directly beneath your foundation. This is how radon gas is pulled into your home through cracks, sumps, and utility penetrations.
Because you keep your home closed up during the winter, there is no fresh air coming in to dilute the constantly accumulating radon gas.
The Solution? Test Now
Understanding the Stack Effect is the first step, taking action is next.
- Test Your Home (It's Simple!): Winter is the ideal time for an accurate radon test because the Stack Effect is maximizing your potential levels. If your reading is high now, you have a year-round problem. We offer simple, approved testing kits to help determine the levels in your home.
- Mitigate Immediately: If your test results show levels above the EPA action level of 4.0pCi/L, professional mitigation is necessary. A certified radon mitigation system works by reversing the stack effect. We install a pipe and fan system that creates negative pressure beneath your foundation, capturing radon gas and venting it safely above your roofline before it even enters your living space. Crucially, a professional system does this without compromising your home's heat or energy efficiency.
Don't Wait for Spring
Don't let the effort to stay warm this winter expose your family to an invisible threat. Testing your home for radon is an essential part of your winter home safety plan.
Ready to find out if the Stack Effect in impacting your family's health? MidAmerica Basement Systems can help. We offer easy to use test kits and can mitigate your home quickly and efficiently. Purchase a test kit here.