If you want to keep your mate, then you must abate
Radon gas has definitely become ‘a thing’ in Calgary. With the potential to cause fatal lung cancer, long term residences, particularly those with kids growing up inside, should be sampling. And of course, sampling itself won’t do anything without following up and conducting the abatement, if needed. Last year at the family Killarney SW residence, I was politely encouraged to conduct the 90 day sample. Well, I complied, and the results came back borderline (in my view). Around here, borderline isn’t good enough, this wasn’t surprising to me either. ‘Think of the children’ and other such comments were uttered. As winter arrived, polite discussions on abatement degenerated into demands and deadlines. When deadlines came and went without progress, ultimatums were issued. That was around the time that it was agreed that I should do something about this radon problem.
An estimate was requested by Mrs. M from local professional abatement contractor. Your friendly builder, not one to pay retail for anything involving construction nearly choked on his beer once she shared pricing. It was assumed (by me) that (actually my assumption was totally erroneous and sexist), being a female, her quote would be more than a male construction company owner, and that I’d surely be able to talk myself into a reasonable price for the work. Sadly (on the ability to cut the price, not the debunked assumptions on gender based pricing on the job site) it seemed like nobody would budge, not even the second quote was remotely palatable, though I prodded them significantly to drop the price.
And this is where the fun with radon begins…
206 Bq/m3 is too high. We’d like to see this a lot lower. Watch this site for the next episode of ‘fun with radon’.