Radon Mitigation in Silver Heights

Silver Heights was built mostly in the 1950s along the north side of the Assiniboine in the west end. The housing is consistent postwar construction, and the neighbourhood has aged well, but the river proximity and the age of the additions produce a steady stream of crawlspace work. Streets closer to the river have a higher water table and some slow bank-related soil movement; streets further back deal mainly with clay heave and frost.

The crawlspaces themselves are overwhelmingly additions: rear extensions, sunrooms and enclosed porches built across several decades. Founded shallow, vented, and insulated between the joists if at all, they are cold in winter and damp in summer. Homeowners usually call us about the symptom rather than the cause — a cold floor in the back room, a musty smell when the furnace runs, cracked tile in a sunroom — and the diagnosis is almost always a crawlspace that sits outside the heated envelope while being connected to the air inside the house.

Our scope reflects that. We confirm founding depth and bearing, correct support below frost depth where piers have been cycling, address water at the exterior first, and add interior drainage with a freeze-safe discharge where groundwater is active. Then the space gets a reinforced sealed barrier across floor and walls, perimeter insulation, air sealing at the rim joist, and humidity control. The cold floor and the smell resolve together, because they were the same problem.

Silver Heights calls arrive as symptoms rather than diagnoses: a cold back room, a musty smell when the furnace runs, cracked tile in a sunroom. Streets nearer the Assiniboine add a higher water table and, close to the bank, some slow soil movement, which changes the assessment.

Our first recommendation is to separate movement from moisture before specifying anything. If support is cycling with frost or moving with the bank, that is corrected first. Then water is managed, then the space is sealed and insulated at the perimeter so it joins the heated envelope. The cold floor and the smell usually resolve together, because they were the same problem.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced by the decay of uranium in soil and rock. It is colourless and odourless, it moves upward through soil, and it enters buildings through any opening in contact with the ground. Health Canada identifies it as the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking, and sets a guideline of 200 becquerels per cubic metre for indoor air, recommending remedial action above that level. Manitoba consistently records some of the highest residential readings in Canada, which makes this a local issue rather than an abstract one.

A crawlspace is the most efficient radon entry point a house can have. Where there is exposed soil, or a thin unsealed membrane, soil gas moves into the space essentially unimpeded — and from there into the living area, because the stack effect pulls air upward through a house continuously during the heating season. Our long heating season means that pressure difference operates for a large part of the year. A house with a sealed basement slab but an open crawlspace under an addition can still have substantially elevated levels.

Testing has to come before mitigation, and it has to be done correctly. A long-term test of at least three months, ideally during the heating season when windows are closed and the stack effect is strongest, gives a representative result. Short-term tests are useful as a screening indicator but fluctuate too much to base a decision on. We will arrange or guide testing, and we would rather you test first than buy a mitigation system you may not need — though in a crawlspace with exposed soil, sealing the floor is worthwhile on moisture grounds regardless of the radon number.

Where mitigation is needed, the standard approach in a crawlspace is active sub-membrane depressurization. A sealed membrane is installed across the floor and up the walls — the same membrane used for encapsulation, which is why these two projects belong together — and a dedicated fan draws continuously from beneath it through a perforated collection pipe, venting above the roofline. That negative pressure under the membrane captures soil gas before it can enter the space. The system is simple and highly effective, but it depends entirely on how well the membrane is sealed, which is why installation quality matters more than equipment selection.

Post-mitigation verification is not optional in our view. After the system is running and the building has returned to normal operating conditions, the space and the living area should be retested to confirm the reduction. We also label the system, explain what the manometer reading means, and tell you what to check — because a mitigation fan is a mechanical device that will eventually fail, usually silently. A system nobody monitors is a system that may have stopped protecting you years ago.

Pressure and building dynamics explain why two apparently identical houses can test very differently, and why your neighbour's result tells you nothing about yours. Radon entry depends on the pressure difference between the soil and the building interior, and that depends on stack effect strength, exhaust appliances, mechanical ventilation balance, wind, and how tight the building is. A house with powerful kitchen and bathroom exhaust and no make-up air runs at a greater negative pressure, and draws correspondingly more soil gas. This is also why sealing work and mechanical changes can shift a reading in either direction, and why testing after any significant envelope work is sensible.

System design details separate a mitigation that works from one that merely hums. The collection point beneath the membrane needs a permeable layer — clean gravel or a drainage mat — so the fan can draw from the whole footprint rather than a single spot. The fan has to be sized to the soil's permeability and the area served: too little suction leaves parts of the footprint uncaptured, too much wastes energy and can pull conditioned air if the membrane has gaps. The exhaust must terminate above the roofline and away from windows and air intakes. And the pipe needs a manometer, so the system reports its own status.

Timing relative to encapsulation is the practical advice we give most often. If you are sealing a crawlspace for moisture reasons and you have not tested for radon, test first. The collection pipe and gravel layer belong under the membrane, installed before it goes down; retrofitting them means cutting open a barrier you just paid for and compromising its continuity. A long-term test takes three months, which is usually compatible with planning a project anyway. If the number comes back low, you have lost nothing but gained a documented baseline. If it comes back high, you have saved yourself from doing the job twice.