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Normal radon mitigation sucks out the air from underneath a house's foundation.

What if I ran the fan in reverse to blow this same air outward instead of sucking it upward? It seems either direction should be effective, so I am thinking that we choose to suck upwards just to avoid pushing it out towards neighbors. If sucking is truly more effective, how much more effective is it (in terms of radon pCi/L)? I imagine the difference in effectiveness depends on the season, whether the house is cooling or heating, so please consider both seasons. Of course, measured data comparing both fan directions for both seasons would be the best!

bobuhito
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2 Answers2

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The problem with this idea is that you don't really control where the radon-containing air will vent. You may actually end up pushing it into your living space.

With the suction setup that is used, the vented air goes up the tube and is safely exhausted away from living quarters.

jwh20
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I've been wondering about this myself and found a paper from the early 90s that explored pressurizing the basement such that the gradient was equal or higher above the slab. The paper below indicates that it works well and I'm not quite sure why this isn't explored for houses with very poor material under the slab for SSD.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1863451/

Nate
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