Radon Mitigation in Sandy, UT

The Mouth of Little Cottonwood

If there is one address in the Salt Lake Valley the geologists single out, it is this one. The Utah Geological Survey identifies the ground at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon as having the greatest potential for elevated indoor radon anywhere in the valley. The mechanism is not subtle: the canyon drains the Little Cottonwood stock, a granitic mass carrying uranium in accessory minerals, and the canyon has spent the last few tens of thousands of years grinding that rock into a coarse, clean, highly permeable fan spread out across east Sandy.

Permeable Fan Gravel Cuts Both Ways

Coarse gravel under a slab is the most efficient soil-gas conductor there is, which is why the readings up here can be high. It is also the reason mitigation on this ground tends to go well. A single suction point in clean fan gravel will often develop measurable pressure across an entire basement footprint, so the system that fixes a 3,000 square foot house here can be simpler than one for a smaller house on tight valley clay. You still prove it with a test rather than assuming it.

Finished Basements, Everywhere

Sandy built out hard from the 1970s through the 1990s, and the pattern is consistent: full basement, poured walls, and a finish-out that happened either with the house or in the twenty years after. That finished lower level is a bedroom, a theatre room or a mother-in-law apartment — occupied space, at the bottom of the house, where soil gas concentrates. It also means the slab is under carpet and drywall, so the access points a system needs have to be planned rather than improvised.

Working Around a Finished Lower Level

The honest constraint on a finished basement is not the fan, it is the route. Getting a sealed riser from a suction point out to the exterior without opening up a ceiling somebody paid to have finished takes a look at the mechanical room, the garage wall and the joist bays before anything is quoted. Sometimes the tidy route costs a little more labour and saves the drywall. That is a conversation to have standing in the room, not over the phone.

Coverage Around Sandy

All of Sandy from the 9000 South corridor up to the canyon road, including Alta View, Granite and the streets climbing toward the Little Cottonwood entrance. Twenty to twenty-five minutes from downtown. Start with a 48-hour test; a system, if the number calls for one, ends with a retest.

Sandy Radon FAQs