We had no idea we were living with high concentrations of radon in our home and found out about it from a friend who had recently purchased a home in a Calgary NW community. He told me that he was going to move into his new home after the “radon mitigation” was complete. This comment sparked me to ask about what radon is and why he would need to mitigate. He filled me in, and I also asked him who was helping him fix the problem. Great West Radon (GWR) was doing the job and he had nothing but good to say about his experience.
After this conversation I did some further reading on radon and purchased a radon detector (Corentium Home by Airthings, Radon Gas Detector) from Amazon. Once we had the detector in hand we began testing and were shocked with the readings that we got over the next several days. The World Health Organization suggests a safe building would have an annual average residential radon concentration reference level of less than 100 Bq/m3 and for Health Canada their max number is 200 Bq/m3 . Needless to say, when we started seeing our short term number (peaked at 1,710 Bq/m3 ) and a long term average of over 800 Bq/m3 we picked up the phone and called Great West Radon.
Dorothy was the person at GWR who took our call, and she was very informative. She let us know about the effect of weather (pressure changes) on radon readings, amongst other things, and we booked an appointment for a site visit the following week. During that week we saw numbers as high as 2,150 Bq/m3 and our average increased to around 1,300 Bq/m3. Typically, the recommended test period for radon should be about 3 months, but with numbers like these we decided that we needed to act sooner than later.
Jordan was the technician from GWR that came out for the site visit and to quote the radon system. He was great at explaining how radon gets into a home and what they could do to reduce the levels. At no time did we feel that Jordan was pushy or salesy, he simply did a walkthrough of the house while explaining to us the process of how they would help us get our radon levels to an acceptable level. After the visit, we received our quote (that evening) and it was not a hard decision to move forward with GWR. They booked us in for the following week which brings up another good point. GWR has a great online portal for clients and everything you do with them (from scheduling, to invoice, to receipt etc.) is available online and emails are sent for each step of the process.
On the date of installation, Troy and Gary (GWR installers) showed up exactly on time. They were professional, clean, and excellent to work with. Troy went out of his way to explain the installation process along with answering any questions we had. We have an in-floor heating system in our basement with 5 zones and finding a suitable installation spot was no easy task. The guys took their time and didn’t rush the job, they found a great spot and installed the system with great attention to detail. They had a lot of gear to bring in and laid down mats to protect our carpet and kept the install clean and tidy from beginning to end. I’ve worked with a lot of building contractors (plumbers, framers, electricians, roofers etc.) in my lifetime and have to say that these guys were one of the best to work with and that the quality of their work is exceptional.
Once the installation was complete we reset our radon detector (takes several hours) and woke up this morning to a reading of 77 Bq/m3 . Troy had indicated that it could take a couple of days for the levels to drop but given our previous numbers we are absolutely thrilled. I’ll have to update this review in a few months to see where we are at, but I am confident the system will keep our levels down.
I would recommend Great West Radon to anyone concerned about radon or dealing with a problem like ours. Thanks for the great service!
