I work for a contractor and have a home inspector as a great referral partner. He just set up a 48 hour radon test ordered by the buyers. He happened to circle back through the neighborhood and saw the selling realtor had sent someone to open up all the windows while the test is being done. It’s 49 degrees today. Way to sabotage!
@threebeans, wow, that’s some scummy behavior. I hope the buyers or their agent take photos of the open windows and their agent contacts the selling agent’s broker. I’d go ballistic over that.
@threebeans, our buyers required a radon test in our circa 1790 post and beam house with a hand-dug cellar and boulder/stone foundation that leaked like a sieve. They wanted me to keep all of the windows in the house closed for 3+ days in late June when the temps were hitting the high 70s.
I said the hell with that and opened the windows as I saw fit. The idea of testing that house for radon was obviously ludicrous in the first place. Sheer stupidity. (As are, IMHO most radon tests, most septic system test involving running the water for hours in a highly unrealistic manner that can actually damage the system, and various other ways to pad the cost of buying a house by playing on people’s fears.)
Almost 30 years ago, we bought a house with a septic system. There was some sort of 'test" that was performed == I think they just opened the tank and saw that it had been pumped out recently. Ten months later, the entire leaching field failed – it became totally saturated and didn’t absorb any more water – and cost us $12,000 to fix.
I used to joke that all of my new living room furniture was buried in the front yard.
Septic systems can definitely fail. The common “test” for them is just not a good indicator, and can actually harm the system by washing particulate matter out of the tank into the field.
I have never heard of a radon test out here. I have had 3 buyers who were very inspection trigger happy, ordering everything you could think of, but never a radon test. I cannot imagine that it would be worth the money unless there was a history of radioactive stuff in a neighborhood?
However, if a buyer is paying for a test during their contractual inspection period, I would fully cooperate. I am sure the agent is now going to be on the hook for the cost of a new test, not to mention starting the clock again for 48 hours. As a buyer I would insist that the inspection period be extended for that 48 hour period that was lost.
@threebeans Let us know what the outcome of the debacle is. I’m curious how it will play out
Just loaded some more photos of the finished interior, but they are kind of dark.
Thank goodness the young lady bought new dining room chairs yesterday!!! I was livid that the ugly 1970s dorm room chairs should not come back into the house. Later I find out that they were husband’s grandmother’s table. He thinks they are going to be worth something someday. I think they are beyond hideous and should not be brought into the house after spending so much time and effort to transform the house into a cute cottage style
I’ll try to load a picture. I am sure I will be proven wrong by all of the expert antiquers here.
99.9% of “antiques” is junk!
Also loaded some photos of all of the extensive termite damage we need to repair in the garage area
@coralbrook, it is one thing to cooperate when you are a flipper. It is another thing when you are A) living in the house, B) the request is going to cause you days of misery, and C) it is total BS in the first place.
Radon is more likely where there is a lot of rock like granite under houses. It is normally only a problem when the house has a very tight envelope where the gas can accumulate, such as a very recent, energy-conscious house in a cold climate. None of those things pertain in San Diego, judging by what you’ve said.
We live in a high radon area so radon tests are a legitimate concern. My company does septic inspections also - it’s actually required for real estate transfers. Not sure what’s happening that yours flood the system but that’s not how we do it! Nor do we recommend it. As far as my friend, words were exchanged, test was reset. Whatever equipment he uses would have sensed the change in barometric pressure anyhow and he would have redone itt regardless. Not sure whose footing the bill for the extras
When I bought my house we did a radon test, and the reading came in at 8 pico-curies/liter, and IIRC the EPA safe limit is 4. So the seller put in a mitigation system.
After about 10 or 12 years the fan rusted out, and we never replaced it.
Not particularly worried about it. The level drops by half or so with every floor you go up, we don’t spend much time in the basement, my house is pretty leaky, and part of the mitigation was to seal all the cracks in the foundation floor and walls, which probably does more than the sub-floor air evacuation system.
The highest reading I ever heard of was around 250, which is supposed to be equivalent to smoking 20 packs of cigarettes a day or so. I think I would have run from that property.
My septic system is almost 50 years old, we treat it very gently though. No bleach, no chemicals, no garbage disposal, only 3-4 loads of laundry/week… I’m hoping it will pass inspection when we sell this place someday.
@threebeans, what percentage of houses in your area have radon remediation systems?
How od you do septic inspections? In my experience, they put some kind of dye into a toilet and flush it, then run the faucet in a sink while they do the rest of the inspection and wait to see if the dye shows up in the septic field. Not a realistic scenario, and not good for the septic system.
I’m not familiar with septic systems. When the dye leaks out into the ground, how do they know? Does the water go up to the top? Or do they dig holes in the area?
Never heard of the dye test as an OSM. In the case of our septic system, they will have to run that faucet for close to a whole DAY (!) just to fill the holding tanks (pumped septic with a drain field). Lol. We are geared for 6-7 people living here full time, not the two part-timers. 
@Consolation - Good question and I’m not sure - it is not part of our business. I know we have one in my home and most of my neighbors do too. When you get the results the go to the state for tracking.
For septic inspections, there are three types of systems here if you’re not on city sewer and water. A holding tank is simple - it’s usually a concrete tank that holds the waste water and when it’s full you have a company come pump it and dispose of it. Those are pumped empty and the tank is inspected for any cracks that would allow the wastewater to go directly into the soil (and water table)
The second is a conventional system where you have a tank and a drain field, again the tank is pumped and inspected for cracks and the drain field is evaluated for signs that it’s saturated and not able to process the wastewater properly before it hits groundwater.
The last is used for heavy soils (clay or rock). It’s a mound system where again you have the tanks and the water is pumped to a mound of layered soils to mimic a conventional system. For those there are vent pipes that you can inspect and also look for signs that it’s saturated and failing.
There is a state form that we have to complete for every evaluation and the county gets a copy. Generally if a system is over 20 years old or has no permits pulled for it, the county will consider it a failed system and make the homeowners replace it. We have some rural farming communities here with “do it yourself” septic systems that are definitely not code compliant. One of the goals of these inspections is to find those systems when the farm changes hands and make them come up to current code.
The dye is used to find out if the septic system is leaking into any near by wetland, stream or pond.
Actually, what they do with the dye is look to see if it appears on the surface of the leach field, which would indicate that the system is saturated. I don’t recall ever buying or selling a house where the septic tank was pumped as part of the inspection. I’ve never encountered a house with a holding tank and no leach field, they are probably illegal everywhere we’ve lived, and have never seen one of those mounds with vents anywhere but a commercial property or maybe a development.
CT reputedly has lots of radon, but I only ever saw one house there with a remediation system, and we went through two or three house-buying cycles. Everyone demanded a test, though.
My major encounter with septic system oddity was this house. It shared a septic system with the house across the road! We are uphill, and the septic line ran under the public thoroughfare to a tank and leach field on their property. 100+ years ago, both houses belonged to the same family, and the road was dirt. We eventually split the systems. The town was happy.
Laundry Room
We are very busy trying to get the laundry room done so the owners can have hot water. We had to pull the old water heater out in order to build the laundry room. The laundry room is going to have:
Laundry sink because husband does a lot of dirty work in garage
Stackable full size washer and dryer (wife just bought new washer and dryer)
Trap door in floor because there is an access crawlspace hole in the area to get under the family room addition - this is adding a whole new dimension to complexity
Floor drain - the husband is so worried that water heater or washer are going to flood back into the garage because the garage was built with the wrong slope… it slopes to the back of the garage instead of sloping out of garage. Absolutely a No No
Insulated brand new energy efficient water heater. Why new water heater??? Because, when we went to drain the existing water heater, it had almost 6 inches of sediment clogged at the bottom of the tank. My carpenter had to invent an air compressor to shoot into water heater to push out sediment every 3 seconds to get water to drain out of the tank to remove it.
Broom closet to hold vacuum cleaner and brooms
Shelves next to stackage washer and dryer
We had scheduled 5 days but have already run into many problems. Base plates, studs and a post had to be pulled out and rebuilt due to termite damage. Owner wants all the gas lines and plumbing moved into the walls. Currently they are running outside of walls. This will take a whole day of new plumbing and gas lines. And the floor drain is a whole bunch of work.
Oh well… they understand we are going to run way over schedule and budget. Original budget $2,000 (not including washer and dryer) but now we are going to be about $3,500 due to cost overruns and new water heater
That sounds like a big laundry room!