Strategic Radon System Placement

Friday, February 13th, 2026 by Brian Notestein

Challenge

During our walkthrough to determine radon system placement, the homeowner asked if it could be installed behind a finished wall next to a closet. He said there was about a nine inch gap between the basement wall and the sill plate on the floor. Our response was that we would need to see how far the footing extends, and if it was clear, we could definitely do it.

Additionally, from this location the only way to exit the house would be to utilize a chase where HVAC ducting was installed on the basement ceiling. Fortunately, this chase happened to have several inches available for our pipe to pass through.

Solution

The one thing we wanted to do was minimize the amount of drywall to be cut along the length of the chase ---to allow pipe to be inserted--- so, a small area was cut near the exit point above the window to allow one 30" section of pipe to be inserted at a time and glued together. Purple Mountain Radon cut six sections of pipe with each being 3" in length and glued them together until we reached the far end where the suction point was located. We also drilled a pilot hole in the area between the wall and the wall framing and discovered the footing was not an obstruction. This allowed us to core through the floor and create the void by removing soil.

In this multi-level home there is a basement level and a garden level. We cored through the floor in the basement level and through the wall of the garden level and combined the two suction points.

This was the email we received the next day:

"Hi Brian,

I wanted to thank you for the great job with installing the radon system in my house. The initial monitoring readings went from 15.8pcL to 2.1pcL in 12 hours! "

Following up a couple days later, the radon dropped even more to below 1.0 pCi/L.

This is the basement wall where the home owner asked us to install the system. The homeowner cut out and removed the drywall.

This is the chase, which encloses the HVAC ductwork, but with enough room to add a radon pipe.

This is the wall after the homeowner removed a section of the drywall.

This is the small ceiling cut-out above the window that provided access to the chase.

Looking through the chase and the multiple sections of pipe.

The final piece where radon riser goes up the wall to meet the pipe coming through the chase.

About the author

Brian Notestein

Owner

With an estimated 21,000 annual deaths attributed to radon induced lung cancer, we are working toward saving lives with every mitigation system we install. Let's reduce that number each year.

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Strategic Radon System Placement

Challenge

Solution

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