An installed system is not a permanent fix
Local measurements and geology — not national boilerplate.
Radon fans run continuously — every hour of every day — and they wear out, generally somewhere in the five-to-ten-year range. When a fan fails in Scott County, the house does not drift back to a mildly elevated level; it returns toward its untreated baseline. Scott County sits on glacial till laid over uranium-bearing bedrock along the Mississippi — the same deposit that makes eastern Iowa one of the most radon-prone corridors in the country. The failure is easy to miss because there is nothing to see or smell. The one indicator is the manometer — the small U-shaped gauge on the pipe. If the liquid in both legs has levelled out, the system is no longer pulling suction and the house is effectively unmitigated.
Sources: EPA Map of Radon Zones; Iowa HHS Radiological Health (Iowa Radon Survey); EPA (action level)
Common failures on Davenport radon systems
Repair work in the Quad Cities has a particular flavor: much of the local housing stock is older, with stone or block foundations, added-on sump pits, and systems that were retrofitted years ago and never revisited. Iowa's brutal freeze-thaw cycle is hard on exterior pipe runs and roof penetrations, and a fan mounted in an unconditioned Iowa attic works against bigger temperature swings than the same fan would in a milder state. With the statewide average around 7.6 pCi/L, a dead system here does not mean a mildly elevated house — it means a house drifting back toward some of the highest untreated levels in the country.
The most common call is a dead or dying fan. A fan that has gone silent, or one that has become noticeably louder or started vibrating, is usually at the end of its bearings. Replacement is straightforward, but the replacement fan has to be matched to the original design — an undersized unit will not hold suction under the slab, and an oversized one wastes electricity and can pull conditioned air out of the house.
Other frequent problems: seal failures where the suction point meets the slab or around a sump lid, which let the fan pull room air instead of soil gas; cracked or disconnected pipe, often in an attic run or where the pipe exits; and systems that were undersized from the start and never actually got the house below 4.0 pCi/L. Any repair should end the same way an installation does — with a retest that proves the level came back down.
- Radon fan replacement, sized to the original system design
- Manometer diagnosis — confirming whether the system still pulls suction
- Re-sealing suction points, sump lids, and foundation penetrations
- Repairs and retesting on systems installed by other contractors
Related pages
Every page cites its sources — start where your question is.
Davenport Radon System Repair — FAQ
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