I know what radon is, don't need that education.

I need to have my place tested.

I've tried the home DIY kits with poor results. I bought a kit for Accustar labs, placed the sampler thing for the alotted timeframe, completed the paperwork as required, sent it in the prepaid envelope that came with it, and zero results. I kept checking the website for months and it appears they just toss them in the trash and pocket your money from the sale of the kit (the return shipping and laboratory testing is all wrapped into the purchase price of the sampling kit so it's a great scam to run).

Even the company/lab recommended by the EPA for these kits has awful reviews for this very problem on Amazon.

Are the digital home meters reliable? It doesn't take too many failed DIY test kits at $15-35 each to surpass the $130 cost of a digital meter.

What other options?

I'd recommend the fancy, infinitely-reusable meter, which you can then sell to recoup most of your investment after you've gotten your own readings.

Re-use the things, wherever possible.

20 some years ago - my dad would get test kits from the local county extension office when someone locally requested a test.  At the time I think they were free.  You let them set out for a few days and then shipped them off for lab testing.

Doing a web search, it looks like this is still a thing, either free or a reduced price, and I would assume accurate.  Third party not selling mitigation services.

Once someone figured out they could create a demand for mitigation installs, it exploded into a industry when buying/selling homes in the last 20 years.

Yes - Radon is bad, but I think they turned some of it into a bigger boogey man than it is at low levels.

My brother has a digital radon meter. No idea how accurate it is, but I can definitely tell it works based on the reading changes by location and with and without vents closed and such.

A while back I made an offer on a house and the home inspector did a radon test. Anything above 4.0 pCi-L is considered failing. I get an email from the inspector one night, 482.0. I immediately assume he messed up the decimal point, but no, it was 482.0. Said it was the highest reading he'd ever seen.

A while later I was looking at another house. Radon came out in the 90s. I talked to a radon mitigation company just to get some info and in talking to the guy I mentioned the 482. He says, "what was that number again? hold on". I hear some talking in the background, he comes back to the phone and says, "yeah, we got that job". Said they'd done tens of thousands of systems in the region and that was the second highest they had dealt with.

Around here most of the extreme failed radon tests are caused by people being around the tester.

From my experience the tests should be done on an empty home with no one entering it while the test is being complete.

How would you complete a long term test then?

And wouldn't you want the results to mirror conditions that are created with people living in the home?

I'm trying to wrap my head around why the results would fail when the home is occupied but pass when it's vacant. The only explanation I can hypothesize is as follows. One way radon gets into the home is when a negative pressure is drawn by things like running the dryer, vent hood, furnace, etc. If that's how it's getting in then would it make any sense to shut those things down and get the people out while testing? I would think a long term average while the home is being used as it normally would is going to be the most representative of the real radon levels.


Lastly, I did some more research on digital meters. None of the low cost digital meters come with a certification or official calibration. Their accuracy is spotty. One guy on bogleheads forum has 3 of the same meters (coincidentally made by a company that also makes the pro meters). When placed side-by-side he regularly gets readings that vary about +/-25% from the average of the 3. To get good metering equipment it will cost you about $1000 plus $200 for recalibration (which is required annually in most cases).

To get accurate results from the short term test kits that you mail to the lab it has to arrive within 7 days of the end of the test or the lab will reject it. Which means the prepaid 1st-class mail label that comes with it is a joke and you have to pay for Express delivery.

The long term tests are a big unknown. That is what I tried before and the lab (Accustar), being one of the highest rated, still managed to lose my test or just failed to put the report online. I'm not really sure because these companies intentionally hide their contact info so you can't contact them when your test doesn't show up.

My opinion is it’s people not staying away from it.  People went to go and touch it and “check on it “.

It’s easy to get a test on an unoccupied house. You do it after the previous owners move out and before the new owners move in.

I live in a VERY high radon area. Every three years we get tested. Last fall the mitigation fan died and it was replaced.  We also had a second system installed on the opposite Side of the basement. I also happened to have two of my own devices (Airwave and EcoSense Cube) I put in when the system dies to track thing pre and post repair.  

After the install they did professional testing to make sure it was mitigated that lasted three days. Three fancy expensive digital machines and six dumb sensors that were to absorb air and had to be sent to lab.

For what its worth, the results were almost identical (.2 variance) between the professional testing and my devices.

When COVID hit my wife had to work from home in the basement so we figured we better test. Called a local company and a Thursday to Monday test was like a $100.

A place I was buying, I dropped a digital meter and asked for a remediation system based on the results. Owner wanted his own test done and had a professional come set up their system (he had multiple properties in the area, so tested them all at once. Their results matched the digital one exactly. Same after the mitigation system was put in. Each time I've moved since then, I've just set it up from time to time to monitor the system. The number of times I've used it, it was well worth the $130 it cost years ago. Unfortunately, it looks like that model isn't made any longer so can't recommend it, but at least shows it can be valuable.