- 1). Determine your home's ventilation rate. The ventilation rate is calculated by determining the amount of cubic feet of air in your home that is being ventilated per hour. Homes are ventilated through kitchen and bathroom fans, electrical outlets, crawl spaces, attics, cracks and leaks in windows, doors and walls, plumbing and dryer vents. The more sound and air tight your home, the higher the concentration of radon -- if radon is present -- because it has no outlets for escape. Many high-grade air purifiers, such as those by Austin -- a brand used in hospitals worldwide -- also list how many cubic feet of air they clean, so you will want to take this into consideration when determining ventilation rates. A structural engineer or radon mitigation specialist will be able to determine your home's ventilation rate. However, an average home's ventilation rate -- 1,800 square feet with eight-foot ceiling height -- is 7,200 cubic feet per hour.
- 2). Calculate the emission rate of radon in your home. To do this, you will need to determine the amount of gas released per square foot of stone in your home per hour. The average rate is 0.1 to 5 picoCuries per square foot per hour. A picoCurie is one-trillionth of a Curie, which is an international measurement unit of radioactivity. A radon mitigation specialist will be able to determine this amount for you, if you find this process difficult. Otherwise, consult the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or a radon mitigation specialist for a list of stone products and their radon emission rates per square feet per hour, and multiply this number by the number of square feet of radon-producing stone that is in your home. This is your radon emission rate.
- 3). Divide the radon emission rate by the ventilation rate and you get the concentration of radon in your home in cubic feet per hour.
- 4). Divide again -- using the cubic feet to liters of air constant -- to determine the picoCuries of radon per liter of air per hour that are emanating throughout your home at any given time. For example, in a 24-hour period, four picoCuries per liter of radon -- the uppermost acceptable level in a structure -- will produce 12,672 radioactive disintegrations in one liter of air.
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