Electronic Radon Detector

After the previous blog on our experiment, we thought we could follow this up with the use of an electronic radon detector meter. We read various reviews, the one with the highest reviews was the “Airthings Corentium home radon detector”. However, most of the negative reviews related to the fact the machine wasn’t working on arrival. We paid £108.00 for it on Prime Day but without was £169.00. It visually appears identical to the “Canary” which from PropertECO was £165.00.

Ours arrived on Amazon Prime and worked straight out of the box. It stated the detectors in the meter were the work of the CERN laboratory, which gave us confidence.  It took a few minutes to self-calibrate. We purchased this meter to see if we could get a snapshot during a survey. To see if during the 4-5 hours spent on site would be sufficient enough for us to gain any meaningful reading. This meter takes 24 hours to give the first readings. So, using it in any less of a time frame than 24 hours is not possible. So, no use to a building surveyor doing residential work.

From a homeowner perspective however to be able to get some sort of meaningful results in 24 hours without having to send off for a 10 day laboratory test could be a great advantage for the short term needs of a property purchaser in a high risk Radon area.

Seasonality

The laboratory tests offered a seasonally corrected value. As the electronic meter was used after the laboratory tests. It was exceptionally warm during the second test period. hence doors and windows were open. This does appear to confirm that winter readings will be higher than summer readings by a significant margin. This will be a subject of a different blog.

	Unseasonably corrected laboratory analysis	Electronic Meter reading	difference
Solid floor 1950’s	54	35	19
Suspended timber 1926	42	12	30

So the results do show a fairly major difference. We expected them to be proportionally different but that does not appear to be the case.