Should I hire a professional radon testing company or buy a home radon test kit?

Timmerman Radon Testing, LLC has many advantages over the typical short-term radon testing kits sold online and in stores.

Speed

The continuous radon monitors that we use for testing can produce accurate results in as little as 48 hours. We can take direct readings from the testing equipment and give you the highs, the lows, and the average radon levels right on the spot as well as a full report within the same business day.

A home radon test kit must be mailed into a laboratory and then you must wait for them to produce the results. One of the biggest complaints online for the at home test kits is the wait time is too long. Also, there are many complaints that the results don’t come at all. Shipping, handling, lab or clerical errors can make your results disappear into the abyss, resulting in a waste of money and time.

One of the main factors in the EPA’s recommendations for initial testing is speed. It is important to get your initial test results quickly to be able to make an informed decision on further action. (As some homes can test ridiculously high according to the EPS’s action limit.) With the time it takes to get results from a home test kit as well as the possibility of dealing with out of town/state laboratories, it may not be your best option for quick results.

Customer Service

When you hire our company for radon testing, we follow through to make sure all your needs are addressed. You can call or email the owner directly whenever the heck you want with any questions or concerns. You can even request copies of your report for up to 5 years after the initial test. But most importantly, we can give you guidance on the IDPH and EPA’s recommendations based on your test results. This can include giving you names of local reputable mitigation contractors. We receive no compensation from the radon mitigation contractors that we provide information on, just companies based on reputation and work ethic. We want happy, satisfied customers, this is just the way we do business.

When you buy something like a home test kit you make the purchase up front and from a company that most likely is not local. With companies like this, they entice you with a low price and once you make the purchase, there is not a lot of incentive to provide even adequate customer service. Secondly, most lack one of the secret ingredients, “love”. As a local radon testing company, we love the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Corridor. We are passionate about providing a good value service. It is just about impossible for a out of state company to compete with us on that level.

Quality Control

This is where things can get exhaustively long and boring. But it is also where you can see a humongous difference between a professional radon testing organization and a DIY home radon test kit. Some key points:

Not only do we have our machines calibrated on a yearly basis, we also run duplicates and crosschecks on a routine and minimum basis. So, every 10 tests at a minimum is crosschecked with another device. This ensures that results are accurate and radon monitors are functioning properly.

With one of the common home radon test kits that is used such as a charcoal canister, quality control is very complicated and hard to control. One example is how the testing gear is stored and for how long before being used. Is testing canister stored past expiration date? Where was it stored? What were the humidity levels? Is there a proper radon proof seal? How long since test was done before it gets into the hands of the laboratory? (most of these home radon test kits have an 8-day maximum including shipping)

In fact, there are so many more variables with this type of radon testing that a single test is never considered accurate enough to warrant mitigation.

Another reason is a typical single home radon test kit cannot warrant mitigation in a real estate transaction is the subject of user error. Where our machines can test and record hourly results, these other types of testing can only give a single number for the entire time the machine was in place. So, if the user forgot to write down the exact date/time the radon test kit was in place and gave an estimation it would throw off the entire average.

Really this is just the beginning of where things can go wrong with DIY home radon test kits. This is exactly why a business like ours exists, to provide expertise, experience and exceptional quality assurance in this complicated measurement procedure.

Unbiased

Most people now want to know radon levels before buying a home. Most people are going to want/need to sell their current home at some point. The folks buying your home are going to trust results from an independent licensed radon tester a lot more than a home radon test kit.

Secondly, our radon level test results are unbiased in anyway. We hope that every home tests low for radon, but the facts are, especially in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area, results come back high quite often. But if the radon levels do come back high, we have no conflict of interest with this. Timmerman Radon Testing, LLC only does testing. We do not do mitigation. Some companies do both. While this may seem on the surface to be a good idea, with the nature of radon (invisible odorless, etc.) we find that it does not create consumer confidence. (e.g. A company comes to test your home, it tests high and then they install a $1500 system to get rid of it) But if Timmerman Radon Testing, LLC provides the test and a third party mitigation company comes in and fixes it, you can be confident in the entire process.

The radon mitigation companies that we may recommend also do not do testing, and they don’t do it because of these same values that we believe in. It is unfortunate that the radon mitigation companies that don’t do their own testing can also be at a disadvantage on price because they typically hire out a third party for all the testing once the process is complete, but at the end of the day it is consumer confidence and overall value that is most important. This is going to be what people trust, especially when purchasing a home.

Call me today:

Owner: Andrew Timmerman - Former Home Inspector now a Certified Radon Tester

Certification number S00469

Timmerman Radon Testing, LLC

1200 Rainbow Blvd

Hiawatha, Iowa 52233

Phone: 319-213-0228

Open 9am - 5pm Monday - Friday

Also available after hours most of the time.

Call/Text:

Should I hire a professional radon testing company or buy a home radon test kit?

Timmerman Radon Testing, LLC has many advantages over the typical short-term radon testing kits sold online and in stores.

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Should I hire a professional radon testing company or buy a home radon test kit?

Timmerman Radon Testing, LLC has many advantages over the typical short-term radon testing kits sold online and in stores.

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