Vapor Intrusion... Who knew?!

I received an email from Aria Cahill regarding this infograph. Seems like some good information and another reason I am happy we were able to address our radon issue.  Apparently there are other chemicals in the ground as well that act similar to radon and will intrude into your basement.  It appears that the mitigation is the same as for radon, so we are covered.

Radon Mitigation Success !

After reading an article in newspaper about radon in the Twin Cities, Jen thought we should test our basement (since we had just put in a gas fireplace).  Test came back with a reading of 10 pCi/L, 4 is the EPA recommended level.  So we bought an electronic meter and stayed out of the basement for a week.

We placed the sensor in the same location to verify the accuracy with the other test.  The reading for the electronic meter came back at 12.  The directions say to place the meter 20 inches above the floor, but since we are always crawling around we thought we would get a reading on the floor.  On the floor the reading was 25-30 pCi/L.

So after doing some reading I found that typical installation fees for mitigation systems run $800 to $1200, which I thought was a bit excessive for the materials involved.  Being a DIY kind of guy I installed the system myself and now the reading is 1.2 pCi/L on the floor!  We are very happy.

Cost:

• Fan - $100
• Pipe - $50
• Drill rental - $70
• Incidentals - ~$50 ?

So for about $300 I was able to install the system.  It wasn't too hard and it was very satisfying to see the reduction in the reading.

Utility Room Wall.

We are working on finishing the basement, we needed to make some room in the family room so we could lay out the carpet.  I thought it would be a good time to finish off the wall for the utility room and build some shelving in there to store boxes while we were working in the other room.  Started on a Sunday, and got half of it up that day, and finished the rest during the week.

Fixing the treadmill

I went for a run one morning and found that the belt of the treadmill was slipping quite a bit.  Pulled out the manual, tried tightening the walking belt, didn't help.  Put it on the back burner for a couple days (weeks).  Eventually found myself bored and took off the cover, found quite a bit of black dust.  The internet said that it could be the motor belt as well.

I marked the belt and roller to see where the belt was slipping, this confirmed that it was the motor belt.  I called up the support center to order the part.  He had me move the tension spring up to the next setting, which fixed the problem as well.  This confirmed that the motor belt was failing, so I ordered the part, $40 for the a simple belt...  Well cheaper than a new treadmill I guess.

You can see in the bottom picture where I drew a line with white out to see if the pulley was slipping on the roller.  I also made a line on the axel from the motor onto the belt and I could see that move when the walking belt would slip.

The final clearing!

As you could see we started clearing our land 2 weeks ago, when my dad brought over his new tractor.  We have come a long way in 2 weeks.  What started as clearing for a playset, turned into a destroy the lot while having fun on the tractor time.  Yesterday we had to say good bye to the orange beast, but I think it has served us very well :)

On Sunday we hooked up the tiller attachment and it cleared the area, and made a nice bed for planting.  It was pretty amazing how much we were able to get done in such a short amount of time.  Now we have to get back to manually raking and seeding.

More clearing the land

We continue to work on clearing the area for the kids playset.
I also cleared a path up to the road on the opposite side of the lot.  We might be able to use that to drive down to the bottom, while we are working on putting grass in the back yard.

Our orchard

My parent bought honeycrisp apple trees for Nick and Maddy when they were born and we have those planted along the driveway.  Last fall in October we purchased a bunch more apple trees, when they went to 75% off.  We also picked up a flowering pear and a couple of pear trees.

I was worried about the trees, because of the lack of snow cover and occational cold temperature during the winter.  But they are budding out and look to be doing just fine.