We repair radon fans and check existing mitigation systems for homeowners in Asheville and nearby Buncombe County areas. Homeowners usually need this when the u-tube gauge on their radon pipe reads level, the fan has gone silent or started making new noises, or the house came with a system nobody has looked at in years. A radon system only protects you while the fan runs — and fans are the one component that wears out.
Quick self-check before you even call: look at the little u-shaped gauge on the pipe. Offset fluid means the fan is pulling. Level fluid means it isn’t — and that’s the whole diagnosis you need to give us.
Radon fans run 24 hours a day for years, and like any constantly running motor they eventually fail — most last somewhere in the range of five to ten years. Repair work means confirming the failure (gauge reading, power at the unit, bearing noise), replacing the fan with one correctly sized for the system’s suction field, re-sealing the couplings, and confirming the manometer shows proper draw again. A checkup covers the same ground for a working system: gauge reading, fan condition, pipe and seal integrity, and whether the original installation still matches the house — relevant if the basement’s been finished or the home has changed since the system went in.
When a fan has been dead for a while, we’ll usually recommend pairing the repair with a follow-up test, because the honest question isn’t just “does the fan spin” but “is the house back under the level it was mitigated to.”
Fan replacement is one of the more contained jobs in radon work. The variables: which fan the system needs (suction requirements differ between gravel sub-slab fields and tight-soil or membrane systems), where the fan is mounted (an exterior wall canister at shoulder height versus an attic unit), the condition of the couplings and pipe around it, and whether the failure exposed an underlying issue like bad pipe pitch holding condensation. Most replacements are completed in a single short visit; we’ll tell you on the call if yours looks like more than that.
Check the u-tube manometer on the pipe: level fluid means no suction. Back that up with your ears — a working fan makes a faint continuous hum at the unit. If the gauge is level or the fan is silent, the system is down, and that’s all the diagnosis we need from you.
Radon risk is about long-term exposure, not days — so a dead fan isn’t an emergency, but it isn’t something to park for a season either, because levels drift back toward what they were before mitigation. Reasonable promptness is the right posture: call, get it scheduled, and the house goes back to its mitigated level.
Mechanically inclined homeowners sometimes can, and we won’t pretend otherwise. The two things a swap-it-yourself approach misses: the original fan may have been wrongly sized in the first place, and a replacement without a follow-up reading or test tells you the fan spins, not that the house is protected. If you’d rather have it sized, sealed, and verified in one visit, that’s the job.
Thirty seconds. We follow up by phone — usually with a clear scope from that one call.
You don’t need to understand the report. The number is enough — for example, “inspection said 6.8” tells us almost everything we need to start.
Call or send the form with “the manometer is level” or “the fan went quiet” — fan repair is usually a single short visit, scheduled from one phone call.