Burton is the kind of housing stock radon was made for. About half of it went up between 1940 and 1969, most of that in the 1950s, and it's largely what you'd expect from that era around Flint: modest ranches and capes on full basements, concrete block foundation walls, a sump crock in the corner, a floor drain, and a slab that's been through seventy Michigan winters.
None of that's a defect. It's just a lot of ways for soil gas to get in, in a state where the Indoor Radon Program puts one in four homes above the 4.0 pCi/L action level. The good news is that this is also the easiest kind of house to fix well. An unfinished Burton basement gives us the whole slab to choose from, which usually means a cleaner install, a shorter day, and a lower final number.
Block walls are the part people miss
A poured wall is a wall. A concrete block wall is dozens of hollow vertical cores, open at the bottom to the footing and the soil beside it, and often open at the top into the rim joist. That's a chimney. It's why two houses on the same street, built the same year, can test completely differently depending on what has been done to the block over the years.
So on a block-wall house we don't just core the slab and call it finished. We make sure the system reaches the cores as well as the sub-slab, and we seal the openings that feed them. Skipping that step is the single most common reason a system looks professional and still doesn't move the number.
The crock, the drain, and a one-day install
Two things in a Burton basement usually decide how the day goes. An open sump crock is a direct opening into the soil, and it gets a sealed, airtight lid with the pipe tied in. Your pump keeps working exactly as before. Where perimeter drain tile is reachable through that crock, it often doubles as a ready made suction network that reaches the whole footprint, which is the best outcome available in this housing stock.
Most Burton systems go in inside a single visit, three to five hours, with a verification test after. Below 4.0 pCi/L guaranteed, designed for under 2.8, and the job isn't finished until the retest says so.
Frequently asked
We have concrete block walls. Does that change the system?
It changes where we pull from, not whether it works. Hollow block cores act like a chimney for soil gas, so on a block-wall house we make sure the system addresses the cores and not just the slab, and we seal the openings that feed them. The guarantee is the same either way.
Our sump crock sits open. Is that the problem?
It's usually part of it. An open crock is a direct opening into the soil under your slab. A sealed airtight lid is standard on our installs, and where the drain tile is reachable through the crock, it often becomes the suction point that treats the whole footprint at once.
Burton is one of the places we work most, but the guarantee is the same everywhere in the county. See how the systems work, what they cost, or send a test result for a firm quote.