The quiet half
Some problems announce themselves. The dangerous ones do not.
Everything under what is it doing starts because something broke and you noticed. These are the opposite. There is nothing to notice, nothing leaking and nothing making a noise, and the only way to know is to go and find out.
Each one is the same shape: whether it applies to your house, the cheap test that answers it, what the number means, and only then what it costs if the answer is bad.
Written
- RadonRadon is the one house problem with no symptom at all. A $10 to $25 kit is the only way to find out, EPA says fix at 4 pCi/L, and this covers where to put the test, how to read the result, and what mitigation actually costs.
- Hard water and scaleNobody is required to tell you how hard your water is, and the map behind every "hardness by ZIP code" page is 1975 stream data. Here is the free test you can do in a bottle, the $10 strip that gives you the number, and what a softener costs.
Being worked through
- Well waternot yetWhat to test for, how often, and what the results mean
- Crawl space dampnot yetThe musty smell, the vapour barrier and the joists
- Termite pressurenot yetWhether your area has it, and the signs before the swarm