Radon Mitigation in Stewartville, MN
Radon testing and mitigation in Stewartville.
The median construction year for a Stewartville home is 1987, which means the housing here splits roughly in half between older central blocks and newer subdivisions on the edges. The radon question is the same one either way, but the basement it lives in looks very different.
Mixed eras in one town
The blocks closest to downtown Stewartville have homes that go back to the early 1900s, with foundations that pre-date modern building practice. Block walls, stone walls, slabs that got added decades after the original basement, and the kind of mechanical patchwork that comes from a hundred years of owners making changes.
The subdivisions on the south and east sides of town, including Aurora Rising, are a different housing stock. Tidy mechanical rooms, consistent layouts, and the post-2009 Minnesota passive radon system roughed in under the slab on most of the newer homes.
The rock under both halves of town is the same. Indoor radon trends above the state average across all of Olmsted County, and Stewartville sits in the middle of that pattern regardless of which side of town a home is on.
Stewartville at a glance
Radon work for a town with a wide range of housing eras, where the same question shows up in a 1920s home near downtown and a 2020s home in the Aurora Rising subdivision.
- Housing
- Roughly 7,000 residents in a mix of historic central blocks and steadily growing subdivisions on the south and east sides, including the Aurora Rising development.
- Geology
- A layer of soft limestone close to the surface, the same rock that runs across southeast Minnesota.
- Median radon (Stewartville)
- 4.2 pCi/L , above the EPA action level 37 tests/yr avg, MDH 2014–2023
- Olmsted County ≥ 4 pCi/L
- 42.3% of tested homes Ranks #54 of 87 MN counties
- Distance from Rochester
- 10 miles south
- County
- Olmsted
- Median construction year
- 1987
What the radon numbers actually say in Stewartville
Across the testing the Minnesota Department of Health, Radon Testing public dataset has on file for Stewartville (2014–2023), the median home reads 4.2 pCi/L. That is above the EPA action level of 4 pCi/L. The geometric mean comes in at 3.6 pCi/L. That is a log-scale average that tends to track better when the distribution has a long upper tail, which radon distributions always do.
Zoom out to Olmsted County. 42.3% of tested homes in the county come back at or above 4 pCi/L. That ranks Olmsted County #54 of 87 Minnesota counties for the share of homes above the action level. A separate 68.3% of tested homes are at or above 2 pCi/L, which is the threshold the Minnesota Department of Health uses when it recommends action.
About 37 Stewartville homes get tested every year on average, drawing from a stock of roughly 2,551 housing units. The number above is not a forecast for your specific home. Radon varies house to house even on the same street. The number is a reasonable starting line for the conversation, not a prediction. See the full data set for the by-county and by-tract picture.
Three steps. On your timeline.
Measure your radon level.
We start with a measurement of what is actually in the air your family breathes. You see the result we see, and we walk through what it means in plain language.
You see the picture first.
Once you have the result, we talk through what your home is dealing with. No scripts, no pressure. You decide what to do next on your own timeline.
A conversation about your home.
If you want to take action, we look at the basement together and talk through what a plan for your foundation could look like. Every home is its own conversation.
Other towns we cover.
Byron
Byron has roughly doubled in size since 2000, and most of the housing here is younger than the kids in it. For a lot of homeowners in town, the radon question is something they're thinking about for the first time, often after a coworker brought it up or a neighbor mentioned a test.
Chatfield
Chatfield straddles the line between Fillmore and Olmsted counties, with most of the city in Fillmore. The downtown core is one of the most intact small-town main streets in this part of Minnesota, and the housing around it covers eight decades of construction.
Oronoco
Oronoco wraps around Lake Zumbro, and a lot of the housing here is tied to the water in one way or another. Older lake cabins that got converted to year-round homes, newer builds on lots with a view of the river, and rural acreage homes outside the city limits. The basements vary as much as the homes do.
Find out your radon levels with a free radon test.
About 42% of tested Olmsted County homes come back above the EPA action level. The surrounding counties are higher. The first step is knowing where yours sits, and that is the part we do for free.