Radon Mitigation in Crete, NE
Crete sits in Saline County southwest of Lincoln, and it is the kind of town where radon rarely comes up until somebody puts a house on the market. Doane University anchors one side of town and the housing runs from pre-war frame homes on the old grid to newer construction spreading outward from it. We handle testing and mitigation across all of it. The wrinkle in Crete is not that the radon is unusual for southeast Nebraska. It is that so few houses here have ever been measured, which leaves buyers, sellers, and lenders working from almost no local track record at all.
The state's own accounting shows it. In the five-year window Nebraska DHHS reported to the Legislature, Saline County logged 289 radon measurements. Lancaster County logged 19,828 over the same period. That is not a small gap, and it means the Saline County average of 6.8 pCi/L rests on a far thinner sample than the Lincoln figure most people around here have heard quoted. Thin sample or not, 6.8 sits well above the 4 pCi/L level at which EPA recommends a home be fixed, and it is nearly double Lancaster County's 3.6.
289 Measurements in Five Years, Averaging 6.8 pCi/L
Low test volume changes how a Crete transaction goes. In Lincoln a radon test during inspection is close to routine and most agents have a script for it. In Crete, a buyer who asks for one is often the first person in the chain to raise the subject, and the timeline gets tight because a measurement has to run its full course before closing regardless of how the calendar looks. Plan for it early. If the result comes back at 4 pCi/L or higher, EPA recommends the home be fixed, and that is a far easier conversation at the inspection stage than three days out from signing. If it lands between 2 and 4, EPA recommends the owner consider fixing it, which is a judgment call rather than a mandate, and it belongs in the negotiation instead of in a scramble.
On the construction side, Saline County gets no relief from the state. Neb. Rev. Stat. 76-3505 exempts new construction only where the county average radon concentration is less than two and seven-tenths picocuries per liter of air. At 6.8 the county is nowhere near that, so radon resistant new construction applies to anything built here after September 1, 2019 that is intended to be regularly occupied by people. Nebraska DHHS spells out what that means underfoot: four inches of clean aggregate smaller than 2 inches but larger than a quarter inch in diameter, a minimum 6 mil polyethylene soil-gas retarder overlapped 12 inches at the seams, and a gas-tight vent pipe of at least three inches carried above the roofline. Anything older than that date starts from a bare slab, and the retrofit has to reproduce the same suction from the outside in.
See Crete, NE on Google Maps — we cover the whole area from Lincoln.
Radon testing & mitigation Services Available in Crete
Every service we offer in Lincoln is available to Crete homeowners and businesses at the same pricing:
- Radon Testing
- Radon Mitigation System Installation
- Real Estate Radon Testing & Mitigation
- Crawl Space & Sump Mitigation
- New Construction & Passive System Activation
- System Checkups, Repairs & Retesting
See the full pricing guide for typical ranges.
Crete FAQs
Why do so few Crete homes get tested compared with Lincoln?
Volume follows habit and transaction count. Nebraska DHHS reported 19,828 radon measurements in Lancaster County between October 2018 and September 2023 against 289 in Saline County. Lincoln has far more sales, more inspectors folding radon into a standard package, and a much larger pool of homeowners who first heard about it from a neighbor. None of that changes the gas under a Crete slab. It only means the local information you would normally lean on, which is other people's results, mostly does not exist here yet.
Is 6.8 pCi/L what my Crete house will test at?
No, and that is worth being blunt about. The 6.8 figure is the average of 289 measurements taken across all of Saline County over five years and reported by Nebraska DHHS. Averages hide enormous spread. A house with a full basement, an open sump crock, and a tight winter envelope can read several times what the place next door reads, and the reverse happens just as often. The county number tells you the odds in this part of Nebraska are not in your favor. Only a test in your own house tells you your number.
What do I do if my Crete test lands between 2 and 4 pCi/L?
EPA recommends that Americans consider fixing their home for radon levels between 2 pCi/L and 4 pCi/L, and states there is no known safe level of exposure to radon. That is guidance rather than a requirement, so the call is yours. What usually pushes a Crete household toward acting: a finished basement bedroom somebody sleeps in, a plan to sell within a few years, or a household member who spends most of the day downstairs. A second measurement over a longer stretch is a reasonable middle step if you want more confidence first.