Radon Mitigation in Seward, NE

Seward is the county seat of Seward County and part of the Lincoln, Nebraska metropolitan area, which means a lot of households here treat Seward and Lincoln as one housing market. Radon does not follow commuting patterns. Seward County gets its own line in the report Nebraska DHHS files with the Legislature, and that line reads nothing like Lancaster County's. We line up radon testing and mitigation for houses across town, from the older stock around the Concordia University Nebraska campus to the newer builds pushing out toward the interstate, and the first useful thing to know is that a friend's result in Lincoln tells you very little about yours.

Here is the number that matters. Between October 1, 2018 and September 30, 2023, Seward County logged 621 radon measurements with an average of 7.0 pCi/L. Lancaster County, over the same window, logged 19,828 measurements and averaged 3.6. EPA recommends a home be fixed if the radon level is 4 pCi/L or higher, so the Seward County average sits well above the level at which EPA says to act, while the Lincoln figure sits below it. That gap is why a Seward address deserves its own conversation rather than a Lincoln rule of thumb.

Seward County Averages 7.0 pCi/L While Lancaster Averages 3.6

Nebraska law makes that difference concrete. Under Neb. Rev. Stat. 76-3505, new construction after September 1, 2019 is not required to use radon resistant new construction if it sits in a county where the average radon concentration is less than two and seven-tenths picocuries per liter of air, as determined by the department pursuant to section 76-3507. Seward County's 7.0 average is more than two and a half times that threshold, so nothing built in Seward qualifies for the county exemption. Any home here finished after that date should already have a passive sub-slab depressurization system in the ground: a minimum three-inch diameter ABS or PVC gas-tight pipe embedded vertically into the subslab material and carried at least twelve inches above the roof surface, plus an electrical circuit terminated in an approved box in the attic so a fan can be added later. Go look for the label. The statute requires one reading Radon Reduction System on each floor and in accessible attics.

The older half of Seward is the harder half. A house framed before the statute existed has no stack, no gas-permeable aggregate layer under the slab, and no sealed sump lid, so a retrofit has to build the suction field from scratch through whatever floor is already there. That work is regulated. Nebraska's Title 180, Chapter 11 rules on radon and radon progeny measurement and mitigation services state that a business must not conduct mitigations without a radon mitigation specialist, and the same chapter requires records of the work performed, including pre-mitigation and post-mitigation measurements. We connect Seward homeowners with licensed local pros working under those rules, and we ask for that post-mitigation number in writing every time, because measuring the house again after the fan is running is the only honest way to know what the system did.

See Seward, NE on Google Maps — we cover the whole area from Lincoln.