You failed a radon test in DeKalb County
DeKalb County reads elevated often enough that a high result should not feel like an anomaly. What it should feel like is a prompt: confirm the number, find out which part of the house it came from, and get written quotes from people licensed to do the work.
Landlords in DeKalb ask a different question than owner-occupants: whether a system installed in a rental needs to be disclosed and how it holds up with tenants. Farm owners ask about outbuildings and whether a well matters. The well question comes up often enough to answer plainly — waterborne radon is a separate pathway from soil gas and needs its own test.
What an elevated result actually means
If the house has more than one soil-contact zone, the confirming test is worth placing thoughtfully rather than automatically. A high reading in a farmhouse cellar and a normal reading upstairs still means the cellar needs attention if anyone spends time there. On a rental property in DeKalb, confirm before the next lease starts rather than mid-tenancy, when access and closed-building conditions are much harder to control. And keep the paperwork: the original result, the confirmation, the quotes, and eventually the post-mitigation number. Open prairie means wind, and wind matters for testing: a gusty week can pressurize one side of a house and skew a short-term reading in either direction. Winter closed-house conditions are the reliable window. Harvest and planting seasons also affect scheduling on farm properties, where access to the yard around the house is not always free.
Your next four steps
Four steps, in this order. Confirm the result — a second short-term test or a longer-term measurement, run under closed-building conditions. Get written quotes from independent businesses holding a current IEMA-OHS radon mitigation license. Decide who pays, which in Illinois is a negotiation and not a legal mandate. Then verify with a post-mitigation test after the system runs. Nothing about a single elevated reading forces you out of your house or out of a contract. Ask for the post-mitigation test in writing, and on multi-zone farm properties ask for a reading in each conditioned zone rather than one number for the house. Landlords should keep the verification result with the property file — it is the document that answers a future tenant or buyer question without a new test.
If the result landed inside a deal
The Illinois Radon Awareness Act requires sellers to provide the state radon pamphlet and disclose known elevated results; it does not require testing or mitigation. DeKalb’s substantial investor and rental market means many properties changing hands have never been tested, so the buyer’s own measurement is frequently the only data that exists.
Communities we route in DeKalb County
Failed Radon Test questions in DeKalb County
A tenant’s test came back high. What is my next step as a landlord?
Confirm it under proper closed-building conditions, which usually means coordinating with the tenant on windows and doors for the test period. Then get written quotes. Illinois law here is about disclosure rather than compulsory installation, but a documented, verified fix is both the cleaner answer to a tenant and the better record for a future sale.
Does an elevated result put a sale in DeKalb County at risk?
Sales here run on two clocks: the general residential market and the university rental cycle, which concentrates transactions and turnover around the academic year. The Illinois Radon Awareness Act disclosure applies exactly as it does statewide — the pamphlet goes to the buyer, known elevated results get disclosed, and neither testing nor mitigation is compelled by the statute.
Am I legally required to mitigate in Illinois?
No. A result at or above 4 pCi/L is an EPA action recommendation, not an automatic legal obligation in a Illinois sale. What state law generally governs is disclosure — telling a buyer what you know — not whether a system gets installed. Who pays, and whether the work happens before closing, is negotiated between buyer and seller.
Related DeKalb County guides
- Radon mitigation in DeKalb County
- Radon testing in DeKalb County
- Mitigation cost in DeKalb County
- System installation in DeKalb County
- Illinois radon contractors: join our network
Decision guides for this stage
- Failed a test during an inspection
- Negotiating radon repairs
- Buyer credit vs seller mitigation
- All homeowner decision guides
An elevated number in DeKalb County is a solvable building problem with a known fix and a verifiable result. Work the four steps, keep the paperwork, and let the 1 territories here put competing quotes in front of you rather than one.
Sources
- U.S. EPA — Radon
- U.S. EPA — A Citizen’s Guide to Radon
- U.S. EPA — Consumer’s Guide to Radon Reduction
- U.S. EPA — EPA Map of Radon Zones
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