What we can and cannot determine online
Every tool on this platform runs on what you type into it. That is a real constraint, not a modest one, and pretending otherwise is how a website ends up telling somebody their house is fine.
So here is the boundary, stated in full and in advance. We can determine 7 things. There are 13 we cannot. Both lists appear on this page, and the four most consequential limits appear again beside every result any tool here produces.
The two lists
Two lists, published together so the shape is visible. We can determine 7 things about your situation from here. There are 13 we cannot, and the second list is the one worth reading — knowing that a question exists and has not been answered is more useful than a confident answer to it.
What we can determine
- What the terms on your report mean
- Units, durations, device types, and the difference between a screening figure and an annual average are published and stable.
- Which aspects of a test are commonly questioned
- Closed-building conditions, placement, duration, and weather are specified in published testing guidance, so we can tell you what will be asked about.
- Why your foundation and building features matter to the conversation
- The relationship between building type and soil-gas entry is described in published mitigation guidance and does not depend on seeing your house.
- What to ask a professional, and why each question matters
- A good question is a function of your situation, and your situation is something you can describe accurately.
- The general categories a next step could fall into
- Categories are not recommendations. We can lay out what exists without telling you which one applies to your house.
- What information is still missing from your picture
- Absence is checkable. If you have not told us the duration, nobody knows the duration, and saying so is useful.
- Whether we can currently route a request in your area
- That is a fact about this platform rather than about your house, and it is derived from our own provider records.
What we cannot determine
- Whether your test was conducted correctly
- Protocol compliance depends on distances, surfaces, and four days of household behaviour that nobody recorded and we cannot reconstruct.
- Whether the device was calibrated
- Calibration is a property of the device and its programme. The reading carries no evidence about it either way.
- Whether your result is accurate
- Accuracy would require a duplicate measurement or a laboratory record. A number typed into a form is a report of a number.
- Whether reduction work is legally required for you
- Requirements vary by state and by transaction, most states require disclosure rather than action, and this is a question for counsel rather than a website.
- Whether a particular system would work in your house
- That depends on diagnostics performed on the building — how the soil under it communicates — which cannot be inferred from a description.
- Whether a provider is properly licensed for every jurisdiction
- Licensing is issued and withdrawn by authorities on their own schedule. What we could confirm is what an authority said on a date we checked.
- Whether a provider carries adequate insurance
- A certificate shows a policy existed when it was issued. Adequacy for a specific job is a judgement, and currency is a question for the carrier.
- Whether your home is safe
- Safety is not a property a measurement establishes, and it is not a word this platform is in a position to use about anybody’s house.
- Whether a health condition is related to radon
- That is a medical question about a specific person, and it belongs with a clinician who holds their history.
- Which contractor you should hire
- We hold no performance observations on any business. A recommendation would be a preference presented as a finding.
- What the work will finally cost
- Price follows from a design, a design follows from diagnostics, and neither has happened. We publish no cost figures anywhere.
- What the physical conditions at your property are
- Access, moisture, slab condition, and existing pipework are things somebody has to look at.
- When a provider could actually attend
- Availability is set by the business and changes daily. We do not hold a calendar and would not publish one we had not verified.
Why the second list is longer
Not modesty. A platform whose claimed abilities outnumber its stated limits has drifted towards selling, and the check that keeps the second list longer than the first runs automatically at build time — if the balance ever inverts, this site fails to build.
The more useful point is that a stated limit is information. “We cannot tell whether your test was conducted correctly” tells you three things: the question exists, somebody can answer it, and nobody has yet. A page that quietly omitted that sentence would leave you believing your number was more settled than it is — which is precisely the belief that leads to spending money on the wrong thing.
What stays unknown no matter what you tell us
Some gaps close when you supply more detail. These do not. They are properties of the device, the laboratory, or the four days in your house that nobody recorded, and no amount of description recovers them. Each is shown as an open question rather than a problem, because that is what it is — an unknown is not a failure.
- Device calibrationNot known
A device reports what it reports. Whether it was calibrated, and when, is a property of the device and its programme rather than of the reading.
- Chain of custodyNot known
Where the device was between the end of the test and the analysis affects what the result describes, and only the handling record shows it.
- Placement complianceNot known
Whether placement actually met protocol depends on distances and surfaces nobody has measured from here, however carefully it was described.
- Interference during the testNot known
A door propped open for an afternoon, or a device moved and moved back, would not appear in any record a homeowner holds.
- Seasonal variation in this houseNot known
The same house commonly reads differently in different seasons, and a single test covers one period rather than a year.
- Readings on other floorsNot known
A measurement describes the level it was taken on. What the rest of the house reads is a separate question with a separate answer.
What this means for how you use the site
- Read the tools as preparation for a conversation, not as a substitute for one. Their value is that you arrive knowing what to ask and what your own situation is.
- Treat every output as conditional on what you typed. Change a detail and the output changes, which is the honest behaviour of something working from a description.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis, a legal opinion, or an assurance about anybody’s health. The three lists above say where each of those questions actually belongs.
The counterpart to this page is the standard we hold ourselves to — the same boundary written as commitments rather than as capabilities, with how each one is enforced.
When a question needs somebody who can see the building
Describe your situation and we will tell you honestly whether we can route it to a provider in your area today, or whether we cannot.