Radon Mitigation in Security-Widefield, CO

Security-Widefield is an unincorporated community south of Colorado Springs, built substantially in the 1950s and 1960s as housing for Fort Carson and the defense economy that grew around it. That origin gives it one of the most consistent housing stocks in the county, and a distinct set of radon characteristics.

The dominant form is the modest single-story ranch on a slab or over a shallow crawl space, built quickly and to the standards of the period. Mid-century slabs in this area commonly have unsealed floor-wall joints, utility penetrations cut without sleeves, and control joints that have opened over seventy years of soil movement. Those are the entry paths, and on a house of this era there are usually several.

The practical consequence is that a Security-Widefield install often involves more sealing work than a comparable newer home. A single suction point can serve these houses well because the footprints are small and rectangular, but the diagnostic work of finding and closing the entry points is where the time goes.

Many homes here have had basements partially finished or garages converted to living space over the decades, frequently without permits, which produces foundation transitions that were never designed to be air-sealed.

This community also has an unusually informed relationship with environmental testing. Residents dealt with a widely publicized groundwater contamination issue affecting the local water supply in recent years, and the experience left a population that takes household testing seriously and asks harder questions than average. That is worth knowing: homeowners here generally want the data, the retest result and the documentation rather than reassurance.

The area is unincorporated and permits through El Paso County and the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department.