New Construction Radon Systems in Story City, IA

New construction radon in Story City, IA got rewritten this month. Iowa’s HF 2297, effective July 1, 2026, requires a passive radon mitigation system in every newly constructed single-family home and duplex statewide: the vent pipe, sub-slab to roofline, built in from the pour. The vote was nearly unanimous, which is what legislating against an 8.5 pCi/L state average eventually looks like. For north Story County builders and buyers, the practical line is the permit date, because this county had no radon-resistant construction rule of its own before the state’s.

Two kinds of “new” in Story City

Post-law builds carry the pipe. What they don’t carry is a guarantee: passive systems move soil gas on natural stack draft alone, and Iowa’s till has embarrassed natural draft before. The finishing question, does this house need the fan, belongs to the first closed-house winter, roughly November through April up here, and a 48-hour test answers it. When the answer is yes, activation is the trade’s easiest ticket: inline fan into the existing run, an outlet, a manometer, a retest.

Pre-law builds, the neighborhoods Story City added through the 2010s and early 2020s, are ordinary Iowa houses in radon terms: nothing built in, Zone 1 underneath, 71.6% statewide odds of testing at or over the line. They retrofit with standard sub-slab depressurization, four figures and a day, same provable finish.

For anyone building now

The law sets a floor, and small details decide whether the passive stack ever has a chance: pipe routed for real vertical draft, sump lids sealed airtight, the run labeled at every level, an attic path that accepts a fan later without surgery. Builders hitting those marks hand their buyers a house that finishes cheap; builders treating the pipe as a checkbox hand them a future retrofit with extra steps.

Iowa Code 136B credentials all of this work for hire. Straight answers on the new law, first-winter testing, activations, and pre-law retrofits, free, across Story City and north Story County. Bring the permit date; the rest is a phone call.