A lot of Chattanooga landlords did not set out to be landlords. A job move, a house that would not sell at the price they wanted, an inherited property, or simply a decision to hold onto a starter home as an investment instead of listing it. Whatever the reason, the moment a house switches from owner-occupied to tenant-occupied is a good moment to test for radon, even if it never occurred to you when you were living there yourself.
When it was your house, a radon reading was your decision to act on or not. Once someone else is living there and paying you rent, the air quality in that house is something you are responsible for providing, and most landlords want to know what they are dealing with before a tenant asks. We are not aware of a Tennessee statute that specifically mandates radon testing for rental property, so this is not about a legal requirement. It is about knowing the actual condition of a home you are now renting out to someone else's family, and being able to answer honestly if they ask.
Our whole region sits over geology that produces radon at levels the EPA considers worth addressing, and that has nothing to do with who lives in the house. If your home has never been tested, or was tested years ago before a renovation changed the basement or added a finished lower level, the reading you get today could look very different from whatever you assumed. Our radon levels page covers what is typical for this area.
A 48 hour test placed on the lowest livable level, with the house closed up, gives you a clear number before the first tenant moves in. If the result comes back low, you have documentation that costs nothing to hand a prospective tenant who asks, and one less thing to think about for years. If it comes back elevated, you get to decide how to handle it on your own timeline, before anyone is living there, rather than in the middle of a lease when a tenant brings it up.
A standard sub-slab or sub-membrane system brings most homes well under the level the EPA recommends acting on, and once it is installed it keeps working with almost no attention, aside from watching the gauge occasionally. See our mitigation systems page for how the equipment works and our cost guide for what to budget. A system installed between tenants, with nobody living in the house yet, is about as low-friction as this kind of work gets.
If you already have tenants and have not tested, you do not need to disrupt anything. A test kit or a short-term monitor can sit in the house during a normal week without anyone needing to be present for it, and results still come back the same way. If you manage more than one rental, testing all of them at once is usually more efficient to schedule than doing it one at a time as each lease turns over.
Plenty of accidental landlords eventually do sell. If that ends up being the plan, a radon test done now becomes part of your paper trail, and our real estate radon guide and contractor guide cover what buyers and their inspectors will expect at that point.
Call (423) 529-4385 and tell us the square footage, whether it has a basement or crawl space, and when the next tenant is expected. We can usually test and, if needed, install before that move-in date.
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