Radon Mitigation in Old Colorado City, CO

Old Colorado City is the oldest part of the metro area, platted in 1859, and its housing stock reflects that. Much of the area west of 26th Street is pre-1940 construction: bungalows and Victorians on partial basements, dirt-floor crawl spaces, and stone or early poured foundations that predate anything resembling a modern vapor barrier.

This matters in a specific way. A clean sub-slab depressurization system assumes a continuous concrete slab over permeable fill. Older homes here often have neither. The result is more submembrane work, more mixed-foundation homes needing two suction points, and more diagnostic time before anyone can quote a firm number.

Decades of renovation compound the problem. Many homes have had basements dug out, porches enclosed, and additions added across several ownerships, which produces a foundation that is part original stone, part mid-century slab, and part recent pour, with no continuity between them. Each transition is a potential entry path and a potential suction leak, and a system designed for one section of the house will not necessarily serve the rest.

The lots themselves add a constraint that shows up nowhere else in the county. Westside blocks are narrow, houses sit close together, and there is often no clean exterior route for the vent pipe that keeps the discharge the required distance from a neighbor's windows. That pushes more of the pipe run into the interior of the house, which means more finish work, more disruption, and a higher bid. Ask any installer to walk the exterior before quoting.

The area also sits near the Ute Pass fault zone at the base of the foothills, where fractured bedrock gives soil gas easy paths to the surface. Homes on the same block can test very differently.

Work inside city limits permits through the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department. Several blocks fall within the Old Colorado City Historic District, which adds review for exterior alterations visible from the street.