What's Done is Done

The most expensive thing I've had to do to this house so far is also the least sexy thing to talk about and photograph.

Hrmph.

This fancy black tupper tub you see above is a well water radon mitigation unit. It basically takes the water from the well pump, bubbles it to jostle the radon out (radon wants to be in the air, not the water) and then blows the contaminated air out while pressurizing the water back to the house.
That black box, it's attached pipes and 3/4 a day's labor is $4500.

Double Hrrmph.

Here we see where the air vent exists the basement, through my plexiglass window, along with the air vent. That funny basketball sized thing on the pipe is a fan that is sucking the radon gas out from under my foundation through holes specially drilled and excavated to collect the radon gas before it passes through the cement into the basement air. This fancy contraption of PVC and fan was an additional $1400.
The nice man has to come back tomorrow and listen to the fan with me, because it's oddly loud in weird places in the house. Idling Train Engine Loud, at least to me. But I might be a bit oversensitive.

Here's where I'll make a note to myself to read all future quotes with a fine tooth comb. I went into this thinking that the total for the job was $4500, because the the number in bold at the bottom of the sheet next to the word "total" was $4500. I was pretty thrilled, until the nice man handed me the invoice. What I'd been looking at was the total for the Water section. There was no total for both Air and Water.
it's work I would have had to do anyway, but I wasn't emotionally prepared to lay it out right then. I'm really pretty angry at myself for missing it. It means that some other things I wanted to do sooner than later will now happen later.

One last insult to injury is that I'd just started considering getting a wood stove an tossing it on the unused chimney to get something resembling warmth in here.

Radon pipe, right in front of the chimney.

That idea was vetoed by the universe.