Grand Haven is a lakeshore town, and lakeshore property behaves differently from anything inland. Sandy soils, a high water table close to the water, wind coming off Lake Michigan without obstruction, and a housing stock that includes a meaningful number of homes originally built for summer use.
Those seasonal origins matter. A cottage converted to year-round living is often converted partway: insulation improved in one assembly and not the next, plumbing running through spaces that were never meant to stay above freezing, heating added without the venting being properly reworked, and additions on footings that predate current frost depth practice. We work out what was built for what, because that is what predicts where the trouble is.
Exposure is the other factor. Wind-driven rain finds weaknesses in siding, window flashing and roof edges that a sheltered inland house never has tested. On the water side of a Grand Haven home we look harder at the envelope than we would two miles inland.
Ottawa County is EPA Radon Zone 3, predicted average indoor level below 2 pCi/L, the lowest of the three zones. Sandy soil is generally less of a radon pathway than clay or fractured bedrock, but zone maps predict counties rather than houses, so we still recommend testing where there is occupied space below grade.
