Areas We Serve Around Peoria

East Peoria is built on two levels: the flat river bottom along Washington Street and the Levee District, and the bluff neighborhoods that climb east toward Sunnyland and the ridges above Illinois Central College. Bottomland houses sit close to the water table and lean on sump pits and shallow foundations, while the bluff blocks are full of tuck-under garages and walkout lower levels. Those are two different radon problems in one Tazewell County town, and they get diagnosed differently.

Dunlap sits on the upland north of Peoria along Route 91, and it has grown steadily as families move in for the District 323 schools. Much of the housing is newer than the metro average, which means a meaningful share of it was built after Illinois began requiring passive radon-resistant features in new residential construction. It also means a lot of Dunlap homes have a capped pipe in a closet or garage that nobody has ever explained to the owner, and the unincorporated Peoria County acreage around the village is on private wells.

Washington, in Tazewell County east of Peoria, rebuilt a large share of its housing after the November 17, 2013 tornado tore through Devonshire and the neighborhoods around it. That produced an unusual split for a central Illinois town of this size: subdivisions of houses barely a decade old sitting next to blocks of original mid-century and older stock near Washington Square. Homes rebuilt from the slab up fall under different construction rules than homes that were repaired, and that distinction matters when you are trying to figure out whether your house has any radon infrastructure at all.

Morton sits on the upland in Tazewell County where I-74 and I-155 meet, well back from the river bluff, and the town is best known for the pumpkin processing that gave it the Pumpkin Capital name. Its housing runs from the older blocks around Main Street, with full basements and block foundations, out to newer subdivisions on the north and east edges where slab-on-grade and shallow crawlspace construction is far more common. Those two foundation types call for different mitigation approaches in the same school district.

Pekin is the Tazewell County seat and one of the older river towns on this stretch of the Illinois, with a downtown core around Court Street and housing that in places goes back well past a century. The town runs from the river terrace up onto the bluff, so foundations sit in genuinely different material depending on the block: coarser sand and gravel on the low ground near the river, glacial till on the higher ground east of downtown. Old foundations plus permeable soil is the combination that makes testing worth doing here.

Peoria Heights is a compact village on the bluff above the Illinois River, with Grand View Drive along its northern edge and the observation tower at Tower Park at its center. The housing is mostly early to mid twentieth century on narrow lots, and because the village sits on the bluff line, plenty of homes step down the hillside with a partial basement under one half and a crawlspace under the other. Tight lot lines and a walkable streetscape also make where a vent pipe goes a real design question rather than an afterthought.

Bartonville sits southwest of Peoria on the bluff above the river valley, an older working village anchored historically by Keystone Steel and Wire and the grounds of the former Peoria State Hospital. The housing is predominantly mid-century and earlier: modest frame houses and ranches over concrete block basements, many with unfinished lower levels, open crocks, and floor drains that have been there since the house was built. That is the profile that tends to produce a first radon test result nobody was expecting.

Germantown Hills is a Woodford County village on the wooded ridges east of the river, strung along Route 116 between East Peoria and Metamora, and most of its housing has gone up within recent decades. That means bigger lots, walkout lower levels cut into the ravines, and a real share of homes built after Illinois began requiring passive radon-resistant features in new residential construction. Outside the village limits, the larger Woodford County parcels are on private wells.

Chillicothe is a small river city on Route 29 north of Peoria, sitting where the Illinois widens into Upper Peoria Lake, with Shore Acres on the water and an older residential core set back and uphill from it. Housing near the river leans toward crawlspaces and raised foundations for obvious reasons, while the blocks up the slope and out toward the Illinois Valley Central schools are more conventional basements. Rome and the unincorporated stretches just south add well-served properties to the mix.