CleanZone Field Brief
The 28-Day Relocation Check
Most people research a new address for less time than they research a phone. This is the method we use: one week on the ground, one week in the public record, one week on paper — and a final week to decide, in person. No equipment beyond your phone, a notebook, and patience.
At a glance
- Four weeks, four questions: how does it feel unscripted (days 1–7), what does the public record show (days 8–14), what's on paper and what's planned next door (days 15–21), and does the winner survive a return visit (days 22–28).
- Visit at the hours nobody stages for: before 7 a.m., after 22:00, and a weekend night — not the agent's chosen Saturday slot.
- Pull the water report, the radon class, and the transmitter registry. All three are public and free; almost nobody asks for them.
- Check planning applications on neighbouring parcels, not just the one you're buying — approved means happening.
- Fix your thresholds (noise, hardness, radon, flight paths, planning) in writing before you compare candidates, not after.
A house viewing shows you a staged hour on a chosen day. What you are actually buying is every hour of every day — the 4 a.m. freight route, the Friday-night bar spill, the water that comes out of the tap in August. None of that is visible at 2 p.m. on a Saturday. The fix is not more viewings; it is a structured four-week pass where each week answers one question:
- Week 1 — Environment as lived. What is this place like when nobody is selling it to me?
- Week 2 — The public record. What do the official datasets say that the seller didn't?
- Week 3 — Paper. What is legally attached to this parcel, and what is planned next door?
- Week 4 — Decide. Does the winner on paper survive one more look at its worst hour — and at what price?
Week 1 — Environment as lived (days 1–7)
Visit at hostile hours
Three visits minimum: a weekday before 7 a.m., a weekday evening after 22:00, and a weekend night. You are listening, not looking. Traffic pattern, aircraft, ventilation and refrigeration hum from commercial neighbours, dogs, church bells, agricultural machinery. The World Health Organization's night-noise guideline for Europe recommends outdoor levels below 40 dB Lnight for undisturbed sleep — you don't need a meter to notice a street that clearly fails it; you need to be there when it fails.
Most buyers do the opposite of this method: one visit, at the hour the estate agent suggested, on a dry Saturday afternoon. That slot is chosen because it is the quietest, brightest, least representative hour the property has all week. A single good viewing tells you almost nothing about the other 167 hours.
Watch the sky, twice
Aircraft routing varies by wind direction and time of day. One quiet afternoon proves nothing. Note what crosses overhead during each of your three visits and at what apparent altitude; low, repeated crossings at fixed intervals mean you are under an approach or departure corridor, and those do not move for you.
Run the taps
Ask the current occupant or the water utility for the latest water quality report — in most of Europe and North America the utility is legally required to provide it. The number to find is hardness in mg/L CaCO₃ (see the thresholds table below), plus nitrate. Then run the hot tap and look at the kettle: limescale history is written inside it.
Walk the perimeter
A 20-minute walk in each compass direction. You are logging: mobile masts with line-of-sight to the bedroom, high-voltage lines, fuel stations, workshops, anything with a chimney, and the smell of the place after rain.
Week 2 — The public record (days 8–14)
Transmitters and towers
Most countries publish transmitter registries (national telecom regulator) with mast locations, operators, and bands. Pull every site within ~1 km and compare against what you saw on the walk — the registry catches what trees hide, and your walk catches what the registry hasn't licensed yet.
Radon, soil, and flood
Three lookups from national geological and environmental services: the radon potential class of the area (the EU reference level is 300 Bq/m³ indoors, and the US EPA's action level is 4 pCi/L — a high-potential zone means "budget for a test", not "walk away"), historical land use for the parcel (former industrial, filled ground, orchards with legacy pesticide load), and the flood zoning including surface-water flooding, which standard maps often understate.
Radon concentration moves with season, barometric pressure, and even wind — a single afternoon reading is close to meaningless. Regulators size their reference levels around long-run averages precisely because of this; a proper test runs a minimum of three months, which is why the check belongs in week 2 and the decision waits until week 3.
Distance-to-hazard audit
From the front door, measure straight-line distance to: nearest industrial site, nearest fuel storage, nearest HV line, nearest waste-processing site, nearest slaughterhouse or rendering plant. You are not applying a formula — you are making the invisible list visible so it can be weighed deliberately instead of discovered later.
Everything in week 2 was already public before you went looking. Nobody had to hand it to you — you just had to ask the right registry.
Week 3 — Paper (days 15–21)
The parcel file
Land registry extract (boundaries, easements, rights of way), covenants and restrictions, and — the one most buyers skip — planning applications on every neighbouring parcel, pending and approved. The quiet field next door with approved outline permission for forty units is public information that nobody volunteers.
Institutional trajectory
Airport expansion consultations, road-scheme corridors, quarry licence renewals, windfarm applications. Infrastructure changes announce themselves years ahead in consultation documents; twenty minutes of searching the local authority's planning portal is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.
Decide against thresholds, not feelings
Before you compare candidates, fix your limits in writing. Ours:
| Measure | Reference point | Reading it |
|---|---|---|
| Night noise | WHO Europe guideline: < 40 dB Lnight outdoors | Audible constant traffic at 4 a.m. → treat as failed, no meter needed |
| Water hardness | USGS classes: soft < 60 · moderate 61–120 · hard 121–180 · very hard > 180 mg/L CaCO₃ | > 180 means descaling everything, forever — price it in or filter it |
| Radon potential | EU reference level: 300 Bq/m³ indoors (Directive 2013/59/Euratom) | High-potential zone → commission a 3-month indoor test before exchange |
| Flight corridors | Repeated low crossings at fixed intervals across ≥ 2 visits | Corridors are permanent infrastructure — assume it never improves |
| Planning pipeline | Any approved application materially changing a neighbouring parcel | Approved = happening. Decide on the future parcel, not the current one |
Week 4 — Decide in person (days 22–28)
Go back once, with the table
By day 22 one candidate is ahead on paper. Give it one more visit, at the hour that worried you most in week 1, with the printed threshold table and the area report in hand. You are not looking for new information — you are checking the file against the ground one last time, on a day nobody staged.
Price the findings
Everything the checks surfaced is either a walk-away or a number. Hard water is a softener and its yearly salt. An elevated radon class is a three-month test now and, at worst, a mitigation system. A noisy façade is glazing. Put those numbers in the offer, with the public record attached — a documented finding argues better than an opinion, and this is where the month of work literally pays for itself.
Decide on the record
Day 28 is a verdict, either way. A walk-away against your written thresholds is a pass, not a failure — the table survives, the file survives, and the next candidate starts at week-2 speed because your limits are already fixed. Whatever you choose, keep the file: the day you move in, it becomes your baseline.
The one-page checklist
- Three visits logged: early weekday, late weekday, weekend night
- Overhead traffic noted on all three visits
- Utility water report obtained; hardness + nitrate recorded
- Perimeter walk in four directions; masts / HV / industry logged
- Transmitter registry pulled for ~1 km radius
- Radon class, land-use history, flood zoning looked up
- Distance-to-hazard list written down
- Land registry extract read, easements understood
- Neighbouring parcels' planning applications checked
- Airport / road / quarry consultations searched
- Thresholds written BEFORE comparing candidates
- Return visit to the finalist at its worst hour, table in hand
- Findings priced into the offer — or the walk-away
- Decision made on the record, file kept as the move-in baseline
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The desk half of this method — water chemistry, flight activity, transmitter density, radon potential, hazard distances for any 25 km cell — is what the CleanZone map was built to answer in an afternoon. The ground half, only your own feet can do.