The soil gas permeability is an important characteristic value to evaluate the geogenetic radon potential
of a building ground. Independent from the the radon activity concentration level in the soil air the gas permeability
determines the possibility of additional radon supply to the building structure.
Usually the water permeability of the soil, also well-known as "kf-value", is very important
for geological questioning. For this purpose a number of standardized measuring procedures exist,
which are applicable both in the field and in the laboratory, but are however not suitable for measuring
the gas permeability. Due to the subordinated importance of this problem there is no method
which can be regarded as state of the art, but different groups of researchers work with different
self-developed devices.
The permeameter device distributed by us was developed during research work concerning the radon potential in Germany
and showed its practical suitability at some thousand measuring points. It is based on the classical
method of KIRKHAM (1947), after which a defined quantity of air is led with constant pressure through
a soil sample. In practice a number of co-ordinated flow pipes are used in order to measure the
resulting positive pressure in the piping system. The equipment is constructed for
field usage and can be combined with different soil gas probes. The specific permeability k
for the different probe geometries can be computed with the help of the provided calculation principles.
Not contained in the scope of supply are compressed air cylinder, pressure-reducing valves and pressure hose.
