Measuring Excess Background Close to Walls

The walls of a civil building, even small houses, contain construction material with the presence of some small fraction of radioactive elements. It could be expected that, apart from the shielding effects that walls and roofs in a building provide against the arrival of cosmic radiations from outside, they also contribute to the overall count rate of particle detectors, such as Geiger counters. Test measurements with small counters have been made close and far from the walls of a house to check these aspects.