Delaware Township radon testing and mitigation

Part of Delaware Township, Delaware Township is a large rural township between the Delaware River and the Sourland country, almost entirely farmland and woodland.

Housing stock. One of the highest concentrations of 18th and 19th century stone housing in New Jersey, with limited later large-lot building.

Water supply. Public supply reaches little of Delaware Township. A well draws from the Lockatong and Stockton formations, so the water and the soil gas share a source.

The ground under Delaware Township

Delaware Township is largely preserved farmland over the Lockatong and Stockton Formations — dark argillite and sandstone laid down in the Newark Basin, with the Lockatong in particular carrying more uranium than the red shale under the centre of the county. The rock is hard and jointed, the soils over it are often thin, and a great deal of the housing is very old: stone farmhouses and mills, often still on their original foundations, with cellars that were never designed to exclude anything. Systems here are more often membrane systems than slab systems, sealing takes real hours, and the number of suction points is decided by testing rather than by floor area. Wells here draw from that same rock.

That is the shape of the ground here, not a finding about any one address. The NJ Geological Survey maps the formations; a certified contractor measures what is actually happening beneath a particular slab.

Around Delaware Township. The requests come from the Rosemont and Raven Rock areas; the Locktown and Sandy Ridge country; the Wickecheoke and Lockatong creek valleys; the Route 519 corridor; the Delaware River frontage near Prallsville and Bulls Island.

Working here

Open rural properties, though long private drives and outbuildings can constrain where equipment goes.

What moves the cost here

This is the most consistently expensive part of the county to mitigate properly, and for structural rather than commercial reasons: open cellars need membrane, rubble stone needs sealing, and a house that has grown over two centuries rarely has one continuous floor to work under. A quote that matches a modern subdivision price is a quote that has not seen the building.

Delaware Township holds a great deal of surviving 18th and 19th century stone housing, which makes it one of the parts of Hunterdon where a standard sub-slab system is least often the right answer.

The township sits over the Lockatong Formation, a uranium-bearing dark argillite, and its thin soils and heavily jointed rock together explain why readings here can be high in buildings that look nothing like the modern basements people associate with radon.

Permits and paperwork

Permits run through the Delaware Township construction office. Historic buildings are common here, and where a property is listed or in a district, exterior pipe routing may need to be agreed before work begins.

New Jersey municipalities sometimes share construction-code services with a neighbour, and postal addresses in this county frequently do not match municipal boundaries, so confirm which office actually has jurisdiction before anyone applies.