Radon in Sergeantsville

Sergeantsville sits in Delaware Township — the village at the centre of Delaware Township, near the state's last remaining covered bridge.

Housing stock. An intact 19th century village of stone and frame houses, surrounded by preserved farmland and farmsteads.

Water supply. Public supply does not reach the village or the farmland around it. A well here draws from the Lockatong argillite — the uranium-bearing rock that makes this corner of the county what it is.

The ground under Sergeantsville

Sergeantsville sits in the Lockatong and Stockton Formation country of western Hunterdon, and the Lockatong is the geologically interesting part: a dark grey to black argillite laid down in deep lake beds, and the kind of organic-rich sedimentary rock that concentrates uranium more readily than ordinary red shale does. It is also hard, thinly bedded and heavily jointed, so gas moves along the bedding and joint planes rather than through the rock. Much of the village and farm housing here is 18th and 19th century stone, with shallow cellars and floors that were added — or not — long after the walls went up. That combination, uranium-bearing rock beneath and open stone cellars above, is why this corner of the county produces some of the more difficult jobs.

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 Sergeantsville. The requests come from the Sergeantsville village crossroads; the Green Sergeant's Covered Bridge and Rosemont area; the Wickecheoke Creek valley; the Locktown and Croton roads country; the Delaware River side toward Stockton.

Working here

Village lots are modest; the surrounding farm properties are open.

What moves the cost here

Almost nothing here installs like a modern house. Expect membrane work over open or partial cellar floors, substantial sealing on rubble stone walls, and pipe routing worked out around a building that has been altered several times. That is not an upcharge; it is what the building requires, and a quote that does not reflect it will not hold.

Sergeantsville sits over the Lockatong Formation, a dark lake-bed argillite that carries uranium more readily than the red shale under the centre of the county — one of the reasons western Hunterdon returns some of its highest readings.

A great deal of Delaware Township's housing is 18th and 19th century stone with shallow or open cellars, so sub-membrane systems and heavy sealing come up here far more often than in the county's newer townships.

Permits and paperwork

Permits go through the Delaware Township construction office. With uranium-bearing bedrock beneath, the gross alpha screening required on Hunterdon wells at the point of sale is a genuinely useful early warning for any address here on a well.

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.