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PSA: I dropped $300 on a ground-penetrating radar rental for my backyard dig and found nothing but old pipes
Got all excited after watching those YouTube videos where people find Roman ruins in their garden with GPR. Rented a unit from a place in Austin for a weekend, thought I'd find something cool under that lumpy patch by the fence. Nope. Just some rusted water line from the 80s and what looked like a septic tank. The guy at the rental place even warned me it's hit or miss for residential stuff, but I had to try. Cost me $300 plus a $50 deposit for the scanner. Anyone else blow money on a fancy tool that just confirmed you have modern plumbing?
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sage_ramirez4227d ago
Didn't you read that GPR is tricky in clay soils?
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Oh man, @sage_ramirez42 you just hit on something I totally ignored. I thought clay would be fine because the rental guy said the unit could handle it, but looking back the manual even had a whole section on how clay absorbs the signal like a sponge. I was out there waving it around like a metal detector at the beach, not realizing the soil was basically eating the radar waves before they could bounce back. It makes sense now why all I got was this blurry mess on the screen instead of clear lines. If I ever try this again I'm doing a soil test first or at least waiting for the ground to dry out completely. But yeah, $300 to learn that lesson about clay soils and GPR. Not my smartest move but at least I know for next time.
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alexc9319d ago
Right there with you, I did the same thing last summer trying to find an old septic tank in my backyard. Clay soil turned my $250 rental into a total joke, I was getting nothing but static and random blips that looked like ghosts. The rental guy told me it'd work fine in "most soils" and I just believed him without checking. Ended up digging six test holes with a shovel anyway, which completely defeated the purpose of renting the GPR in the first place.
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