You’ve just been told you need to find a GPR scanning service to come to your property to conduct a scan for buried private utilities. This is likely because you plan to do some sort of excavation work on your land and your contractor, or some other professional, has told you that you need to provide them with information about all potential hazards for the areas in which they will be digging. They recommend hiring someone who uses ground penetrating radar (GPR) because it is a non-invasive method of finding buried hazards that is fairly inexpensive and accurate.
Since you’ve likely never hired a GPR scanning service before, you start to do some research and find out that there are several GPR scanning services in your area. You wonder, “Does it really matter which one I hire? Won’t they all get pretty much the same results?” Unfortunately, no.
Ground penetrating radar is sophisticated technology. While the equipment itself isn’t that complicated to operate, knowing how to interpret the data it produces can be. It requires a highly trained and experienced technician, using the right frequency, to get the type of results you need. It’s important that you hire a company that invests in training its employees and doesn’t send them out into the field alone until they’re ready.
Sometimes, even with the best equipment and the most experienced technician, GPR scans can come back inconclusive. This is because ground penetrating radar struggles to deliver accurate results in certain conditions, such as wet or rocky soil. When results aren’t clear enough for a technician to confidently deliver accurate results, the best thing to do is bring in other technologies.
The professionals at Enhanced Scanning, a GPR scanning service in Southern California, had this to say: “Depending on the site, the soil conditions, and the sizes and types of targets, one tool may work better than another, and many projects require multiple tools to provide the full picture of what lies below the ground’s surface.” So although they use GPR on more than 90% of their jobs that involve underground utility locating or concrete scanning, Enhanced Scanning has other tools at the ready should they need them. Examples of other tools that could be used to locate buried hazards include electromagnetic frequency transmitters and receivers, magnetometers, and electromagnetic induction sensors.
As you contact GPR scanning companies, make sure to ask them how they approach a project if the results come back inconclusive after using GPR. Do they have other tools they can bring in?
No GPR scanning company is likely to guarantee their results, but a good one will be honest with you about how confident they are in the accuracy of their findings. That way, you can proceed with your project with appropriate caution, should they tell you that they aren’t 100% confident about exactly what it is that is buried on your property.