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Paid $600 for a ground-penetrating radar survey on my property - worth it or waste?
I dropped $600 on a GPR survey to find old foundations before digging a garden pond. Guy found a 19th century well I never knew about, which saved me from caving in a hole. But the rest of the scan showed random pipes that turned out to be old drainage from the 50s, not anything historic. Did you get useful data from a paid survey or did you just throw money at someone with a fancy machine?
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samk771mo agoProlific Poster
Consider asking the surveyor if they saved the raw data and would take a second look at it. I found that the real value in these surveys is not the immediate findings, but the ability to cross-reference the data later when you inevitably dig somewhere else or hit something unexpected. A lot of guys will do a quick 30-minute scan and call it done, but a thorough one should give you a digital file you can keep. Did they hand you a printed report or did you get an actual digital file you can pull up later? That makes a big difference in whether the $600 was worth it or not.
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robert6591mo ago
Yeah, $600 is about what you'd expect for something like that. Biggest thing is you proved you didn't have a well or a cistern right where you wanted to dig. That's peace of mind worth paying for if you ask me.
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baker.holly1mo ago
Maybe it's just me, but a $600 bill for proving you didn't hit something you probably wouldn't have hit anyway feels like a lot. A well or cistern is bad news for sure, but is it really that common that you need to pay that much just to rule it out? People dig holes in their yards all the time without this, and most of them turn out fine.
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