That $300 ground penetrating radar hire burned me bad near an old homestead

I paid a guy $300 to run GPR over a spot where I thought there might be a buried cellar from the 1800s. He scanned it for about an hour, pointed out a few hot spots, and said I should dig there. I spent a whole weekend digging down 4 feet and found nothing but rusted barbed wire and a broken plow blade. Turns out the radar was set wrong for the clay soil we have in this part of Ohio. I called him back to complain and he shrugged it off, said 'results not guaranteed.' Has anyone else dealt with fake archaeology equipment rentals or bad operators? What do you look for to tell if someone actually knows what they're doing with GPR?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry_barnes2d ago

Man this feels like a lot of energy to put into something that was never a sure thing to begin with. Ground penetrating radar is just a tool, not a magic wand, and anyone who's used it before knows clay soil messes with the readings real bad. You paid for a scan, not a treasure map, so the guy probably wasn't wrong to say results aren't guaranteed.

lilycraig1d ago

Wait, didn't clay soil actually make the readings worse, not just mess with them a bit?