Ground penetrating radar said 'no walls', I dug anyway and ate crow

Last month I helped a friend survey his field near Abilene for a supposed old homestead foundation. The rental GPR unit said nothing but clean soil over the whole grid, so my friend started packing up. I told him to give me one more hour and picked the low spot where the grass color changed slightly. Two feet down I hit a stacked rock corner, turns out the radar missed it because the fill was too conductive from old livestock runoff. He busted my chops all week about trusting the machine, but I also got a free steak dinner out of the bet. Anyone else had a geophysics tool give you garbage data that old-fashioned eyeballing beat?

1 comments

1 Comment

paul_taylor2127d ago

Take the GPR with a grain of salt, it's a tool not a crystal ball. I've had it miss old brick lines in wet clay more times than I can count, so I always walk the ground for color or settling before trusting the screen. You did it right, the steak was earned.