Paid $180 for a ground-penetrating radar survey, got warned about a buried septic tank I never knew about

I bought a fixer-upper outside Flagstaff last spring and wanted to put in a small workshop slab. The county records showed nothing, but the previous owner mentioned stuff being buried out back. I hired a survey crew with ground-penetrating radar for $180 and they flagged a metal mass about 9 feet down near the back fence. Turns out it was an old septic tank from the 1960s that wasn't on any map. If I'd just poured concrete over it, the slab would've cracked within a season or two when the tank collapsed. The contractor who quoted the foundation work said he sees this happen at least twice a year out here. Some folks argue the radar is overpriced fluff when you can just probe the ground manually, but my soil is all volcanic rock, good luck with that. Has anyone else paid for subsurface scanning and found something that changed their build plans? Or are you in the camp that trusts old hand-drawn plat maps and a sharp steel rod?

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