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Spent $140 on ground-penetrating radar rental, uncovered a Roman drain in my backyard
I've been digging test pits around my property in Chester for a month trying to find where an old boundary wall ran. Rented one of those GPR units from a local survey company for a weekend. Figured I'd just be wasting money but my buddy who does utility locating swore by them. Ran it over the back lawn and got this clear anomaly about 2 feet down. Digging there turned up a section of ceramic pipe and what looks like a stone channel. Turns out the Romans built a drainage line right through where my garden shed now sits. Contractor quoted me $1800 to level that area for a patio, so the rental basically paid for itself. Anyone else tried hobby-level geophysics before breaking ground on a project? How do you keep from going down a research rabbit hole instead of finishing the actual task?
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david7391mo ago
Well look at you, Indiana Jones of the suburbs, digging up Roman plumbing while the rest of us are just happy when the cable guy finds the line on the first try. And of course it runs right under the shed, because the universe loves nothing more than making a simple patio project ten times harder. Honestly the rabbit hole is half the fun though, you start reading about Roman drainage and suddenly it's 2am and you're deep in a forum about ancient concrete. My trick is to set a dumb little timer and when it goes off I put the phone down, otherwise I'd still be researching instead of digging. Just be glad you didn't hit a mosaic, you'd never finish that patio.
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