GPR and Radiodetection Used to Locate
Private Utilities at Airport – Central Florida

We at GPRS were recently called out to an airport in Central Florida. Our customer was hired by the airport to add a taxiway next to an existing runway. Prior to this job, the area was mostly open field aside from a small road connecting two runways. Our customer was looking to add tens of thousands of square feet of pavement, as well as several hundred yards of concrete culvert to accommodate drainage. Our job was to locate any pre-existing utilities throughout the jobsite. The airport was unable to provide our customer with an “as-built” of utilities.

A cursory glance of the job site indicated the possibility of conduit running between the existing runways to power the various lights along each. There was also a communications array bordering the proposed taxiway; its’ subsurface utilities would need to be located. The area that needed to be covered was large. Even in the absence of an abundance of utilities, it would take many hours to faithfully execute a radar scan of the site. However, prior to using the radar, an RD8100 Radiodetection antenna was passed over the property several times in order to pick up any power or radio signals that could betray the location of possible utilities. The Radiodetection wand did, in fact, pick up on a line passing under the site that carried power to the lighting system of the existing runway. After this, the 350HS radar antenna was utilized to scan the area. The radar was able to confirm the location and depth of the conduit that was previous identified by the Radiodetection wand, as well as find another line that the RD was unable to detect. These utilities were painted and flagged. The afore-mentioned communications array was determined to be powered from the opposite direction. It would not be disturbed by our customer’s project.

With this info in hand, the new taxiway could be constructed with confidence that pre-existing utilities were now known utilities. At GPRS, we pride ourselves in giving our customers the peace of mind that comes with knowing the subsurface anomalies within the scope of their work. With projects both large and small, we consistently provide such data.