Concrete Drilling

Concrete Drilling the Safe Way

Concrete drilling is a necessity of the job in many fields, namely transportation engineering and construction. Fortunately, there are new Ground Penetrating Radar Systems in place that allow workers to detect and locate underground utilities, such as rebar, conduit, and tension cables. It is actually possible to scan the surface of the targeted area with an antenna, and discover what lies beneath the surface, at what depth, and at what exact location!

Another bonus to these GPR systems is that it allows large areas to be scanned without having to actually dig or disrupt the surface at all. This is an enormous help because it saves on time, and ultimately on money. In addition, it is a big safety hazard to just randomly dig into the targeted areas without knowing what is underneath, as pipes, rebar, and electrical wires could cause fires, electrocution or flooding if they get tampered with and damaged.

How This System Works

The basic GPR system works by using an antenna that when passed across inspection areas emits radio pulses that are reflected by embedded structures. From a series of scans, target depth and spacing can be accurately determined and laid out directly on the surface for trouble free concrete drilling, digging, coring, or cutting. Conduit, cables, rebar, and voids can be accurately detected and located in minutes.

In areas where complex or crowded target patterns exist, scanned data may be downloaded into a laptop which generates plan view images with 1" depth slices up to 12" deep. In most cases, embedded structures can be located and marked out directly from the screen to depths of up to two feet. As you can see, these GPR systems are invaluable tools for those in the fields of engineering, construction, urban planning, mining and more.