Would ground penetrating radar make for a good business?

[JasonSnake]

Hey'all.

Left my FT IT job to go back to school FT. Because of my crazy school sched, it's impossible to find a FT job to work around it.

I've been brainstorming about doing some kind of residential service and the thought of maybe surveying land with ground-penetrating radar sounds like a good idea - especially with all the sinkhole problems FL is plagued with.

Your thoughts? Lame idea?

 

[jbs$]

Who would be your customers and how would you get repeat business? One shot sales of anything is a tough way to make a living.

 

[thomas91169]

There's likely already many geotechnical firms in FL alone that provide this service.

I work in the foundation drilling/shoring industry and have seen geotechnical reports from about 100 different firms just in my neck of the woods alone.

Are you looking to provide the service of ground penetrating radar to these firms?

 

[KurtDog]

It doesn't sound like a bad idea if you know/have the technology. I'm sure you could sucker, err, help some people out. J/K.

I know people who have used well witchers. They charged something like 500 bucks to walk around the property with two little metal rods for a few hours.

With the number of sinkhole stories coming out of Florida, there might be some good demand/money for finding and mitigating sink holes under peoples houses.

 

[HEMIHUNTER]

Hey'all.

Left my FT IT job to go back to school FT. Because of my crazy school sched, it's impossible to find a FT job to work around it.

I've been brainstorming about doing some kind of residential service and the thought of maybe surveying land with ground-penetrating radar sounds like a good idea - especially with all the sinkhole problems FL is plagued with.

Your thoughts? Lame idea?

It only goes down so far. If there was "loose soil" 200 ft. down I don't think it would pick it up
You'd probably have more luck on the commercial end. Since you're not really going to compete with the larger companies I would contact them and pick their brains on how busy they are, who they get the most work from etc....

 

[Adam99L]

I do GPR surveys for a geotechnical engineering firm. There are many firms in Florida and after SB408 passed two years ago very few people have sinkhole coverage on their insurance policies, which means little work to go around. Also be prepared to have to go to court and defend your findings if the homeowner ends up suing the insurance company.

 

[JasonSnake]

So out of all the responses.. probably not a good side gig to do, especially when I should be thinking of something that would help with 'repeat' customers.

I also thought about lawn maintenance but there are a billion of those folks around here already.

Back to the drawing board.