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Scanning a slab, deck, or wall for rebar, conduit, and post-tension tendons before anyone cores, cuts, or drills.
In Helena, Montana — population 32,091, with buried infrastructure laid down over decades and recorded unevenly — concrete scanning is how a site gets read before anyone breaks ground. Local oil & gas, construction work drives most of the demand.
Concrete scanning is ground penetrating radar run at a higher frequency against a structure instead of soil. The antenna is passed over the surface on a grid and the reflections are read live, so the rebar mat, embedded conduit, radiant tubing, and post-tension tendons get marked on the concrete before a core barrel or a saw goes near them. Cutting a post-tension tendon is the failure mode that makes this work non-optional: the tendon is stressed, the release is violent, and the structural repair costs far more than the scan.
Project-planning data for Helena, MT — soil, climate, and regulatory factors that shape how locating crews scope work in this market.
Helena sits in a continental climate, with winter ground freeze reaching 48 inches — frost changes what ground penetrating radar returns, and it stops paint from bonding, so cold-season work leans on recorded offsets and coordinates. Local ground: Clay, Loam, Sandy loam. Soil conductivity is the variable that decides how much of a locate radar can contribute, because conductive ground absorbs the radar pulse instead of reflecting it. Primary industries — oil & gas, construction — drive steady demand for concrete scanning across the Lewis and Clark County area.
Montana 811 (811) requires 2 business days of advance notice before any excavation in Montana. That notification is free and it is separate from concrete scanning: it brings out the member facility owners to mark the lines they own, and stops at the meter or the right-of-way. Wait for every member to respond before ground is opened.
Locating is quoted per job rather than off a rate card, because the work is a search and a search scales with the site rather than with the clock. On a Helena job, the things that move the number are how much ground has to be covered, how many targets are in play, whether there are meters, valves, risers, or panels a transmitter can be clipped to, what the lines are made of, what the local ground (clay, loam, sandy loam) does to the instruments, and whether you need surface marks or a record you keep.
Describe the job once through Utility Hotline. Our team reviews the request, then locating companies covering Helena and Lewis and Clark County send you their own quotes, so you are comparing them against the same scope. It is free to request.
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Get Free QuotesCommon questions about private utility locating in Helena
Radar imaging of the subsurface that finds plastic pipe, tanks, and voids no signal can be put on.
Finding and marking the buried lines on the owner side of the meter, the ones a one-call ticket does not cover.
APWA color-coded paint and flags on the ground so the crew about to dig can see what is under them.
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Montana 811 — Always call 811 before excavation.
