$199 per load · $149 garden beds · About an hour per load or garden area
Radiation Screening for Imported Fill Dirt, Recycled Aggregate and Garden Soil
Fill dirt arrives on a truck with no paperwork about where it was dug. In central Florida a meaningful share of available fill and recycled aggregate comes from within or beside the phosphate belt, and once it is spread and graded it becomes the ground your house, your yard or your vegetable beds sit on. Screening a load takes an hour. Removing spread fill does not.
Radiation Alert Ranger — Geiger-Mueller pancake-probe survey meter
Last calibrated on · calibrated weekly
Why the source of fill matters here
Phosphate ore carries naturally occurring uranium and radium, and material that has been mined, stockpiled and moved does not read uniformly. Fill and recycled aggregate sourced anywhere near the Bone Valley or Hamilton districts can carry that variation with it to a site fifty miles away.
Nobody is doing anything wrong: fill is sold by the yard, not by its geology. That is precisely why an independent reading at delivery is the only practical check available to the person receiving it.
What we screen
Delivered fill dirt, before it is spread
The stockpile surveyed on a pattern, with readings against site background taken the same day. Screened while it is still a pile and still the supplier's problem.
Recycled aggregate, crushed concrete and road base
Recycled material has an unknown history by definition. We survey the pile and the staged material, and log the readings against your own site background.
Vegetable gardens and raised beds
Beds surveyed individually with the probe close to the soil surface, priority given to anywhere food is grown and children dig. $149 covers up to four beds, then $39 each.
Regraded yards and new sod areas
Where a yard has been levelled or built up with imported material, we survey the graded area on a grid rather than sampling one corner of it.
What a surface reading can and cannot tell you
A pancake-probe survey measures gamma at the surface. It will show you where a pile or a bed reads above your own site background, and it will show you how that varies across the material — which is what you need to decide whether to accept a delivery.
It is not a laboratory soil assay, and we do not report isotope concentrations in becquerels per kilogram. If a reading warrants a lab analysis, we say so in the report and you take it to a laboratory from a documented starting point rather than a hunch.
What you receive
A written screening report: site background reference, readings across the pile, bed or graded area, anything reading above background mapped and photographed, and the instrument calibration date. $199 for the first load or stockpile and $79 for each additional; $149 for up to four garden beds and $39 each thereafter.
Common questions
How much does fill dirt radiation screening cost?
$199 for the first delivered load or stockpile including the written report, then $79 for each additional load screened on the same visit. Garden and raised-bed screening is $149 for up to four beds.
Can you screen fill dirt before I accept the delivery?
Yes, and that is the right time. Once material is spread and graded it stops being a delivery you can refuse and becomes part of your property, so we schedule around drop-off wherever the timing allows.
Is my vegetable garden safe to eat from?
We report what the soil surface reads against your own site background, not whether produce is safe to eat. Uptake into food is a laboratory and agricultural-science question, and we will tell you plainly when a reading is worth taking to one.
Do you take soil samples to a lab?
No. We perform on-site gamma survey work only. Where the readings justify laboratory analysis, the report says so and gives you the mapped locations a lab would need to sample.
How it works
Three steps, no surprises
Book a consultation
Tell us the property, the item, or the facility and what prompted the call. We confirm scope, price and the travel zone in writing before anything is scheduled.
On-site survey with our calibrated instrument
We survey with the Radiation Alert Ranger, taking a local background reference first, then working the area to a fixed pattern so nothing is sampled by chance.
Receive your written report
A written report with the hot-spot map, every recorded reading against your own site background, photographs, and the instrument calibration date. Typically within 48 hours.
Methodology
How we survey — the actual method
Background reference first
Before anything else we record ambient background at the property line. Every later reading is reported against that number, because a reading only means something relative to local background.
Fixed-pattern coverage, not spot checks
Interior areas are walked room by room at a steady pace with the probe held at a consistent height. Yards and lots are walked on a grid — roughly 15-foot lanes on a typical residential lot, tightened where the meter responds.
Hot-spot confirmation
Anywhere the count rate rises above the site background, we stop, tighten the search, and take timed readings at the peak. A location is only recorded as a hot spot after it repeats on a second pass.
Priority zones get extra time
Bedrooms, children's play areas, garden beds, home offices and any spot where someone spends hours at a time are surveyed more densely than pass-through space.
Everything is documented
Each recorded reading is logged with its location, the value, the time, and the instrument calibration date, then plotted onto a floor plan and lot sketch in the report.
Who performs the survey and how we work
Surveys are performed by the owner-operator of EMF Testing Services, trained in survey-meter operation and in the survey procedure described on this page, working to the same written methodology on every job.
We hold no regulatory role and claim no agency standing. What we provide is a documented instrument reading set: where the meter was placed, what it read, when the instrument was last calibrated, and how those readings compare to the background level measured at your own property on the same day.
Our radiation surveys are independent, informational measurements performed for personal due diligence. They are not represented as satisfying, replacing or substituting for any specific government agency's statutory testing, survey or disclosure requirement, and they are not a medical or health assessment.
Find out what's actually there.
One all-inclusive price: $399 for a complete EMF inspection of any size home. That covers every test, every room, and the written report — no square-footage tiers. Flat travel zones apply outside Hillsborough County; we serve the entire state of Florida.