Finding a lost drain pipe

[b-body-bob]

Does anyone have any tips or ideas on finding the open end of a lost drain pipe?

I've got a 4" floor drain/driveway trench/downspout drain, buried 6' deep at the starting end (building has a walk-out basement) that's plugged up somewhere downstream so it backs up in a heavy rain. It eventually drains off but it's a slow process.

We dug up one end so know how deep it is and the general direction it runs. It's in the same trench as the water and sewer lines, so we won't be excavating again because there's no way to avoid tearing up everything. I'm just glad the natural gas line isn't in the same trench.

The other end of the clogged drain is lost in a part of the property at least 100' away. The place was neglected for years (decades!) so if the end of the pipe comes to daylight there's no way to spot it without cutting down trees and scraping the land down to bare dirt, but I accept that might be what it takes, if the pipe can be found at all.

So I thought I'd ask, is there a reliable way to locate the end of a drain pipe, without being able to flush water through it and look for the outflow?

I'm not to the point of trying a dowser yet, but I'm getting there. Any advice is welcome and appreciated.

 

[volleyball]

I would think a plumbers scope might be perfect. You know the starting direction so you know straight and you can see if it turns. the scope should have distance marks to tell you how far and you may be able to see the clog.

 

[Dmarkland]

Have you ever thought about using a pressure washer in the drain to clear it? You run a 1/4" line down the drain and clear the clog. They come in 50 and 100 foot lengths. Check it out.
http://www.cloghog.com

 

[countryroad82]

I know it sounds like voodoo, try dowsing for it. I make my divining rods out of wire, hold them loosely, and when they cross, you're there.

 

[KRB52]

You said the run is about 100 feet and you know the direction. Get a piece of rope that is at least that long, stake, tie, helper hold, etc. one end by where you know the drain pipe is and run the other out to the end, in a straight line. Your end should be in the general area where the end of the drain is. If there is nothing visible, start digging. You may find it ends in a "dry well" that has become plugged, filled in, over time and needs to be redone. I did this at an old farm house my parents owned that I was renting. Kitchen sink drain dumped into a ditch in the basement that ran to a pipe in the foundation that then ran out to a dry well. Having helped my father work on this when I was young, I knew roughly where it was.

 

[b-body-bob]

I would think a plumbers scope might be perfect. You know the starting direction so you know straight and you can see if it turns. the scope should have distance marks to tell you how far and you may be able to see the clog.

The distance is way too far. We shoved a 40' snake tape down it and there was no restriction at all through that distance. They make cameras with super long scopes, but they cost super high bucks and no rental place here has anything like that.

Have you ever thought about using a pressure washer in the drain to clear it? You run a 1/4" line down the drain and clear the clog. They come in 50 and 100 foot lengths. Check it out.
http://www.cloghog.com

I saw that the other day and was thinking about it and I might end up using one of those. I like the way it pulls itself into the pipe but with the rooty soil here I don't like the way it seems it could pull itself into trouble. The only thing worse than a clogged pipe is a clogged pipe with a stuck or broken tool in it.

I've also used an eel to clear drains before, but that was in field tile and I'm not sure the 70s plastic drain pipe would hold up to that. At least I'm not to that point yet where it's worth trying.

I know it sounds like voodoo, try dowsing for it. I make my divining rods out of wire, hold them loosely, and when they cross, you're there.

Oh yeah I'm familiar with dowsing, I mean just look at my picture over there.

I know there's no need in me trying, but I do have a niece with witch toes, where 2nd and 3rd toes grow out of a single joint. I've heard that's a sign of a knack for dowsing.

Man Witch | Backyard Oil

 

[augustus]

Like the pressure washer idea, ive had success with slinking a garden hose with a jet nozzle attachment down the pipe. A friend of mine made a ******* cam from a waterproof camera and an electricians fish line, it works quite well and has helped me a couple of times. Also, maybe if you let the water run long enough, some will get through and you can find a wet spot where it exits.

 

[b-body-bob]

You said the run is about 100 feet and you know the direction. Get a piece of rope that is at least that long, stake, tie, helper hold, etc. one end by where you know the drain pipe is and run the other out to the end, in a straight line. Your end should be in the general area where the end of the drain is. If there is nothing visible, start digging. You may find it ends in a "dry well" that has become plugged, filled in, over time and needs to be redone. I did this at an old farm house my parents owned that I was renting. Kitchen sink drain dumped into a ditch in the basement that ran to a pipe in the foundation that then ran out to a dry well. Having helped my father work on this when I was young, I knew roughly where it was.

You know you might be on to something with the idea of a dry well. The property ends at the road and there's a 12" or bigger line going under the pavement. Standing down there and looking back at the house I can't convince myself that it's deep enough to have daylight anywhere in that direction. A dry well would solve that dilemma.

Or, it might run into the sewer line because where we dug, the two pipes were side by side. Yes I know that's illegal, but I have faith it's not that way because if they were going to do that, they would've tied them together sooner instead of later to save money.

 

[smiffy]

What about a piece of 3/8 inch steel bar with a point on the end and just push it in the graund every 6 inches and see when it hits something be quick to do you only have to do it for 10ft then you can run a string line out in a straight line between the beginning of the pipe and the steel rod and keep going will give you a straight line to follow

 

[volleyball]

What kind of 70's pipe? I know ABS that old looks like new inside.
If you know it is 40' straight, then get a 100' rope and run it out say 30' and dig down to the pipe. That will give you a reference line to dig at say 60' and then 90 -100' to find the end.
Since the pipe will have to be pitched, is the ground also grading downward or do you think the pipe will be 30' down by then?
How do you know the pipe is 100' or longer?

 

[ArkTinkerer]

Rent a powered drain auger and run it down the line. May clear the line for you. Either way, if its not too deep you can often hear where the end of it is. A mechanic's stethescope may help with this if its deeper.

 

[southalabama]

Dye?

 

[Clik]

Rainwater overloads treatment plants, so anything not under roof was directed elsewhere in modern times (supposedly). There's always a bootlegger somewhere. Area drains outside of walkup basements were often just French drains. They just drained into a gravel bed one way or another. Sometimes just gravel under the drain, sometimes into a length of perforated pipe run out some distance, sometimes tied into the footer drain, sometimes just a coil of perforated black corrugated. Many times the gravel gets saturated with fine debris and the only cure is digging it up. In other cases I have jetted them and stirred the fines up enough to renew the system. Sometimes plunging with a taiz disc type plunger works if theres enogh drop to get some stroke/pressure. Sometimes wrapping a arg around a garden hose and pressurizing works. I've even wrapped and sealed a wet vacuum hose and cleared a few. In a few cases (usually cities) they are tied into the storm drain system.

 

[BillK]

Bob,
Do you know anyone that owns or works at a fairly well equipped auto repair shop ? Most shops now days have a "smoke" machine for finding emissions leaks and I wonder if hooking it up to the drain and sealing it if it would pump smoke far enough for you to find the end of the line ?

Just a thought,

 

[signcrafter]

Call a plumber out and he will run a camera with a tracer in it threw the pipe. It will show the clog, how far out the clog is, and also will use a tracer from the top and be able to tell you exactly where your pipe runs and ends. Shouldn't cost to much either.

I'm all about DIY and would always prefer to buy new tools before hiring someone but in this case it would be worth the cost to have the plumber come out and show you exactly how your pipe goes and where the clog is.

 

[b-body-bob]

What about a piece of 3/8 inch steel bar with a point on the end and just push it in the graund every 6 inches

Remember, it's 6' deep at the known point. Anything close enough to the surface to find that way would be god knows where in the yard. I'd have to grid the yard off like an FBI crime scene

Since the pipe will have to be pitched, is the ground also grading downward or do you think the pipe will be 30' down by then?
How do you know the pipe is 100' or longer?

The yard does pitch down.

I estimated 100' by walking to the lowest point and looking back at the house to estimate the drop. If the pipe is 6' deep at the house, I have to find a place over 6' lower than the house for it to come to daylight. I don't have a transit, but looking on the level back at the house it seems to me the yard doesn't have enough drop to come to daylight. So that whole idea is probably off the table. I'm leaning toward the pipe ending in a dry well at this point.

Rent a powered drain auger and run it down the line. May clear the line for you. Either way, if its not too deep you can often hear where the end of it is. A mechanic's stethescope may help with this if its deeper.

That may be what I end up doing. They call those gadgets an eel at the local rental shop (electric snake)

Dye?

That'd work if it came to the surface. What kind of dye do I use, just plain old RITT?

Rainwater overloads treatment plants, so anything not under roof was directed elsewhere in modern times (supposedly). There's always a bootlegger somewhere. Area drains outside of walkup basements were often just French drains. They just drained into a gravel bed one way or another. Sometimes just gravel under the drain, sometimes into a length of perforated pipe run out some distance, sometimes tied into the footer drain, sometimes just a coil of perforated black corrugated. Many times the gravel gets saturated with fine debris and the only cure is digging it up. In other cases I have jetted them and stirred the fines up enough to renew the system. Sometimes plunging with a taiz disc type plunger works if theres enogh drop to get some stroke/pressure. Sometimes wrapping a arg around a garden hose and pressurizing works. I've even wrapped and sealed a wet vacuum hose and cleared a few. In a few cases (usually cities) they are tied into the storm drain system.

Good info. I've got a "high pressure" style nozzle for my hose and could jab that in and hope but if there's a bend before the clog I won't be able to get past it.

Bob,
Do you know anyone that owns or works at a fairly well equipped auto repair shop ? Most shops now days have a "smoke" machine for finding emissions leaks and I wonder if hooking it up to the drain and sealing it if it would pump smoke far enough for you to find the end of the line ?
Just a thought,

Seems like the smoke would want to come out the high end of the pipe, rising the opposite way I need to go, My neighbors talked once about having a plumber put a smoke bomb of some sort in their system and they had smoke coming up all over the place in the yard due to broken field tiles. So apparently it works.

I think dye in the pipe would have the same basic effect though, right?

Call a plumber out and he will run a camera with a tracer in it threw the pipe. It will show the clog, how far out the clog is, and also will use a tracer from the top and be able to tell you exactly where your pipe runs and ends. Shouldn't cost to much either.

I'm all about DIY and would always prefer to buy new tools before hiring someone but in this case it would be worth the cost to have the plumber come out and show you exactly how your pipe goes and where the clog is.

Around here the trick is finding someone with the right gadget. It's not a big city, so not a lot of pros into stuff like that. I expect the business model is more like they come in and say, "start over" and hand me an estimate for that. I'll make some calls Monday if I'm still in this pickle though, you never know what you'll find unless you ask, right?

 

[b-body-bob]

Update - ran garden hose in pipe for 1/2 hour, the drain didn't back up, and I can find no trace of the water in the yard. So I think I'm dealing with a dry well and that maybe the problem is that when it rains heavily, the dry well is filling up with water from the yard, and that stops the drain from emptying.

 

[PT Doc]

Update - ran garden hose in pipe for 1/2 hour, the drain didn't back up, and I can find no trace of the water in the yard. So I think I'm dealing with a dry well and that maybe the problem is that when it rains heavily, the dry well is filling up with water from the yard, and that stops the drain from emptying.

Run in longer or increase the flow so that you can the end. My spigot puts out almost exactly 5gpm through my hose.

 

[b-body-bob]

Good info on the flow rate - 5gpm for 30 mins is 150 gallons. A foot of 4" pipe holds .65 gallons (per wiki answers). 150/.65 = 230 feet of pipe that would be filled by that amount of water. So, if it was totally or mostly blocked, that should have been enough water to see it at least start backing up, right?

 

[BillK]

Seems like the smoke would want to come out the high end of the pipe, rising the opposite way I need to go,

Pretty sure the smoke machines put out smoke with a fair amount of pressure. You would just have to seal it up at the entrance with duct tape or just a bunch of wet rags and it should pump the smoke all the way through the line.

 

[Advan]

See if your rental place has a pipe tracer... This is what they're meant for, and I'll bet its like $40 a day!

 

[Aura]

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_1054_1054

 

[b-body-bob]

Pretty sure the smoke machines put out smoke with a fair amount of pressure. You would just have to seal it up at the entrance with duct tape or just a bunch of wet rags and it should pump the smoke all the way through the line.

After today's see how much water I can run in the pipe and still not find any in the yard experiment, I'm not sure smoke would even come out, esp if it ends in a dry well like I suspect.

See if your rental place has a pipe tracer... This is what they're meant for, and I'll bet its like $40 a day!

I called today and asked about a camera (didn't have), will call Monday and ask for a pipe tracer instead.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_1054_1054

That looks like the modern version of a willow branch to dowse with

 

[Aura]

Yup, but I think this one works on genuine magic cuz it don't seem to take batteries.

 

[kbs2244]

Check with your local plumbing supply store.
They should have a red dye that the steptic guys use to find bad spots.
You are talking pretty deep, but if it gets to the surface somehwhere, you will know where.

 

[b-body-bob]

I haven't made any phone calls for a pipe tracker yet, but did notice something else yesterday -

I hosed down the driveway, and the trench backed up just from the accumulation of water sprayed on the slab. That led me to realize that the trench is a heckuva lot bigger than the single drain outlet, so there's a chance that a bottleneck at the outlet is causing a backup there.

If that's the case, and since there's less than a fat chance I'll be digging everything up again to enlarge the drain and pipe, I may end up with a pump there to move the water out.

 

[BillK]

I hosed down the driveway, and the trench backed up just from the accumulation of water sprayed on the slab.

Bob,
Is it just the trench that backs up ?? Maybe the pipe from the trench to the main line is just clogged some ??

 

[volleyball]

You either live with water on the lawn or you plan on finding the pipe and renewing/enlarging the dry well. Maybe even going to a larger pipe once you clear the structures you don't want to upset.
You could go as far as digging past the structures a hole large enough for a horizontal boring machine. How big a project are you going to let this get?
And while your local tool place might only go 50', it may be money well spent to go to a pro rental shop further away if their camera goes 100'.

 

[b-body-bob]

Bob,
Is it just the trench that backs up ?? Maybe the pipe from the trench to the main line is just clogged some ??

Pipe from the trench to the main 4" run is all new.

How big a project are you going to let this get?

There's the question. I say not much bigger.

Right now I'm thinking to drop a pump in the trench near the outlet so it's out of the way of cars driving into the garage, then bring a line out of the pump up the retaining wall and out into the yard with just enough depth to hide the pipe. The yard runs downhill away from there so I can just dig a shallow pipe to get the water away to an inconspicuous place to dump it.

I think that's an acceptable solution to a bad situation.

 

[kbs2244]

I M H O , avoid any kind of pump!
Gravity rarely fails, power companies often do.

 

[eddiemeddiem]

I can think of two options:

1) a couple years ago the city had to inspect the sewer line between my house and the street. They had a camera on the end of a snake reel that they ran down the pipe. When it got stopped, they could scan from above ground with a metal detector like think that found the end where the camera was stopped. The could tell where it was stopped, and how far below my driveway it was.

2) find someone with an IR/thermography camera. Run a lot of hot water down the drain, and wait a while for it to seep/drain out. If it's draining to near the surface, the ground will be warmer than the surrounding area, and you'll be able to locate the exit from the temperature difference. You'd be surprised how sensitive the modern cameras are.

 

[SLYDIT]

what about blowing smoke down it? i heard of a guy putting oil in his motor bike exhaust and hooking a pipe to the open end, letting her rip and then seeing where the smoke comes out.

 

[va.grouseman]

Don't know your exact situation or what size pipe your dealing with exactly, but if the pipe isn't more than 6'' in diameter, you might try a Drain king. I have used them on my pipes many times and they work. House is 65 years old and the drain pipes are old cast iron which will oxidize over time and grow little rust **** that catch stuff. After about a year it about completely clogs and I pull out the Drain King. They attach to your garden hose and go down to the clog and when you turn on the water they expand to the interior size of the pipe so there is no backwash. They have a built in pop-off valve so when it has expanded as far as it can, the water blasts forward only and breaks the clog. Just an idea. Here's one on E-bay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Drain-King-...339?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4611affa93

 

[Kevin54]

Pressure washer is the easiest way. Run the hose down as far as you can, and fire up the pressure washer. Do this on a very dry day. If it starts to overflow by backing up. let it set for awhile. Then again fire it up. After a few hours, go out as far as you thing things MAY be and start walking back and forth until you find a damp area in the ground. You can either use a small shovel, divining rods, or you can take something like a piece of rebar and start poking down into the ground. If you use a piece of rebar, sharpen a nice point on it.

 

[b-body-bob]

Don't know your exact situation or what size pipe your dealing with exactly, but if the pipe isn't more than 6'' in diameter, you might try a Drain king. ]

I've got experience with those, but I call them blow-balls. Anyway, I had a situation like you describe with pipes periodically getting clogged and I'd break out the hose and ball and blast it clear. Well one day I had done that and when I hauled the hose back out of the stand pipe, the ball was gone. That very next weekend I was out in the yard helping install a new run of sch 40. At least I eliminated that old field tile, right?

FWIW I exploded one of those balls on the same pipe run I'm fighting now, but was on the other side of the driveway. I was pushing against a clog of mud, it wasn't budging, and water doesn't compress. I had realized it was a bad idea but didn't stop and eventually POP! went the rubber ball but this time the ball stayed on the brass threaded part so nothing was lost.

So thanks to all that, I'm no fan of sticking stuff into these underground pipes.

 

[venturesomerite]

Perhaps I missed it, but do you know what kind of pipe it is? Does it change types at all ?


For instance my mom's house is an old colonial, has PVC inside, iron pipe through the foundation wall, and clay to the road service.



On another page all together, I used to work in a golf course, that had a floor drain. And with out fail, the drain would get clogged with golf balls. I actually found that the super industrial (the **** that would probably melt your skin off ) drain cleaner (drano foamy ****) would soften the plastic enough on the balls to allow them to move when you squirted a hose down there.



However, if you do have water backing up from a dry well, that certainly wont work.

Is it possible to dig up a little bit of the drain line from inside to install a check valve? Obviously don't bury that in cement, put it in some kind of servicable box that can be opened if need be.

 

[b-body-bob]

Well, we found one coupling so there's two full pieces of PVC heading out into the yard. I take that to mean it's PVC all the way because if they were going to switch to field tile or corrugated later in the run they would've done it at the first coupling.

 

[High Desert]

You might try a septic tank cleaning company. They often have to locate septic tanks when owners have no idea. If the lines aren't clogged, they have a device they can flush that emits an RFID (I think), then search the yard for the signal. Perhaps they could "flush" one down your line.

If you have an underground cistern of significant size, it would be good for you to find where in case it is in poor shape and may collapse.

 

[JimR1998]

I needed to locate my septic line for a sewer tie-in a few years back. Got estimates in the high hundreds for exploratory digs, electronic locating, etc. Then this older contractor shows up and asks me for 2 wire hangers. He cut them into L-shaped lengths and put the short ends in 4" long pieces of PVC. Then he told me to hold the PVC in my fists and walk slow until the hangers move. He said we were divining for water and laughed with his friend. I thought I was being made a fool of, but sure enough... we located the line and an underground cable. Dead on. I couldn't believe it.

Not sure if it will work with a PVC pipe but give it a try. I think it has something to do with electrical charge and my cast iron pipe was grounded.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/Allemanswiro.jpg/1280px-Allemanswiro.jpg

 

[Westly]

It would probably be easiest to put in a new drain line, and not make this one 6 feet deep!

Or you could excavate the 6 foot one, or look for an archeologist with a ground penetrating radar