Underground wire tracer/detector
- Thread starter s14kev
- Start date
Sevenhills1952
Well-known member
Call Miss Utility? Especially if it's new property. Some years ago I had them here and they marked a buried cable. I asked the guy if he could mark others...then handed him $20. He marked everything.
I took lots of pictures after he left with measurements off of buildings so I'd know.
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I took lots of pictures after he left with measurements off of buildings so I'd know.
Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk
Lots of underground feeder cable and irrigation solenoid cable snaking over 9 acres. I don't think anyone would do it for $20..
HoosierBuddy
Well-known member
You can call a private locating firm and they will come out and locate your stuff.
Absent that, maybe you could go on ebay and try to find something used? A new commercial quality pipe locator costs between $1000 and $10,000 depending on features. At the low end is the old split-box type with an analog signal meter and tone. At the high end are multi-frequency units with full digital display and built in survey grade GPS.
Ebay looks to have used equipment in the hundreds of dollars not thousands of dollars.
The other thing to bear in mind if DIY is that using locating equipment requires a certain amount of training and practice. If you do buy one...I'd suggest you practice over known structures to get a feel for how it works before doing your "real" job.
Phil
Absent that, maybe you could go on ebay and try to find something used? A new commercial quality pipe locator costs between $1000 and $10,000 depending on features. At the low end is the old split-box type with an analog signal meter and tone. At the high end are multi-frequency units with full digital display and built in survey grade GPS.
Ebay looks to have used equipment in the hundreds of dollars not thousands of dollars.
The other thing to bear in mind if DIY is that using locating equipment requires a certain amount of training and practice. If you do buy one...I'd suggest you practice over known structures to get a feel for how it works before doing your "real" job.
Phil
Sevenhills1952
Well-known member
I must have been lucky!
Maybe it depends on your state, I'm in Virginia. About a year ago I called Miss Utility twice. They never showed up and my backhoe snagged a large phone line. It looked like the ground puked spaghetti. Verizon fixed it no charge since I had called.
This was years ago, the guy marked an area about 1.5 acres. It didn't take him long at all. I had wires and pipes running everywhere on this old place. He used different color paint for different things.
Being here 40 years and trenching in things myself what surprised me was where I was certain things were I was off by 10-20 feet in places.
Miss Utility will come out here (most times) , you may try them first. Even if you had to pay the guy $100-$200 "tip" to do it it would be worth it (my opinion).
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Pressingonward
Well-known member
I needed to trace the wire going to my well once. I found someone online with a crazy method for doing it for free, and you know, it worked great!
What I did was turn the breaker off to disconnect power, then opened up the box at my well to access the wires. You then take a piece of stranded wire and connect it to any of the wires you want to trace (wire nut or twist the ends, however you want to do it). Here's the fun part - park your lawnmower or some other gasoline powered implement nearby, and wrap the wire 5-6 times around the spark plug wire.
Now get yourself a portable AM radio and a pair of headphones. Start the mower. Move the radio antenna back and forth across the wire you want to trace and adjust the frequency on the radio until you can hear the signal. I found it gets loud when the antenna is near either side of the wire, with a quiet spot directly above.
I was able to trace my wiring with no problem once I got the hang of it
What I did was turn the breaker off to disconnect power, then opened up the box at my well to access the wires. You then take a piece of stranded wire and connect it to any of the wires you want to trace (wire nut or twist the ends, however you want to do it). Here's the fun part - park your lawnmower or some other gasoline powered implement nearby, and wrap the wire 5-6 times around the spark plug wire.
Now get yourself a portable AM radio and a pair of headphones. Start the mower. Move the radio antenna back and forth across the wire you want to trace and adjust the frequency on the radio until you can hear the signal. I found it gets loud when the antenna is near either side of the wire, with a quiet spot directly above.
I was able to trace my wiring with no problem once I got the hang of it
HoosierBuddy
Well-known member
I needed to trace the wire going to my well once. I found someone online with a crazy method for doing it for free, and you know, it worked great!
What I did was turn the breaker off to disconnect power, then opened up the box at my well to access the wires. You then take a piece of stranded wire and connect it to any of the wires you want to trace (wire nut or twist the ends, however you want to do it). Here's the fun part - park your lawnmower or some other gasoline powered implement nearby, and wrap the wire 5-6 times around the spark plug wire.
Now get yourself a portable AM radio and a pair of headphones. Start the mower. Move the radio antenna back and forth across the wire you want to trace and adjust the frequency on the radio until you can hear the signal. I found it gets loud when the antenna is near either side of the wire, with a quiet spot directly above.
I was able to trace my wiring with no problem once I got the hang of it
That's essentially what commercial pipe locator does. It consists of a transmitter box and a receiver unit. The transmitter puts a wave form signal on the pipe or wire in the radio frequency range. The receiver has one or more antennas that allow the user to find the center of the radio signal being carried by the pipe or wire. Where the center of the signal is at ground level will hopefully be close to the center of the metallic pipe or wire underground. Typically state law will say how close the marks should be for an accurate locate. In Indiana it's within 2 feet either side of the edges of the structure. This allows some wiggle room for the errors that can creep up in marking...the biggest is often the signal bleeding off on a foreign conductor and that tending to pull the center of the signal towards that conductor (like another buried or overhead wire that the signal is getting off onto).
Anyway...more info than the OP wanted. I do like the idea of the home built detector. Something like that would actually make a tremendously interesting demonstration for workers being trained in how to successfully locate underground pipe using modern equipment.
By the way...I've seen a few guys use "witching sticks" or "drowsing rods" to locate stuff over the years. In my experience even though a lot of people believe these work..they don't...and any excavation around a line marked that way is pretty likely to encounter the structure in a spot other than that marked.
Just my experience. Don't be dissing on me....all you witches out there.
Phil
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Rusty Bolt
Well-known member
I have a Mastek ms6818. It works but sometimes it just barely works. If the wire gets more than 20"-24" deep it doesn't work at all in my soil. I did use it to find where my outdoor wiring ran. Consider this a lukewarm recommendation. It was better than digging up my yard.
The same locator is sold under a lot of different names. I think Mastek in the OEM. But they all seem to use the same model number. It's about $160 on Amazon.
The same locator is sold under a lot of different names. I think Mastek in the OEM. But they all seem to use the same model number. It's about $160 on Amazon.