well I just spent a full day looking for a water line that should have been found in a hour. what are guys using to locate underground wire/pipes lines. thanks
Bought one of the original locators Pipehorn several years ago and it works great. Bonus for us is they are made in Birmingham, AL. Underground Pipe & Cable Locators | Pipehorn Locating Technology For more than 50 years, Pipehorn has been in the business of delivering solutions to address problems related to underground utility location and damage prevention. pipehorn.com It's been a good unit.
thanks cm would you buy the HL or just the H model
No problem. I bought the HL.
Radio Detection makes the best locating equipment.
Excavator bucket seems to work great. Funny enough, I trenched power to a sign that had buried 7200v, fiber, phone, cable going across like it was a spider web, no problems. Using a clapped out Deere 310A, about had to cast out the bucket as it was so loose. Boring outfit comes to install some lines with their fancy equipment, managed to rip out the main phone line twice and sent a guy to the hospital when he Sawzalled a 7200v feeder that they claimed was dead. "Not in an drawings" Oh ripped that line out too... like ripped it right out from the building that fed it!
had two different old timers there, both used this method, both way of
Last week bucket and throttle for the win 15 ft past indicators & shallower than they thought it gave everyone extra time the brains scratching and electricians wondering *** & me with no cookie for finding the surprise sometimes it happens
Ive found that a 40' 12"@72 H pile under a 4500 lb drop hammer is a good underground locator .Over the years of pile driving we seem to find all kinds of things that were not supposed to be there.
The spicy roots are the ones I get scared of. Or a gas main. Contractor hut one in Anchorage a few years ago, had flames like 50ft high.
Is there a service that would have something like this to either hire or rent? I know where the water shutoff is, in the front yard, but then it goes who-knows-where about 300 feet to the house. I'd rather not dig it up and I don't think Call Before You Dig spots water lines do they?
Is there non-destructive equipment that can find buried plastic lines without tracer wires? Is there anything affordable for mortals?
What material is the pipe? If plastic does it have a tracer wire.
Call your local locator service, 411 is the number here. They locate and if you hit something it is on them. Someone hit a three quarter inch gas line feeding a house prior to calling 411. The bill was 3500.00 Luckily, they were able to get the bill reduced to 500.00 If someone had callled 411 and hit the line it would have cost 0.00
Yes , I have a locator that picks up pipe without tracer wires. I have to see who makes it.
Alot of pipe in the ground around our area does not have tracer wire.
The average locator service is just for the feeding utilities to the property, anything else is not covered. Like if a water meter is on the side of the county street any piping to the home is on the owner, same with electric lines past the meter. Utilities pay them and only up to their meters, nothing else. Plastic pipes with water can be traced with a radio frequency introduced into the water. I know because the time we needed that done his gizmo was broken. That was a private owner pay locator. Yeah gotta love worthless website like this one. No prices etc. Underground Pipe & Cable Locators | Pipehorn Locating Technology For more than 50 years, Pipehorn has been in the business of delivering solutions to address problems related to underground utility location and damage prevention. pipehorn.com Are there places to rent this sort of stuff?
we found this one by opening the water line at the shutoff in building, then shoved a electrical fish tape down the plastic pipe towards the service pit
LOL wut?
Sorry I guess I didn't look hard enough. Its an age thing I guess.
I have no experience with them, but there are acoustic generators you can hook to a hose bib or yard hydrant. I asked a Subsurface Solutions rep about this a few years ago. They have an acoustic setup, but it's painfully expensive . I found an Australian company that makes acoustic generators for very reasonable. Just need to find a decent listening device for less than $6K.
I used a shoenstedt for work was not cheap but had multiple hz choices which is good. Sometimes I needed high frequency sometimes 512 for locating water. Depended on what other utilities were in the area.
Yall laugh, but witching rods (two pieces of #12 wire about 18" long with a short bend for a handle) are what I've used my entire life to find stuff underground. Obviously I call 811 to have all the public utilities marked, but if I need to find private water lines, buried electric, etc that's what I use. It can be surprisingly accurate, however, they are indiscriminate in what they find. Anything that disrupts the magnetism of the earth in a straight line will make them move, so you need to have at least an idea of what you are looking for and which direction it runs. Of course they also can't tell the depth.
^^^This 100%. I have been using a 14-18" of copper ground rod bent to fold over your index finger to locate for over 30 years. It works and will located plastic, copper, rubber, RCP and ductile. If it's a copper line it seems to be more accurate than other materials for obvious reasons.
try this sometime When you have located something with the witching rods (just putting out numbers as an example) Then lets say what ever you locate is buried approx. 3 feet deep Now instead of using the 2 rods, put the one behind your back and hold one above whatever you locate and hold high then slowly start drop down Whenever it starts to swing inward gives an idea of depth Now do the same procedure coming upward from ground Between the 2 readings is the basic depth of whatever you locate Now the funny part. The person who showed me this was doing a trench across field tile Beside the trench the tile was down 30" Bottom of trench down to the tile was about 6" With the witching rod beside trench it witched for 30" in the trench it witched for 6"
Another funny part of witching the depth Do it with left hand the rod swings in toward body Do it with right hand the rod swings in toward body
I will certainly give the depth thing a try, never had heard that before. I've had numerous customers watch me locate a pipe and not believe it until we dug it up. There is most definitely science/physics behind it, but the part I don't fully understand is why not everyone can do it. I try to teach anybody I can, most people can do it to some extent, but some not at all. All using the same rods, same technique, IDK. I've only tried witching for a well twice, but both times we hit water. First time we hired a well driller to drill a farm well, told them to dig wherever they thought was good. Went down 600' an hit nothing but dust, took my witching rods and walk around the field until I found what appeared to be two veins of water crossing each other, set a flag and told them to drill there. At 120' down they hit 80gpm of water!
Dave Kessler from Hoosick Falls was the one you wanted to hire. Old well driller in our area and his helper both were good at locating water with witching rods. He also used an old Bucyrus-Erie pounder. If he felt that he had found water, he also was fairly good at estimating the depth and yield. He guaranteed his dowsing; if he drilled where he felt was good, and it came up dry, you owed him nothing. If you selected where you wanted the well, you bought the hole, wet or dry. He often succeeded where the bigger, faster rotary rigs failed because they drilled right past the vein whereas the vibration of the pounder opened them up. We built 38 years ago on top of fractured rock and many dry holes are all around us. Dave went to 180’ and got 15 gpm. He told us to set the pump at a hundred and all has been well (pun intended).
We bought a locator to use to help find the gas line, the electric, cable, and phone. I found my guys and myself never got really very good at using it. Judging how often the 811 locators guys are off, and how many areas they mark (Old abandoned utilities), I would rather let them deal with it and the liability. In any event, you're still hand digging around. We never did get what we really needed which was a reel flexrod with Sonde on the end to insert into the pipes. Most waterlines and drain pipes that are old do not have tracer wires. Almost easier to dig and install a new water line or drain line. If I was to do it again, I would get the plumbers reel with camera on the end, and locator.
Yep. I also found out (thankfully not the hard way) that the locates in my area expire after 30 days. If you had a locate done and you hit something even 1 day after it expires then its on you.