Rules and Guidelines
Want to participate in the discussions? Please read our Community Rules and Guidelines. Need some help? Visit Support and Answers.

  • State Not Answered
  • Locked Locked
  • Replies 48 replies
  • Subscribers 34 subscribers
  • Views 5324 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
You may also be interested in
This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Underground Cable Tracing.

Zoomup

An P.V.C./P.V.C.  cable is run in steel conduit underground from a farm barn to another location. It may run underground to some nearby concrete slabs previously used as a base for wooden sheds, or it may run for about 80 metres to some distant  derelict outbuildings.

I am not too familiar with all of the types of underground cable tracers available.

Which would be the best type of cable tracer to use to determine its run? There may be other buried metal to confuse some tracers. Will a signal injected into the cable be able to be detected by a cable tracer as the cable in inside steel conduit?

The cable is currently dead.

Thanks,

Z.

 

Parents
  • 0

    Many ways, with varying efficacy in different substrates and varying rate of fall off with depth. 

    Do you have an idea of depth, and how accurately do you need to know the route ?

     

    Electrical,

    Make the tube alive with a few volts of a high frequency you can hear on the radio - the genny/cat method is essentially that.

    A metal detector, which is a combined low frequency  transmitter and receiver, a GPR has the same function but at higher frequency, so the wavelength allows some phasing.

    ELF or DC - energise as an earth electrode and plot the surface voltage contours.

    Thermal - blow warm or very cold air through the pipe and image with IR camera. (freezer spray can be injected into the loose jackets of network cables for the same purpose in an emergancy) 

    Only good near the surface.

    Acoustic - blow gas or play sound into the conduit, or get a colleague to hammer and follow with an ear trumpet, much like the water board used to trace leaks. Works best far away from the origin.

    magnetic anomoly - compass may or may not work, a proton precession magnetometer certainly will, but building one is probably more effort than laying another cable.

    Probably more ways than this.

    Mike

Reply
  • 0

    Many ways, with varying efficacy in different substrates and varying rate of fall off with depth. 

    Do you have an idea of depth, and how accurately do you need to know the route ?

     

    Electrical,

    Make the tube alive with a few volts of a high frequency you can hear on the radio - the genny/cat method is essentially that.

    A metal detector, which is a combined low frequency  transmitter and receiver, a GPR has the same function but at higher frequency, so the wavelength allows some phasing.

    ELF or DC - energise as an earth electrode and plot the surface voltage contours.

    Thermal - blow warm or very cold air through the pipe and image with IR camera. (freezer spray can be injected into the loose jackets of network cables for the same purpose in an emergancy) 

    Only good near the surface.

    Acoustic - blow gas or play sound into the conduit, or get a colleague to hammer and follow with an ear trumpet, much like the water board used to trace leaks. Works best far away from the origin.

    magnetic anomoly - compass may or may not work, a proton precession magnetometer certainly will, but building one is probably more effort than laying another cable.

    Probably more ways than this.

    Mike

Children
No Data

Community Rules & Guidelines