Detecting plastic water pipes

[Jim]

Can anyone come up with a means of accurately detecting the location plastic water pipes that are chased into brickwork and then sheeted over with plasterboard?

[Owain]

"Jim" wrote | Can anyone come up with a means of accurately detecting the location | plastic water pipes that are chased into brickwork and then sheeted | over with plasterboard?

Hammer and nail. Will find the pipe every time :-)

Owain

[kmillar]

Hammer in a nail. Pull the nail out. If water spurts out you've found the pipe.

-K

Jim wrote:

[Christian McArdle]

It works even better with metal gas pipes, although you also need a lighter to do the final check.

Christian.

[Rob Morley]

Add a radioactive isotope to the water, then trace the pipes with a geiger counter. ;^>

[keng]

If they travel up from floor level, try a fine bladed filling knife or similar and slide it in at bottom of plaster board to locate the chased channel. Use a spirit level or plumb line to mark channel up wall then check again at top of wall.

KG

[Lurch]

On 27 Jan 2005 07:54:18 -0800, "keng" strung together this:

This one's even funnier than using a hammer and nail.

If someones plumbed a house with plastic then they're not going to be running in a straight line anywhere at all, either horizontally, vertically or other.

[Pete C]

Hi,

Try passing very hot water throught the pipe and detecting changes in surface temperature with an IR thermometer.

If not flush some string through the pipe, pull a cable through and use a cable detector to detect where the pipe is. Some careful application of AC to the cable may help!

cheers, Pete.

[keng]

No, definitely can't see that in the original post, but then, you're such a smart ar*e you probably know everything there is to know about the house in question.

Sure, the hammer and nail was funny, but then it's time for something else once it has run it's course. You being such a know all still haven't been able to come up with your own material, either funny or practical.

If the channels have been chased into brickwork there's a remote chance that they may follow one of the routes you so purposefully scorn, hence my hilarious post.

KG

[John Stumbles]

or perhaps you can hear the water running through the pipe? may be more noticeable with particular conditions of taps or valves half-open causing turbulence & therefore noise

[Christian McArdle]

Except that it is run in a chase, so is very likely to be vertical. I wouldn't cut a chase into brickwork that meanders about.

Christian.

[.]

In article , Lurch writes

What a daft statement

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

If you can get into the pipe. . . .

Decent magnet on a length of string. Magnetic compass from the heel of the shoes (Pathfinder?) you had when you were in the cubs in the 60's and look for the deflection of the needle toward the magnet.

In tha absence of the above, any magnetic compass should be fine.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)" saying something like:

Detcord.

[Andrew Chesters]

Perhaps you could make this easier by mugging your local, friendly doctor and relieve him of his stethoscope.

[nog]

------------------------------8<

A stem wineglass is better than nothing, and safer than a doctor.