I'm trying to find where the victorian drain and sewage pipes are. Is it worth getting a post hole tool like
You use a drain tracing transmitter and receiver, which you should be able to hire locally.
Colin Bignell
On Tuesday 09 April 2013 00:34 george - dicegeorge wrote in uk.d-i-y:
How much can you infer from the manholes and the directions the branches initially take, combined with location of downpipes and loos in the house?
I use a fork and shovel as you need enough space to stand in the trench.
That's worth remembering.
Any drought year, you can see where the pipe runs are in our lawn. Don't know what the Victorians did but the dairy had collector pits and loose laid *weeper* spider work. Unfortunately the Field Mice have found these and set up home.
Edinburgh Council has put drain maps on line from around 1890 - 1930.
That post hole digger is intended for fencing posts & useless for anything else.
If your drains are OK, just use them,don't worry. If you are making extensive modifications, ignore them, just dig for the new drains. If there are small alterations one can often determine where the drain are from manholes and common sense.
If there is a problem, you might be best to pay for a camera check, this can locate and identify the problem exactly. (The camera is poked down the drain with standard drain rods) Often the camera transmits a signal that can be detected from above where it is.
Manholes may have become covered in soil but the metal lids can be found with a metal detector.
Check out your neighbours (drains), they may give clues to /have knowledge of your installation.
Check with the local council for plans they may have.
Water deviner maybe? Brian
You may laugh but I've seen that done successfully.
- and updated their knowledge umpteen times in the last few years, mainly in Princes St, Haymarket etc, no doubt. Bah.
Locate as many manholes you can and work according to these. Don't put sewage into a surface water drain as it *will* be traced back to your house and you'll have to re-do them.
dig trenches
Dig with a proper spade (not a shovel) and buy a trench spade:
if you hit subsoil / sand / clay without finding a drain, move on, if you find a patch where it's obvious infil, go deeper
If there is water in then, then you can find them by divining ... it works, I have traced water pipes, drains & power cables.
How does it work ? Anyone ?
Simon.
No one knows. But many claim that, nevertheless it does..
"Eppur, Si Muove"
perhaps buried deep in our subconscious, is a mechanism out of Africa, that can sense or smell water, and we just need the props to access it?
Actually, that type of thing can be tested for now. There was a documentary recently that showed how the unconscious has abilities that just need to b e brought to the surface. The process of looking for enemy camps in aerial photos was improved by detecting cues from the subconscious using some type of brain monitoring (e.g. EEG) to highlight maps that may contain an enemy camp. The operator was trained to do this by painstakingly slow examinatio n of the photos. In the new system, the operator would "scan" the maps at h igh speed, just glancing at them and a note taken of any that triggered a c ertain subconscious reaction. He would then examine the marked photos consc iously to confirm the details, and was amazed at what he had unknowingly sp otted.
Perhaps they should monitor the brain of a diviner and see what happens. Of course the fact that nobody has won that prize is a bit odd ...
Simon.
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