How to find a buried waterpipe with electricks?

It will get snorts of derision, but you have nothing to lose with dowsing.

George Miles explained :

GPR?

In message snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com, George Miles snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

Just dig carefully. At that age it has to be steel although I have heard of mains supplies in Asbestos.

Did some of this with two bent coat hangers as a child. It certainly

Tim

But you never did a proper double blind test.

George Miles explained on 07/11/2021 :

Plotting soil resistivity might work....

Connect one terminal of a test meter on the resistance range, to a good earth, attach the other terminal to a sharp metal probe which you can push in the soil. Lowest resistance readings should be where the metal pipes run.

Could be his lucky day and it is lead which will be worth more than the 20mm mdpe replacement.

That's the paradox ... who gives a s*it about double blind tests if using dowsing does appear to find buried pipes.

Bearing in mind in an uncontrolled test there could be a lot at play. Even down to subtle variations in the ground level that are somehow detectable sub/unconsciously.

The older the get, the less hasty I am to dismiss things as "absolute" bollocks, which isn't an invitation to woo. They might only be 99% bollocks. Much like the old wives tale about heartburn in the mother being an indicator of a hairy headed child. SWMBO was told that when she had heartburn and our lad was born with a nice layer of hair) and the doctor told the MiL it was "absolute nonsense", Fast forward a few years and research shows that the hormone that promoted hair growth in the fetus also causes the sphincter of the oesophagus to weaken and lead to ... heartburn.

Actually, we did do some. One person would hide a metallic object and another would then find it.

Probably wouldn?t stand up to any sort of serious scrutiny admittedly.

Tim

Yeah, too easy to detect signs of the hiding.

Needs to be done with known water supply pipes which have been there for decades and which have no visible surface effects and are where it isn't the obvious place to put a water supply pipe.

This kind of thing?:

Don?t laugh or dismiss this?

I watched someone use a wooden rod, one end on the ground, the other to his ear. He had a rough idea of the location.

He placed a series of tent pegs using sound, later in the day there was a trench as far as I could see where they?d been, with men in it.

I'd have thought it could just about be lead too, especially if as much as 120 years.

As Brian says below, water boards use acoustic detectors. Although this is normally for leaks, it might work provided there is flowing water. Also, do you know any treasure hunters? Failing that hire a pipe detector as already mentioned.

More probably lead

Yes as long as you use all three modes and have the signal generator to attach to one end of the pipe.

I see the one linked above seems to scan all modes automatically, I used Cscope ones which you had to switch between mains frequency and its harmonics, radio frequency and the signal generator frequency. We also had them calibrated regularly.

The latter had some way of establishing the depth and I know it had two detector coils spaced at different heights but damned if I can remember how they used that to discriminate the depth.

When there was a need to trace a pipe in our village the Water Company came out and a bloke had a wooden stick with an earcup on the end. He stuck the end of the stick in the ground and found the running water.

Bill

Metal detector, then by hand.

Hire a cat from somewhere, that would most likely do on its own, but if there's any doub then hire a genny too. Lots of places have them available. You are likely to find all sorts of stuff down there.