I bought one of these cheapo units and literally could not believe how well it it worked. I tracked conductors well over 3 feet deep. Way cheaper than renting a fancy unit. Of course, if you need to go over 4 feet you need a high tech unit.

Thanks for posting this !! I have a very similar situation. About 300 ft from barn to junction box. Then splits off about 50ft to pond aeration and irrigation pump. Then about 100ft to a plug then another 100 ft to another pond aeration pump. Im hoping its one of the shorter runs. Tripping breaker without any load.

PS...The signal seems much stronger when the receiver (the dongle at the end of the wire) is horizontal and not vertical. I inserted the receiver horizontally into a TEE that I glued on the end of a 3 foot long 3/4" PVC pipe which acted as a wand and made tracing the underground conductor much easier and faster.

@ejcheck

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the tip.

Great advice. I’ve got the almost exact same situation with my well pump. Hope I have a similar experience. Thanks for posting.

@ejcheck

2 жыл бұрын

Good luck. Take your time and listen carefully as you move down the line.

Great tips, thanks for posting this!

@ejcheck

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks. I realize that the vid is a bit strange but there were more than enough fixing the beeps. I wanted to show what I did when I got a problem.

I appreciate the way you explained getting to the break and then working backwards from the other end to determine the location of the break, and bypassing it. I am still learning how to use the device, so what would also be useful to me is if you showed exactly how you hooked up the alligator clips to the wires, and recorded several minutes describing the sounds it made as you traced the wire and what happened when go got closer to and farther from the cable. Did you ground the black clip to the earth with a metal rod, or connect it to a different conductor in the cable? Does your cable have two hots and a Neutral in your cable, or is it three phase? I have subscribed to your videos, so if you post something new I can take a look at it. Thanks, Steven

@ejcheck

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for subscribing. 1- I am not an electrician, just a homeowner that does some DIY stuff. 2- My situation was straightforward. At the pump end, I had a 3 wire outlet. With the breaker OFF (just in case),The 2 alligator clips were attached to the White (Neutral) and Black (Hot) wires. There are only 2 wires to attach and my pump wiring had only 3 wires (white, black, ground). I suppose should there be a 2nd Hot you might have to do the process twice. The transmitter is sending a signal down the line so it will stop at the break. 3- In my case, all 3 wires were broken so this cuts the number of permutations. 4- When I reversed direction I was lucky that there was a relay for the sprinkler system control which made it relatively easy to connect on the relay terminals. Otherwise, I guess the breaker would have had to have been pulled to connect and i can't say that I am comfortable going into the breaker box. I hope that helps

Hey, glad this device seemed to work… How deep was your wiring? I have a fault between the breaker panel in our pump house and the plant nursery about 150’ away. We laid the wire a few years ago about 18” deep. Do you think this would find a wire at that depth?

@ejcheck

Жыл бұрын

Code is supposed to be 18". Whoever laid this line did a lot of cheating and 12" was probably closer to reality

The instructions say that it won't work on multi strand wires. Do you know what this means?

@ejcheck

11 ай бұрын

Most house wiring is a single solid wire for each conductor as opposed to multistranded like you'd find in lamp cord

@hansrein8946

3 ай бұрын

Kolsol f01

@the_atomic_punk487

2 ай бұрын

@@ejcheckwell my dog fence wire is multi strand, I can’t see a reason why it wouldn’t work to find an underground break in the wire. Was hoping someone could confirm or deny this.

@ejcheck

2 ай бұрын

@@the_atomic_punk487 I can only say give it a try.