How do you find a short in buried wire?

wykubotaguy said:

Get an electrician with a fault locator and he should be able to locate the fault within inches and give you the depth as well.

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X 2. Fault locating isn't hard to do, you just need the equipment. I used to do quite a bit with a unit like this before I retired.


It could be a bad splice, but it could also be a case of insulation failure, either a pinhole from when it was manufactured or possibly damage from handling or it could be damaged by something it was buried with, like a sharp rock. A fault to earth won't necessarily trip a breaker, the earth resistance can be high enough that the breaker sees it as just a load...I've seen that happen. Several years ago a guy called in that there was steam rising from the ground out in his back yard so we went out and checked. Sure enough there was a hole in the snow and a small pool of water in the lawn, maybe 6 - 8 inches in diameter and it was bubbling merrily away...electrolysis, eh? It did warm it up enough to raise the temp high enough to thaw the earth and melt snow but it definitely wasn't boiling...I checked after the power to it was shut off. Turns out the previous home owner used to have a pool house out back but had torn it down and filled in the pool before he sold the house but they didn't remove the electrical service to it, just buried the bare ends underground. They probably just opened the breaker and left it like that but the new owner turned it back on not knowing what it fed but thinking it had to be on.

X 2. Fault locating isn't hard to do, you just need the equipment. I used to do quite a bit with a unit like this before I retired.It could be a bad splice, but it could also be a case of insulation failure, either a pinhole from when it was manufactured or possibly damage from handling or it could be damaged by something it was buried with, like a sharp rock. A fault to earth won't necessarily trip a breaker, the earth resistance can be high enough that the breaker sees it as just a load...I've seen that happen. Several years ago a guy called in that there was steam rising from the ground out in his back yard so we went out and checked. Sure enough there was a hole in the snow and a small pool of water in the lawn, maybe 6 - 8 inches in diameter and it was bubbling merrily away...electrolysis, eh? It did warm it up enough to raise the temp high enough to thaw the earth and melt snow but it definitely wasn't boiling...I checked after the power to it was shut off. Turns out the previous home owner used to have a pool house out back but had torn it down and filled in the pool before he sold the house but they didn't remove the electrical service to it, just buried the bare ends underground. They probably just opened the breaker and left it like that but the new owner turned it back on not knowing what it fed but thinking it had to be on.

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Currently I'm exploring the TDR approach but am falling short on the key component 74AC14.  I have plenty of 74HC14 around but am I to assume the HC is too slow on rise time?

Things that I have tried are sending 60 HZ down the wire and using an AM radio to locate the wire.  This worked amazingly well, however, the expectation was the break would show by a defined change in the radio noise at the point of the break.  I suspect we are narrowing down the area of the break but because the depth of burial varies and the fact that I'm certain the break is not a crisp clean one the AM radio method although helpful is too vague and serves as an approximation.

Hand digging is not fun in this soil so a precise location is needed.

Another thought I had was to send a very high voltage down the wire which seems inline with some of the above suggestions.  I have a Cockcroft Walton multiplier circuit I made from an old laser printer that I may hook up and see if I can detect any radio noise at the break.

Thanks for all the ideas.

Jerry

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