New to locating and have questions

**SteveDodds** · July 27th, 2011, 09:31 PM

I've been on the job with CUS for about 2 months now. When I was doing the ride along thing, the guy I was with was using an RD8000. I didn't have my machine yet so I used his while he supervised. I know have an RD7000. We always ran his on 8k and 20% power. Now, that is all I do. I am to the point now that I know how to locate on 8K but not on any other frequency. Are the other frequencies any different? I am wondering what the other frequencies are used for. I understand that lower frequencies go a longer distance and higher frequencies will jump barriers and bleed off. What do all of you do?

Another question is with grounding. I live in Iowa and we have good soil here. How do I know when the ground is no good? I am asking because I assume I have always had a good ground but I'm not sure. If the ground is not good will the transmitter just not tone? There has been sometimes where the gas lines just wont locate. Is this because the ground is not good?

In my area, some gas meters at houses have some weird plastic coating on the risers. When this occurs there is also often 2, 3, or more wires that look like tracers but will be coiled around the riser and there will be a hose clamp around the riser with the wire clamped to the riser. When I find one of these, none of the wires will trace and line won't trace by hooking my lead to the pipe itself. I have also tried to cut off some of this weird coating. Not sure if I was supposed to or not but I had to try something. Any ideas for me?

**SteveDodds** · July 27th, 2011, 09:52 PM

Btw, this is on steel gas services.

**orangeboots** · July 27th, 2011, 10:10 PM

the 700 transmitter will tell u if you have a good ground i think at 20% your Ma reading should be about 15Ma but I could be wrong ,every time you hook up check your display and notice different readings. The wire on the gas risers is a anode not a locate wire should be a steel service and you may need to increase power and freq, to push thru the anode

**6feetunder** · July 27th, 2011, 10:11 PM

Originally Posted by SteveDodds

I've been on the job with CUS for about 2 months now. When I was doing the ride along thing, the guy I was with was using an RD8000. I didn't have my machine yet so I used his while he supervised. I know have an RD7000. We always ran his on 8k and 20% power. Now, that is all I do. I am to the point now that I know how to locate on 8K but not on any other frequency. Are the other frequencies any different? I am wondering what the other frequencies are used for. I understand that lower frequencies go a longer distance and higher frequencies will jump barriers and bleed off. What do all of you do?

Another question is with grounding. I live in Iowa and we have good soil here. How do I know when the ground is no good? I am asking because I assume I have always had a good ground but I'm not sure. If the ground is not good will the transmitter just not tone? There has been sometimes where the gas lines just wont locate. Is this because the ground is not good?

In my area, some gas meters at houses have some weird plastic coating on the risers. When this occurs there is also often 2, 3, or more wires that look like tracers but will be coiled around the riser and there will be a hose clamp around the riser with the wire clamped to the riser. When I find one of these, none of the wires will trace and line won't trace by hooking my lead to the pipe itself. I have also tried to cut off some of this weird coating. Not sure if I was supposed to or not but I had to try something. Any ideas for me?

I'm not sure how the 7000 is but if it's anything like the 8000 you can tell how good your ground is by the number reading on the screen of the transmitter. When you have it turned on it with leads plugged in it will read 0 as you hook-up and ground out the numbers will start to climb, the higher the number the better the ground, typically 80 or higher is excellent, not to say below that isn't still good. locating is the same in any frequency in my opinion but certain frequencies should only be used for certain situations that you will learn as you go. Typically 8 is a great one to run in for most scenarios. Higher frequencies come in handy when dealing with difficult gas lines among other things, especially 83k. In regards to the gas meters and the coating and wires what that sounds like to me is maybe inside meters that have been moved outside. The old existing line is steel but they have chopped off the old line outside the house and replaced only the riser and a few feet of the service with plastic. In most cases these are very difficult to tone, especially from the tracer wires. I'm not sure why there would be more than 2 wires but in many cases these particular services have 2 wires, one which ties the plastic riser into the old existing steel line so you can tone it, theoretically , and the other is a test wire for an anode which is for cathodic protection of the service. Maybe I'm wrong altogether but that just what it sounds like you might be talking about, I'm sure others will have more to say. At any rate good luck to you, learn from everyone you can. Oh yeah and I wouldn't advise cutting anything back like that, we had a guy cut into a fiber optic that fed an air traffic control tower to try and tone it, let's just say it wasn't pretty.

**JACKnBORE** · July 28th, 2011, 07:15 PM

Hose clamps with a wire running to ground indicate that there is anode for riser to keep rust off. Usually you can look at these and every bit of metal is corroding. UNTRACEABLE.