Broken water line found, Holland, MI

A most unusual request was made to me to help find a broken discharge water line coming from a sump pump in a 100+ year old home.

The line extended about 200 feet coming out of the basement and then made a 90 degree turn out to a drainage ditch. The owner Cody and his wife Jennifer

bought the house 2 months ago when they moved from Tennessee. They didn’t have any trouble until the recent rains that caused some flooding.

Cody ran a metal spring steel snake from the house to a point about 200 feet then stopped, he then tried it from the ditch to about 100 feet and was stopped again.

With the snake still in the pipe from the house my detector friend Dave B. and I followed it out to about the spot the snake stopped.

We dug a trench about 6 feet long and 3 feet deep hoping to find the PVC pipe to no avail. We then dug holes from the ditch following the sunken pipe every

6 feet until we found the 90 degree turn just 6 inches from our original trench. Not finding any clog at the 90 degree joint we started digging toward the

house and there was the collapse in the line. This all took about 3 hours and Cody and Jennifer P. were very happy that we could help them.

For our time and reward we asked if we could detect their yard of some 100 plus years old.