Buried Sewer Clean-out’s…Located By Metal Detector!
As a member of THE RING FINDERS community, I often get calls for missing items such as; men’s and woman’s rings, earrings, cell phones, and keys. I even have gotten a number of requests for missing or locating property pins. I also get to meet a great deal of interesting personalities while on these requests for assistance. Ken’s story is a little bit different and takes place on a large plot of land. A few years earlier, he had trenched and ran new sewer lines with a clean-out every 100 feet. Before burying these lines he capped the clean-outs with a big brass fitting. The thought was that these large brass caps would be simple to locate with a metal detector should the need arise.
Fast forward to May of this year, Ken purchased a metal detector and fabricated a probe to rediscover his clean-outs. After several attempts at locating them and hundreds of probes pushed into the ground, I received a request for assistance.
Our First attempts found highly mineralized ground and a lot of debris around our target area. Usually, I would move to a smaller coil, ground balance, and turn up the target separation on my equinox, however in this application we needed depth to locate what was thought to have been 16″ to 18″ down. We searched for 2 hours in the hot days sun before concluding our search. Ken and I had a lot of great conversation but both were disappointed in the result. I left questioning if I had the depth required to even see our target.
I stewed about the issues we had faced for a couple of days and decided I needed another shot. I utilized the money I received from our previous search to supplement the purchase of a new larger coil. I turned my target separation down to 1 to achieve maximum depth and power and on Saturday I returned to the field. Ken had located some older photos that proved we were indeed in the right area. We gave it another shot and we found a target and probed…nothing! Found a target and probed…nothing! Our third and best target we probed…it was an area we had probed during the previous search…suddenly Ken hit something! We both smiled, hopeful that the search was indeed over. We both grabbed a shovel and began to dig and at just about 20″ in depth we located the first brass clean-out cap. I think we were both equal part excited and equal part relieved.
Afterwards, we marked out 100′ up hill in the direction the sewer pipes traveled and began again.
Thank you Ken! I enjoyed our conversations and the opportunity to work on a different project than those I typically perform. I learned some valuable knowledge and procured new equipment to continue helping others.
The first clean-out located at 20″ of depth
15″ coil utilized to locate the target
Our field as seen from above
100′ uphill to the second location
The newly stubbed-up clean-out with marker!
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The Bay Area Ring Finders Brendon Chapman… Metal Detecting Service/Call ASAP 925-580-2590
If you didn’t have a chance to read the original story, Jennifer had lost 2 ring in the water where they dock their boat. I recovered the one ring (wedding band) on the first trip, but the beautiful family heirloom diamond ring was hiding on the muddy bottom, in a location that my metal detector had not yet covered. It was getting late so I packed it in for the day and promised I would return after vacation in a few weeks. It was a safe location, otherwise I would have never postponed looking for the second ring. We made arrangements as I usually do prior to showing up, and quickly got to work upon my arrival. I decided to use my other machine with the 6′ coil, as the target location is a much more concentrated location. The reason for that was because marina locations tend to be very trashy, due to the fact that once an item is dropped into the water, its usually forgotten about. The larger coil I had used on the first recovery attempt was picking up to many signals at one time, therefore the beautiful filigree diamond ring was getting overpowered by other metallic items on the bottom. WELL, that was obviously a good idea because I had Jennifer’s ring in my scoop in under 5 minutes.
