I have several pieces of 3″ PVC buried in a bundle approx 24″ under a gravel driveway. The pipe is empty and capped on both ends. I know the general location (within 20′) of one end of the pipe. Does anyone have any suggestions on locating this PVC pipe????
Discussion Forum
Discussion Forum
Up Next
Video Shorts
Featured Story

The FHB Podcast crew discusses potential causes and solutions for peeling plaster near a chimney.
Highlights
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Replies
I'm not sure I completely understand - Are they buried, and you don't know where EITHER end is? Or you know where ONE end is?
Assuming you don't know where either end is, the only thing that comes to mind is a talented backhoe operator. I remember one guy who was looking for a sewer line that had been buried for several years. He reached out as far as he could with his bucket, stuck it in the ground, and started pulling it towards him. (The backhoe was perpendicular to the direction the pipe ran) After making one swipe, he said: "It ain't there". We asked him how he knew but he wouldn't tell us at that point. He moved over a ways and tried the same thing again. On the third pass, he said he'd found it. Then he got off the backhoe and told us what he'd been doing.
He claimed he could tell where the ground was looser by how the backhoe pulled through the ground. And he also showed us how there were streaks of different colored dirt near the surface where the pipe was located. Both of these told him where the ground had previously been dug up.
Artificial intelligence usually beats real stupidity.
Nobody ever compacts when backfilling a pipe trench to the point where grade matches adjacent grade perfectly. If you map out the 20' area checking spot elevations with a laser level I'll bet you can find the (former) trench by looking for low spots.
T. Jeffery Clarke
Use a tile probe . You can hear the pipe when you hit it with the probe , then you don't have to dig up the whole yard.
A Ditchwitch is pretty good at finding buried pipes but they have to be filled with something dangerous like natural gas, electricity or water - and irrigation lines don't count.
Why would anyone want to store a bundle of 3" PVC pipe two feet under a gravel driveway? Couldn't you find someplace else to store it?
This should be a lesson to you. It serves you right. This happens quite often. Whenever you bury something, draw a treasure map. The more precise, the better.
-Peter
This is most likely the craziest explanation you have ever heard but here goes. Take a wire coat hanger and cut it into 2 12-14" lengths bend at a 90 degree angle 2-3". Hold the short pieces loosely with your thumb and forefingers straight out in front of you, slowly walk over the area that you suspect the pipe is buried, when you cross the pipe the the 2 rods will slowly turn and point at each other. I didn't belive that this would work the first time I tried it, but it does. Good luck and keep witching.
Dan's right, it sounds crazy, but it works for me. I use brass brazing rods bent to 90 degrees. I can "witch" plastic pipe as easily as wire. Funny thing is that this works for some people and not for others. It's a sensitivity thing. My dad could do it, and so can I.
I often lay PVC pipe under driveways every 50 feet or so. I usually mark it well, but it's priceless when the time comes years later to run a water line or alarm system wire under the driveway.
I always lay surveyors plstic tape in the trench about 6 inches below
grade when I'm covering wire or conduit. It's an immediate eye opener whether you're planting a tree or digging for any reason.
Good luck.. Greg.
I live in a city of about 350 homes. We have a pressure feed sewer system with pumps. The company that installed them screwed up many things. One of which is that the some of the electrical lines are only 4-6" deep. And the neighbors electric runs into my yard where it then followed the common discharge line down to the pump/tanks. The two units are about 4 ft apart.
So I knew where the lines started, and I knew the general location of where then ended, but I did not know the path or how they split off to go to the two tanks.
I needed to run a drain line down between the two tanks and roughly parallel to the lines. I had the city guy out and he knew less than I did and his metal detector was broken (but I don't know if they would have seen the wires anyway).
But he said that he was good with witching and it almost always worked.
BUT! Knowing one end I could easily verify what he was saying. It turned out that he was completely backwards. Everyplace he showed as been clear was where the lines where running. And where showed the lines is where I ran my drain in the clear.