NOYAFA NF-826 Underground Cable Locator Wire Tracker, for Dog Fence Cables Irrigation, Wall and Underground Pipeline Wire Detector, Advanced Circuit Breaker Finder for Wall and Underground Cables

Relatively inexpensive, buy does exactly what it says it will. Used this to trace buried telephone wire that carries the copper wire DSL internet----we aren't in a service area for anything else. Did have to open the "telephone company" side of the house box to see which were the powered and grounded wires and attack the leads. Also used it to trace the electric power utility buried lines (120 V) buried to house, barn, and well pump house. Again, some knowledge of what to connect the device lead clips to in the electric panel is required, but very simple and the built in voltage tester make that easy. Signal receiver worked well, even at 100+ yards from the transmitter. Saved me a lot of time and money.

This is actually the best I have ever used. I traced a wire ~60' to a lost sprinkler valve in less than 30 minutes of unpacking it. It is pretty intuitive and works really well!

This system does work quite well, and worth it for repairing our dog fence. A few things I figured out helped me a lot to use it.1. Read the manual. I do have some experience with electronics, but I did find the diagrams to be a little small to see clearly. The text we pretty good, however.2. The quity of the electrical connection to the buried wire is critical to its operation. Can't say this enough. Sloppy or loose connections won't do! The alligator clips supplied are suprisingly good quality, but even so, just wiggling the clip connection produced a wide range of signal quality. My fix was to eliminate the supplied alligator clips and cables, and just make short adapter wires with banana plugs to plug directly into the source device and the system ground and the two fence wires where they connect to the control box. So much better!! You can buy banna plugs for a few $ on Amazon, Parts Express, etc. I had a few false starts until I did this.3. I plugged the transmitter into a charger to be sure I always had a strong signal. Set the output to its maximum, and start the transmitter (there are two actions, one to turn on power, and one to transmit!)4. Tape the receiver to a piece of wood, broomstick, etc. so you can walk with it and keep the antenna very close to the ground. The Antenna 'snout' seems to most sensitive in the direction its pointed, so point it at the ground, don't waive it in the air. For precisse location, point it vertically at the ground. The signal strength meter and audio DOES work well, and it reads highest when nearerst the wire underground.5. Keep the sensitivity on the receiver just high enough to receive the signal reliably. This is the most accurate. If you are searching for something when you have no idea where to start, then increase the sensitivity.6. First, check that the pair of wires leading from the control box to the perimter re intact. To do this,connect the source to one of the wires leaving the control box (and the ground of course), and trace the wire to the fence perimeter looking for breaks. If none are found, THEN connect the device to the OTHER wire and check that. For me, these wires were intact and I could see that one went right, and one went left around the yard. Start nearest the source - If you can see the wire exit the house, start there. The receiver would be responding strongly there, if it isn't, stop and check the connections and that the transmitter is transmitting.7. I decided to keep them both connected, and traced the wire's path around the yard. If there was only one break, I would not have detected it, as I have the transmitter conncted to both ends of the loop (so both sides of the break would have had a signal). If that happened, I would have just connected the transmitter to one of the loop wires and started again. I know we had or yard aerated twice, so I guessed there might have been more than one break so I just made my way around the loop.8. I detected and located one break with this setup (both wires powered), which meant thatere must be another! So I apprached the area from the other side where I had signal and found another dead spot, indicating a break. The two breaks were about 20 ft apart and under our garden (hmmm..). We decided to re-route the wire in this area, as we put in a larger garden, so the repair was straightforward using some new 14 gage stranded wire and waterproof wire nuts.Total detection time was about an hour including making come test cables.Next project is figuring our where some wires go in our house...

Our Worx Landroid buried wire has a break after a nearby lightning strike. This tool made question work of finding the break quick and easy. Granted, I had to learn the right way to use it first. Worth every penny. We could easily return it for a refund, but it saved us and it will be here if and when we need it again.

I purchased a home 14 yrs ago and have been looking for my sprinkler valves ever since. I was skeptical about making this purchase based on some of the reviews. This tool works! It took some trial and error but once I had a good understanding on how to use it (about 2 hours of fiddling arourd in my yard), it was just a matter of minutes before I located the valves. They were buried in my flower bed about 18 to 20 inches deep under a rose bush..

This tool works for homeowners to get the occasional job done. It does locate wires, so you know where to dig in the approximate area. However, do not expect to get the pinpoint precision that high end locators provide, especially the feature to tell how deep the wires are buried. For those critical jobs it is better to rent a unit.