A cable locator or cable avoidance tool (CAT) is an instrument used for detecting the presence and approximate location of buried services in advance of undertaking excavation works. It aims to avoid accidents while excavating.
Magnetic locators are primarily used for locating a single point such as a property corner pin made of rebar or water pipe. Magnetic locators basically locate anything that a magnet would stick to, hence "magnetic locator".
It can detect any ferrous (iron/steel) object that is isolated, such as a steel property pin, steel manhole cover, steel water or gas valve. A magnetic location should not to be used or preferred for buried utility detection, as a pipe & cable locator is the appropriate instrument for these applications. the instrument is specifically for detection of objects with iron/steel (ferrous) content. It ignores all other metals, including aluminum, copper, brass, coins and precious metals like gold. Magnetic Locators are not the kind of "metal detector" you see used at the beach as those are more or less sonar type which detects objects by sound and not necessarily metal.
Pipe and Cable Locators are the second type of utility location equipment. Pipe and Cable Locators in their basic form are two parts, one is a transmitter, and the other being a receiver. The transmitter part is used to induce a signal onto a pipe or cable and then the wand, or receiver, is used to locate the signal that the line is producing.Any buried utility that is of metallic construction and linear and preferably grounded to earth along the path or end-points can be located by any instrument called a pipe & cable locator.The utility must have a metallic linear property for the signal of the locator to transmit down. However, if there is a tracer wire buried alongside or included with the non-metal utility, this is metallic and therefore able to locate. Sometimes a metallic linear device like a plumbers snake or electrical fish-tape can be inserted inside of the non-metal pipe and located by applying the signal to this inserted device
created with
