Not Diesel -how do I find a break in my invisible fence?
 

Guys - my invisible fence has stopped working and I fear the yardman has cut the wire someplace. It goes completely around my house - about an acre - and is above ground in most places and visible. At least it was; now it is mostly covered with vines, etc. Is there a tool that I can buy so I can walk around the perimeter of the yard and detect where it has been cut? Visual inspection is pretty hard, especially on the old back.

Thx

Most hardware stores will have an electronic wire tracer for under $40.

We used this guy: PetSafe RFA-50 wire break locator.

We've only had to go through the exercise once so far, but it worked great then.

Can't you just wear the pet's shock collar and see where it doesn't stun you?

I think you have the wrong forum...

Dang, you just beat me to that answer.....clamp it around your most sensitive area....

We have the same problem with our electric dog collar fence, the squirrels like to chew through the wires. It happens every few weeks, we just go out and walk the entire perimeter of 5 acres sliding the wire along in one hand. If your wire is buried pretty shallow or just covered with overgrowth, it's pretty easy to find.
You can also just walk along and give it a tug every couple of feet. Good luck!

X3, just so you know how Fido feels.:D

Ask the yardman where he's been cutting. In future, have him wear the collar.

Change your fuel filters and see if that solves it.

There is this neighbor lady that is always yapping at me.......HMMMM, getting me to thinking :rolleyes:.

Charlie

For goodness sakes, quit changing your oil!

Coming from a telecom background, I would use a warbler/wand (tone generator/inductive pickup)

http://www.wisecomponents.com/storecatalog/cableloc.html

http://www.wisecomponents.com/images/tempo/701k.jpg

I'd use a TDR. Get the exact distance down the line to the break.

Oh, Rent-All doesn't have a TDR?

B

I was going to suggest this. A computer networking place would have one and might find it an interesting application! Or, if you work for a larger company, a knowledgeable computer geek in infrastructure might be able to rig it up.

Our fence is buried deep, never had a problem.

Neighbors put in themseleves and have had regular issue's.

He uses an old AM/FM portable radio tuned to ????, I don't remember the details but will probably talk to him tomorrow or Tuesday.
Works just like the commericial tester.

Thanks guys. So far I see four options:

inspect by hand - no cost
wire break detector from hdw store - about $40
Pet-Safe RFA 50 - about $75
Warbler/wand from wisecomponents - $150 and up

My guess is that I will go to Radio Shack and, as usual, they will not have a break finder - and then I will buy the Pet-Safe one.

Thanks for the responses; open to other ideas. No - getting rid of doggo is not an option.

That was my original thought. However they START at $1555.00! Mine was stolen from my car back when I did this for a living.

Tone is OK for this job.

Yeah, I was being facetious. My apologies if it didn't seem so. $1.5K is about 1/3 what the Techtronix 1502 (IIRC) cost when we bought one for research in soil physical properties. I think it was 1994 or so. To my knowledge it was only used for electrical line fault one time -- in my home when I was trying to get DSL to work. Phone company said my line was too noisy and I thought I could fix it for the price of my labor. I ran that sucker and found way, way too many splices and insulation faults to make DSL a possibility. Old house. Then our town got cable and and I'm happy.

That TDR still works just fine but there have been tremendous advances since then using the same fundamental theory but focusing strictly on soil rather than the general solution offered by the Techtronix. Also, modern designs (for soil) are in the hundreds of dollars rather than thousands and are not so persnickity.

It was all news to me but the soil physicist was able to derive some really interesting relationships between the curve and soil moisture. It opened-up a whole new way of looking at soil. For me, anyway.

The PetSafe unit sends a different signal from each end of the boundary wire. These are picked up by the included AM radio receiver and heard as tones, one higher in pitch than the other.

If the loop is unbroken, then both tones will be heard at all locations along the wire. If there's a single break, then at any given location along the wire, only one of the tones will be heard. If the loop is broken in more than one spot, then there will be sections of wire where nothing is being broadcast at all (no tone audible).

You could walk the wire from one end to the other, but progressively working through it by halves is a good approach if you don't have any idea of the location of the break(s). Check first at the approximate midpoint of the loop, then at the midpoint of one half of the loop, then at the midpoint of one half of that half, and so on - each time choosing your next test point based on what you heard at the previous one. For a single break, it fairly quickly comes to the point where you're walking the receiver back and forth along a short section of wire to find the place where one tone ends and the other begins.

Eskimo - sounds like a logical approach. Before I purchase that tool, I am waiting for a response from a fellow who said I could use a transistor radio, tune it to a certain wavelength, and walk the line listening for static. He is going to find out whether it is AM or FM and what channel.

Thx

If you dig around a bit on the web with Google search or something similar, you'll find some instructions for doing it using an AM radio and an RF choke from Radio Shack. Here's one link describing such a procedure.

Some report great results using that setup. I tried pretty hard to do it that way with absolutely zero success.

Eskimo - just joined Instructables and printed out the instructions. Thanks for the help. Will let you know. Out the door to Radio Shack.

Thx

Saw my neighbor and forgot to ask him, sorry.

I've got a call into him now, so I should have the answer later.

kk

OK, partially my mistake.
He does add something from Radio Shack,100 uh rf Choke.
Part # 273-102
It gets connects to the pet fence itself, then use the radio tuned to AM 60 and listen, he recommend headphones.

www.pet-products.com had the instructions, but doesn't seem to exist.

I am now the proud owner of the RF choke; cost me $1.51. This is by far the cheapest component of my quest to fix the fence. Hope to attack it tomorrow.

Here's another option.

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100081850&N=10000003+90401

$10 bucks.

It is normally used with 110v/AC , I am not sure what voltage a dog fence is. I would suggest buying one anyway for your toolbox, it is really handy to be able to tell if a wire is live or not. You just hold it next to a wire and it will make a noise if it has power to it.

Well, the old dog just wandered over to the neighbor's yesterday; guess he has figured out that the invisible fence no longer works.

So I hooked up the part from Radio Shack and followed the wiring underground throughout the yard with a transistor radio. It worked well but not exactly as I had expected. I got no steady sound then change to static at the area of broken wire. What I did get was static that ebbed and swelled as I moved it across the buried wire. At the peak of the static I always found the wire buried underneath. So I guessed the yard men had hit the wiring with a shovel in the flower bed. When I traced to the flower bed I just cut and capped the wire, knowing that it was good all the way back to the sender. But there was only a single stranded wire; I thought there would be two wires and they would be twisted together at the cut - not so.

Then I went back to the transmitter and noticed surprisingly that my shop fan did not work when plugged into the extra receptable on the LP 4100 surge suppressor. Yep, no electricity from the suppressor. When I took it apart, it was fried inside.

Ordering another for about $35 from the internet. Guess this was probably my problem all these months; just did not think to check the surge suppressor. So I hope I did not mess anything up in the front yard by cutting and capping a perfectly good wire.:eek:

Will report what happens after replacing the surge suppressor. But the good news is that the transistor radio approach absolutely worked!

OOps always check the basics first.

Yes, where the fence is active there is only one wire.

When there is 2 twisted they cancel out.

So I have a twisted pair from the house to the perimieter. Then the 2 wire individually make that perimieter until they meet back up.

Thats wire netwrork wiring is twisted pair, the twisting cancels out the cross talk from each pair interfering with another pair.

Oh speaking of leaving the yard, funny is the dog will get out, then won't come back in !!!
Had a neighbors dog get out of her yard, into mine then wouldn't leave mine. And the dog is petrified of Men, had to get the wife to collect the dog and return it home.

Success. Not at first but finally. Found out that my surge protector is has a lifetime guarantee so I picked another up at the company that installed the invisible fence. Hooked it up and got a steady beeping. No good.

Called the company and they said the wiring must be a complete loop. When I cut the wire at the flower bed, I destroyed the loop. So I repaired the wire that I had cut and Voila, there it is. Total cost $1.51 and six hours of hard manual labor in the Atlanta heat and humidity.

Great to have a dog shocker, I mean invisible fence, again. Thanks to Eskimo and KKnudson for the recc about the part from Radio Shack.

Real Locator good price
 

Having gone through all these procedures with my invisible fence and finally finding a simple locator that works with an RF null principle the same as the ones talked about on here I can definitely tell you spending $130 on a good locator to begin with is the way to go. The PetSafe locator isn't worth the plastic it took to make it. I found a good locator from a dog fence dealer in Washington state. It was listed on ebay but I just visited the company website and found it there. It was $139.95 on ebay but at the company site it was only $129.95. They also have a youtube video showing how to use the locator and another showing how to properly splice the wire. I can tell you that using the correct splice is very important. Learn from my experience and don't end up having to relocate and fix splices done with tape, 3m type splices, or waterproof wire nuts. Here is the youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9SI18VXCMA&feature=player_embedded

Just my 2 cents worth