6
Finding Faults
Breaks or severe wire damage can be found with the Pro300™. The
setup of the unit is the same as when tracing wire. The difference
comes in the reception. Whereas the traced wire continues to emit
a signal along the path of the cable, a break will cause the signal to
stop at the point of break. Severe damage will cause the signal to
drop to a lower level, but not necessarily end. Minor damage
cannot be located with the Pro300™ as not enough signal is
dropped to notice a difference in response. This is an art and small
faults are sometimes difficult to locate. Practice and experience will
help immensely in this task.
Be sure the cable or wire you are tracking is grounded. THIS IS A
MUST. The signal needs a path to return to the ground stake and
without it, you will not get a good locate. A bad ground is indicated
on the transmitter by observing a weak or no light on the LED. In
many cases, a direct buried cable fault will provide this grounding
and allow a locate.
Finding Solenoids and Valves
Finding solenoids and the attached valves is easy to do. There are
two methods for locating valves. For the first method, you would
setup your locator just like you did for tracing the wire path. For
example, if you want to find the valve associated with zone 2 of
your irrigation system, you would connect the red lead to the zone
2 wire, and the black lead to the ground stake. Then track the wire
by listening for the null signal. When you reach the point where a
solenoid/valve is located, the signal will get louder and expand into
a large diameter (Approximately 2-4 feet). This is your indication
that you are over a valve or solenoid. Additionally, the signal should
not continue past this point unless the station wire leads to further
valves. You may wish to continue past the first valve located to
determine if other valves are also located on this wire.
