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We bought a second-hand scanner for £100
It usually gives very accurate locations for lines with flowing electricity which includes BT cables. Sometime a whole field will give you random readings all over it. Sometimes you get some sort of bounced signal and get 3 parallel readings from the same cable. Usually it works very well. A scanner with a dial to show the signal strength is best, it is more accurate than trying to determine when a noise is at its loudest. It was nearly always possible to dig a foot square hole and find the cable.
Find all electric and BT lines before digging and mark the lines. Also dig down to find them at the point you expect to cross them. The BT can be any old depth, but commonly a foot or so down. It is grey. You are unlikely to damage it with a pick or shovel in scrabbling around looking for it. If it is very shallow then you have to get your orange duct under it somehow by feeding it under or by joining. In extreme cases you can dig along the BT line and lower that.
We have broken 2 BT cables, about 6 water pipes, bent an electric cable and damaged quite a few drains.
In both cases where we broke BT cables, it was our own fault – we had located the cable but then left someone in charge who didn’t know the plan.
There are old BT cables in the ground, often black unarmoured ones, they are disconcerting to break, but not a problem once you are sure they were non-functioning. (Subtly ask person in nearest house)
The electric cable we nearly broke went to some private solar panels, the owner was with us while we ploughed, we asked him about pipes and stuff, and after we had obviously hooked something major his memory returned. The cable was surprised but not shocked.
The water pipes we broke were mainly pipes to farmers troughs. It gets a bit muddy pretty quick, but we have our own mending kit of Speed-fit joints and some spare pipe in different sizes. We haven’t yet gone through a metal pipe, these tend to be lower in the ground. On one occasion we had gone through a pipe on one of the Dent camping grounds and didn’t know until the water was turned back on for Easter.
Drains are a problem, especially as we have some farmers paranoid about them. There are stone culverts that make themselves known. These have large flat stones as lids and are often close to the surface, you might be able to spot them and either avoid them or pre-dig down to expose them and sort them out after. The other common sort is that black concertina tube stuff with lots of holes in the sides specifically meant to collect water from the ground. They can fairly easily be cobbled back together with some added black tape, it doesn’t have to be watertight or pretty.
We have reburied some BT cables lower than they were and left many drains and culverts in improved condition. (We have also refurbished the string on a few gates.)
Earth wires stretch out in several directions from electricity poles, sometimes a long way, longer than the height of the pole. They are copper and break readily. Give electricity poles a wide berth and be ready to rebury any wires sticking up afterwards, re-join if possible. We have also found with the scanner that some of these earth wires carry live electricity (?).
Stuff round houses can be tricky. House owners usually have some idea where their pipes go, or sometimes the farmer who owns the adjacent field will know, or even remember them being put in.
Look out for how BT and electric enter the building, can you see it coming from a telegraph pole? Are there any cables going down the nearest poles? Are they live cables or earth wires? Watch out for private stuff especially in farms where a trailing electric cable goes overland to an outbuilding. Septic tanks can usually be seen, you need to understand the design of septic tanks so you know what pipework to expect. Nearly all sheep fields will have some means for them to drink water, if there isn’t a stream running through the field, look for some sort of makeshift water trough. This often involves a blue 25mm alkathene pipe leading to an old bath or tank. The pipes to these are often shallow, but usually follow field edges.
We did try water dousing. You certainly get a reaction to the ground at various points using dousing rods. However these did not always relate to pipes.
A repair kit will have to be considered. You might have be happy to pass the responsibility over to the contractor, but some standard fittings might be worth having.
Break in an old metal pipe. This is your worse case where someone is going to have to go and buy some fittings. You maybe should have someone around who at least know what kind of fitting you would need and where to buy it
Break in an alkathene pipe. This is more common, but there several variations in the fitting you need
You can stop the water by bending the pipe back
Old BT lines
These are not as disappointing as live ones, but there is no way of knowing for certain that you haven't chopped someone off. It still feels bad. You kind of have to wait for someone to complain, so for 24 hours you are not sure. They won't have registered on the scanner, but are sometimes near to the newer BT line, so they are a bit scary.
In our experience they tend to be black unarmoured rather than grey armoured, but that might not be true in your area.
As you can't detect it, it will happen now and again that you hit one.
Sometimes they are still marked on the BT maps, which can also be confusing since you spend some time try to detect it. And you can't dig down to see what's going on, because the maps aren't that accurate. Get local advice, someone should remember if the phone line was replaced.
NOTE This cable wasn't entirely severed, if had been an armoured cable then it might have survived. If everyone is vigilant and you have a plough with good visibility then it is possible to avoid a crisis, just.
At right angles to our own ploughing we came across a BT line 3 inches below the surface, by careful digging along the BT cable both sides of our lines, it was possible to bury their cable a lot lower, so that we could continue ploughing without any joins.
Skilful digging
That's a BT cable barring the way. It means you can find it easily though. It might also mean the ground is very rocky. It's in the way - you have to thread everything through underneath or join all your ducts there. If you have to join them, do it a couple of metres away to keep it simple if yoy have to dig down to your joins later.
Grey cable this end of the trench is BT, blue duct is a waterpipe, It's not easy.
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