Ever tried to follow a water pipe, only for it to disappear behind a panel or under a floor into a nest of pipes? Unless you pull up loads of nails, floorboards, walls, etc, it's impossible to work out where it goes and where it comes out.

There are tools that can find pipes in walls and in the ground, but not that can follow a single pipe as it passes around and behind other pipes, or through an inaccessible area. But this device will clip onto a pipe as it disappears into a hole and send vibrations through it (frequency to be determined by experiment). You will then be able to find where the pipe emerges by finding which pipe is vibrating, either by touch or a sensor. Gripping the pipe with your hand should damp the vibrations, allowing you to isolate the section you're interested in.

The result will be an inexpensive device enabling you to recognise a section of piping and mentally connect one end with another. Ideal if you're not sure what a pipe is connected to, or where the valve to close it off is; and particularly useful where you can see a few pipes disappearing into a box and more pipes coming out the other side, but you can't match them up.
-- pottedstu, Oct 23 2001

Just get someone to bang it with a hammer like everyone else does.
-- CasaLoco, Oct 23 2001


Is it clockwork?
-- BigBrother, Oct 23 2001


This is a good idea, especially because of the images it conjures up imagining what you were up to when you thought of it.
-- stupop, Oct 23 2001


The last time I followed a water pipe I got pretty wasted.
-- thumbwax, Jul 22 2002


Something you can do to trace hollow PVC wiring conduit: connect one of those small 9V piezo beepers to a 9V battery via a switch. Stick the beeper into one end of the conduit. Hunt around the building or whatever for the sound - which is where the other end of the conduit ends. It works very well. The switch is so the beeper doesn't drive you mad at other times.
-- guyd, Jul 22 2002



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