locating leach field fingers

Mosey · Jul 10, 2002

I need to find out exactly where my leach field fingers are located. The house was built in 1977 and the health department has no diagrams of it. I’ve had the D-Box dug up before, so I know where that is and I know there are only 2 fingers. I’m guessing that the best way to find out where the fingers go is to use a prod. So, how deep can I expect to find the fingers and roughly how long can I expect them to be? Also, is there any chance I can break the tile with the prod? I’m using a home made one, which is just a piece of 1/4 inch rod with a T handle welded on the top.

Scott_in_WVA · Jul 10, 2002

A way I have seen on construction jobs to find a buried water line or conuit/buried pipes is to put a piece of wire in 2 pop bottles,bend the wire 90 angle and hold the bottles close to each other and walk when the wires in each bottle cross each other you should be over the buried line.
Some people might think it is a joke...but I know people that swear by it.

Inspector507 · Jul 10, 2002

My septic service company found mine with a probing device like you mantioned. I have hard PVC not tiles so they didn't hurt them.

rockyridgefarm · Jul 17, 2002

I am trying to figure out what that looks like, I don't understand from your description....

Mosey · Jul 18, 2002

A prod is just a piece of round steel about 3 feet long with a "T" handle welded on top:

Here is a drawing of it sideways with the top on the left (I tried to draw it vertically, which is the way it’s used, but couldn’t get the lines to line up right after previewing the post, any spaces on the left of "|" the are automatically removed):

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You just push it down into the ground until it hits something. Sometimes it's just a stone, so it takes some time and patience to find what you're looking for, but I have found buried drain tile with it. It helps if you already have an idea of where something is and then can follow the pattern.

dourobob · Jul 18, 2002

I have a friend who does this kind of dowsing to local underground wires and water lines but, he does it but without the pop bottles. I've tried it a bit and it seems to work fairly well - think I would need to do more of it to develop confidence in what I am finding. Here are a couple of interesting links http://dowsers.new-hampshire.net/

Bob