Locating Underground PVC Water Pipes: Seeking Device Recommendations and Keywords

As the topic...

I need to locate where my water pipe goes from the well to the house (about 600 meters). Unfortunately, the pipes are made of PVC or plastic... at least they are not metal, so a metal detector is not necessary. I don't even know how to look for it because I don't know what such a device could be called...

So if someone wants to bash me for this topic and send me to the search engine, at least provide me with some keywords that will help me find what I'm looking for. Because when I say "detector", "pipe detector", "ultrasonic detector", etc., I only find metal detectors or ultrasonic distance measuring devices... Maybe I was looking in the wrong place, but as I wrote above, I don't even know what to look for...

And if such a device does not exist yet, could one be made? just using ultrasound? or microwave? Archaeologists have some devices that can find various objects underground... I need something that will detect whether there is something in the ground or not.

Please help.

the simplest way is a lance - a skewer archaeological ones do not detect small objects and not metal ones, you can try something with ultrasound - transmitter in a pipe filled with water and search with the receiver where it is loudest

such an archaeological device is called a shovel and if you make a little effort you will find the pipe down to the centimeter and by the way this pipe probably goes straight from the well to the house without any zigzags so what's the problem you can call a guy who is looking for water with a pendulum or make a pendulum yourself

such a detector exists and is called geological radar - the problem is that it costs a lot of money - probably hundreds of thousands

If someone had done the installation correctly, they would have buried a blue polyethylene tape with a steel insert together with the plastic water pipe - just so that the pipe could be located with a detector. if someone hasn't done it, you can try a device called a geophone (I'm not sure if I'm making it up), but in any case it is a microphone with a special design that is placed on the ground and the noise level of water flowing in the pipe is analyzed. of course, the water must be flowing during this time, and it is even better to install an exciter of a certain frequency at the accessible end of the water pipe (so that it propagates nicely in the water), which can then be searched for with this microphone.

Ultrasound is also good, but it must be a device that does not show distance but analyzes all reflections. Perfect here chirp z-transform (I don't know how it works in our language), but it is quite a complicated issue in the field of DSP and the "on-board computer" of such a detector must have considerable computing power.

In archeology, soil resistance measurement is also used. In this method, any irregularities indicate that the structure of the earth underneath is different than in the rest of the area. The system here is quite simple, although I don't know what the ground resistance is, but even a measurement of up to several dozen Mom can be done quite easily. The device looks like a trolley, two wheels at the front and two spikes at the back, driven into the ground with each measurement (distance between spikes approx. 1 m). Then the results are uploaded to the computer and, for example, deviations from the average resistance value are distinguished.
The problem here is the low resolution, the better the horizontal resolution you want (smaller the spacing of the spikes), the smaller the range in terms of depth. However, if the soil structure is different even at a small depth (after all, the trench was dug, the soil was mixed and the trench was filled in), there is a fairly good chance of detecting it.
A "manual bulk material conveyor" is equally suitable for this purpose. All you need is a fairly shallow ditch around the well and you already know which direction the pipe runs, and then just follow the traces of digging.

Of course, the result depends on how long ago the pipe was laid, but I think that detection even after 20 years (both using resistance measurements and the shovel + eye set) should not be a problem. Archaeologists use resistance measurements to detect foundations at a depth of a meter laid centuries ago, so it's not that bad :]

Hello.
I also had such a problem, the water pipe was plastic, you located it, the so-called the dowser finds all watercourses flawlessly
I suggest finding one

Hello.
1. Aren't there any plans? It seems to me that before laying such a pipe, an appropriate design and some documentation should be prepared.
2. Some kind of echo sounder or something like that, I probably once saw in "Unbelievable" how they "scanned" the interior of the earth with a device that showed cavities in the ground, etc. maybe some company deals with this.
3. According to In my opinion, the best way, without incurring additional costs, as someone mentioned above, is to use a spade. If you dig from where the pipe starts, you will trace it along its entire length.
4. When it comes to checking in one place, simply using a piece of rod turns out to be the simplest and effective method.
Regards

if you do it on your plot, there are no plans, unfortunately. If you have money, contact the Water and Sewage Company in your city. They have devices that can easily find your pipe. That's what they do when they're looking for damage and illegal cuts. You don't have money, buy a shovel, it's a good thing and one beer is enough for them.