jfjohn77

I'm hoping someone can help me out here. I'm not looking for Gold, but I need a detector to pick up some Copper wire. I have a Construction Company in South Texas and we are digging in areas that have buried pipelines. Several of these lines are fiberglass and have copper wire (as a tracer) is laid with these lines to be able to trace them later and prevent damage when excavation of the area is necessary. Normally, one can use a line-finder to locate them, but only if you know the beginning or termination points of the line. Because in those instances, where the line enters and exits the ground there are terminals to attach your ground enabling the line-finder to operate correctly and detect the copper line. In our situation we do not know where these entry or exit locations are, so we can only use metal detectors to find the steel pipelines, but it is not working for the fiberglass of course. I was thinking that since Copper is a Non-ferrous metal, as is Gold, that a Gold locator would work. Is my thinking correct? The real problem I believe, is in the fact that this Copper wire is around three (3) foot deep and only 10 gauge. It's not very large in diameter, but it is a continuous run. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best Gold detector for my needs? Cost is of no concern as the cost of repair to the damaged lines will more than offset the cost of the detector. Thank you in advance for your time.