521A Wire and Valve Locator

It's a great wire Finder for sprinkler systems and other such things. It's never failed me yet. I use it all the time.

I have only used this to locate some buried valves, and it is great! Took me a second to figure out the sounds and best methods, but I have been able to pinpoint valve locations to an accuracy of within 5" before digging my hole. For valves it is best to start the receiver wand at full frequency, sweep it over a known wire to see what the frequency sounds like, then don't worry about tracing wires if the zone is small. just sweep the yard until you get a very loud response. It will be louder than when you go over a wire. At full frequency you can narrow it down to about a 2 foot radius. Now slowly lower the setting on the wand and sweep the spot and it will narrow it down more based on the sounds. For the best accuracy it is easiest to use the meter needle for pin pointing a spot to dig within 5" of the valve, as the sounds gets too quite when the settings are low. You pin point it on low settings by holding the wand vertically above your hot spot. It will stay steady above 10 if you are directly over it, if you start going to far away it will bounce at 10 or drop. If it stays at 10 and you move it over 5 to 8", lower the wands setting some more.

Easy to locate solenoid valves. I have 23 zones in my sprinkler system which was installed years before I bought the house. I had no clue where the valves were as they were burried 3-4 inches under dirt and grass. I have used this 4 times over the last year and a half and find my bad solenoid valve within 30 minutes every time. This tool was expensive, but paid for itself on the second repair, and saved a ton of time.

I used this to find 3 covered over sprinkler valves in about an hour. You must take the time to read the directions and practice using, but it works very well at tracking the wires and locating the valves. The tops of the valve boxes were buried about 4 inches under ground, with the valve itself about 16" underground. There was no doubt when were were on top of the valves. Well worth the money.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because it DID NOT come with the batteries promised in the description, and the D-cell battery compartment makes it difficult to properly install the batteries. Once the batteries are installed, it works great. I found two valves (one had a bad solenoid) within two minutes, one of which was buried 8 inches underground and I would have never found it by probing into the ground. The instructions are simple but accurate, the unit did exactly what it was supposed to do. It’s light weight, and the ground stake and case are sturdy.

The initial impressions are disappointing. Straight out of the box with brand new batteries it would not turn on. I took the batteries out and put them back in a few times and turned it on and off a few times and eventually it turned on. It does beep and squeak but as far as finding buried sprinkler valves goes, I have had better luck stabbing a screw driver in the ground. I have found one valve out of 10 using this wire tracer. I have also found one water line and three buried bricks. I have found four other valves, three of them were by using the grounding probe to stab the ground in the area I suspected the valves were located. The probe pierces sand pretty well however it stops when it hits anything solid so when I have several hits in a 4" circle with the probe, I dig. I found three valves that way. I will give it another try searching for the last five valves but my hopes are not high based on today's experience. I do not know how much the sandy soil with water impacts the tracer but I do get a lot of questionable readings.

I tried to use this to trace sprinkler wires to find where one was broken. Unfortunately, I would lose the signal and despite a number of tries and different approaches I never was able to do a good trace. The machine itself is well built and very good, I just was not able to get it to work for me. A friend who installs sprinklers for a living also tried, with his rig, and could not trace the line. Who knows what the original installer did. I wound up simply running whole new wires rather than trying to dig up the line. Even though I returned teh device I do not fault the manufacturer for it not working for me.

great product great price