This is why I like TH-cam so much. This guy did all the research that I didn't want to do AND made a concise video on how to do it. This saved me money and more importantly, time.
Best way by far. I hooked up my riding lawn mower. Found it 300' in, repaired it and rechecked 2500 feet loop and could hear it all the way around. Saved me a ton of time, thanks !
This lawnmower radio detection trick WORKS. I did as it was described (530 am) and found two yard sprinkler valves that was lost in the thick sod and the valve housing was full of sand. I used ear buds with the radio and followed the signal to each valve. Saved big bucks$$. Thank You
Wow! This worked like a charm. Had tried unsuccessfully several times just with the am radio. Tying it into my power washer ignition coil had me find two breaks in less than 15 minutes. Thank you!
Fantastic technique. It worked like a charm. One big Caveat; many systems leave a common point on a twisted wire section until the main outer loop is encountered. The twisting imparts a weaker but detectable signal to the other side of the open loop. One side as you mention you can walk up right. The other is there but much closer to the ground ; it faked me out. I used recycled solid core Romex for my connection. I took one conductor out of the crappy 16 gauge Romex, wound it four times around my generator’s spark plug wire and connected it to my powered down invisible fence loop. I found the breaks easily, after spotting how much stronger the spark plug generated signal was on one side of the break and the other. The signal only disappeared in an isolated part ( two breaks! ), strong all around from the connection side, weaker on the other side (the side with the twisted wire induced signal) and absent in the isolated segment. Definitely worth a donation!
Thanks so much for the kind words and taking the time to comment! So glad it worked for you! Have a great day! Feel free to check out some of my other videos for useful diy tips, tricks, and hacks!
Watched this in 2019 and traced my power lines to irrigation pump. Worked Flawlessly!! Thank you so much and I’m on it again just wanted to make sure you were Thanked again 😁👍👍
@2005Pilot great to hear!!! Thanks for taking the time to write the kind message!!! The video is very old, but it seems like it is still helping people!
Thank you for posting this video. I was off about 6 feet from the break on my first dig and my lot is two acres. Then I used a radio like yours WITHOUT an antenna and I was able to fine tune the location and was off by less than a foot. I made the repair and my invisible fence is fixed. THANK YOU!!!!
This was a huge help and greatly appreciated. Followed the steps, found the break where the groundhog living under our shed chewed through the wire. Spliced in a new section of wire and we are back up and running!!
Amazing, sure enough wrapped my 14 gauge wire around the spark plug of push mower and walked around with a tape player that had am/fm and put it on 530 while mower was running and you can pretty quickly gauge the sound and exactly where the wire is. What a life saver. Thanks for making this video many years ago when you posted it. Didn't have a walkman but found that tape player at good will for $4.00.
This is by far the easiest and most successful way I have tried. I bought and FOUGHT with the Pet Safe system and the rotten AM radio gave me fits and I EVENTUALLY found the line and but it took me several days to find it and deal with it. I took my little sportsman generator and wired it up and took an old Sony BOOM BOX and what a difference.. Took me all of 10 minutes from setup to finding the wire. SO HAPPY.. THANK YOU!!! .
Hey Kyle, Just wanted to thank you for sharing your great idea on fixing our underground pet fence wire. It worked perfectly! I was amazed on how simple and effective everything worked. We have about 2 acres of containment with lots of roots pushing up the wire. I had two breaks, one from a lawn mower hit and another from some drainage construction.Once I figured out what to listen to(signal) I found the first one in about 15 minutes. After that I was literally jogging waving the little receiver like a man possessed. I found the second break in about 2 minutes. Our boxer and Lab are free to roam again and give you the double tail wag. Thanks again brother.
Hey Kyle what a great idea you had. I'm getting ready to put in my third invisible fence. They always word great with the dogs but it was always a pain to find the breaks. Great idea keep them coming.
Thank you for this excellent overview. I could not have made this repair without your video. I have the Invisible Fence brand of containment system and this process worked perfectly. I had to make a stop at my local Goodwill to pick up an AM radio ($2). I connected the wire from the mower to the wires at the control box in the garage (just be sure they are disconnected from the electronics). I was able to find the break in the line in less than 15 minutes. Another 5 to repair it. And now the system is working properly. Thank you again for sharing your ingenuity.
For those of you who don't want to use a lawnmower: I had 1,000 feet of wire and locating the break was easier for me. That is because I was able to leave the transmitter plugged in. I used an old AM radio with a broken antenna to scan for a break, set on about 530 channel. I simply followed where the invisible line was underground, you will hear the static. When the static stopped, that was where the break was. It worked like a charm. Thanks for your video. It was a BIG help since we had worked trying to locate the problem for 2 days before I seen your video. And that did the trick. Thanks!!
Hi Kyle, I watched several of these videos and yours was the best. After watching yours I went to Radio Shack and bought a $16 AM FM radio and my lawn tractor. Found the break in 5 minutes. I also reflagged the yard for my dog to retrain her. Thanks so much!!!
Thank you so much for this! I bought a AM/FM handheld radio for 8 bucks, and I used a weed eater as the signal source. It worked like a charm! The break was where a vehicle ran over the line and a sharp underground rock pressed against the wire causing a break. I would have never found it without having to replace the whole line! You saved me some serious time and money! Thanks again! The only thing I would add is running the signal source through the line from both directions to really zero in on where the break is.
Thanks for the comment! My only concern with running both wires at the same time is: if the break area is very small, it might be easy to walk right past it and pick up the signal on the other side.
@@doinkeroni To Clarify; What I meant was... connect to one wire, Pin point the dead spot the best you can. Then connect with the other wire to pin point from the other direction. Not both wires at once. It helps with the accuracy which was particularly important in my case having to deal with a yard with lots of grass roots in almost rock hard soil. Thanks again! huge help! My neighbors where getting pissed, you saved me a bundle on dog pound fees alone lol!
That mower coil puts out a better signal than anything that I have used before. As you have said here, the am radio will find the break. I will fire up the mower for the next problem. Thank you.
Life saver! I thought I knew where the break was, but I couldnt find it. After using this method I found it close to where I was looking but I was just far enough away from the real line placement that I wouldnt have found it.
This works really well. I used a portable generator instead of the lawn mower due to wet,snow-covered lawn. One thing I experienced was that my radio antenna isn't as sensitive to the signal as radio body is.
Many thanks! This worked beautifully. Oddly enough, even though the line was broken, there was still signal throughout the whole fence. Maybe because wire ends were touching each other a little bit -- enough to keep signal going from spark plug but not enough to prevent the fence's transmitter from going into "System Failure" and "Break" mode. Your video said the static would go away completely when the radio was right above the wire. What we found was that a signal got louder and faster the closer we got to the intact wire. We found the break when the signal went from very strong to definitely weak. It was the change in signal that alerted us. WE dug and sure enough, found a break. So, thank you again! Oh, and tuning to 530 was perfect. Again, thank you.
THANK YOU! WORKS!! Was able to find line...BUT .....was getting some background frequency on the Invisible Dog fence line, I believe from underground powerlines or underground cable TV. Without lawnmower on , underground dog wire was emitting some sound on AM radio. This really complicated things but at least I knew where my buried wire was. I would recommend walking the suspected area of buried line with Radio first WITHOUT mower on to see if there is some baseline frequency.
It worked perfectly in damp sand under turf. I was trying to locate where the twisted pair to the loop actually joined the loop. Absolutely a life saver and avoids digging just to locate the wire. Thanks.
Just finished and worked. I have 3 acres enclosed. I must say, it really helps if you know where the line is underground. I installed my fence about 8 years ago and had a general idea. I first “wanded” my entire fence. I noted one particular area, about 20 feet or so that had a much weaker signal (very noticeably weaker) than anywhere else along the fence. I dug until I found the fence (carefully) and continued along the line until I found the break, about 3’ from where I started digging. Spliced it and checked the operation of the collar. Back to normal. Thank you Kyle!
This S... Actually Works.. Dern.. I dug and found one break from surveyors.... I used this method and found two other brakes from the neighbor's dog a digging. Thanks Much. It saved me a Lot of time from redoing the entire line....
Worked great. I spent half a day using the old trial and error method and only found one break. Frustrated I did a google search at lunch and found your procedure and tried it after lunch. I found four more breaks in the afternoon. Your procedure was easy to set up. Wrap a wire around the spark plug wire and twist the other end onto one of the loop wires. We had a lot of utility crews digging in our yard last few weeks and also tree trimmers that accidentally cut the wires partially buried in the woods behind our house. Thanks for your video.
I OWE YOU BIG TIME. I have a little over 2000’ of wire laid an I was effortlessly able to find the break with the application of your idea. For those curious about how long it’ll transmit the frequency, I had no issue on clarity of the signal At 2200’-2500’. After I fixed the break I tested the distance it’d transmit keep in mind this is 14g wire. Thanks for the video!
At first I thought this was a gag video when I seen the mower hooked to the wires lol and then you just blew my mind with that amazing knowledge you possess... I love learning new tricks of any trades so thanks man seriously!!!! Your pretty awesome!!!! Thanks again.
Came across this while troubleshooting a break in the coax line for my cable internet. Concept seemed the same so I gave it a try. Worked like a charm.
Great idea. My mower was broken but I used a 2 stroke weed eater and it had a similar effect. The am radio actually picked up the sound / frequency of the weed eater when near the wire and then stopped when I had a break. I needed a break! Thanks for sharing and saving me hours of work.
No problem, Kyle. I had it near 540 on the radio and just left the weed eater idling. It definitely sounded different than your example and didn’t go silent when over the top, but static got real quiet as I got away from the line and as soon as I crossed over the break.
Thanks Kyle, this was a great video and it worked great for me! For my AM radio, I used lawn mowing headphones that play radio that my girls gave me for Father's Day. It picked up the signal well and muted out outside noises, including minimizing the lawnmower noise. As some have commented, doing smaller sections at a time may be best if you enclose a large area.
My mower wouldn't start, so I tried a different idea. I connected one side of the loop to the output side of an electric fence charger. My particular charger is a pulse type and the ticking was easily detected with an AM radio. Worked like a champ and I found the break in no time. Thanks for the excellent idea.
I have an automower that works inside a low voltage loop. When the loop breaks, the mower gives an error message and won't work. I couldn't find an old Walkman so I picked up a cheap Sony AM/FM radio and it worked great. Found the trouble spot in about 10 minutes of tracing the wire. The docking port for the mower was my signal source, so I didn't need the lawnmower. Thanks for a great tip!
Thank you so much! It worked awesome! It really pinpoints right where the wire is and also the break! Cost me like $0.05 in gas. Way cheaper than $100.
Hi Kyle, A big thank you for taking the time to make this video. I've used several different ways to find a break in my Robot Mower wire but this is by far the best method. I found the break within 10 minutes, thanks again from the UK :-)
Thank you for posting! This method works VERY WELL! Tried the RF Choke without success, but once I hooked up a wire to the spark plug wire of my small Honda generator and connected it to the buried loop I was able to locate the wire quickly and accurately. Ended up have three breaks. Thanks again for posting.
We have 5 acres fenced and this worked very well. The signal got weak about halfway around the fence so I just moved the connector wire to the other end of my fence line to check the other side. Found two breaks, repaired and back up and going. Thanks. I will contribute to you as this will literally save me hundreds of dollars a year.
Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for showing the harbor freight centech cable tracker, I bought that thing for about $20 and found the break in my (above ground) fence in less than 30 min. I had been trying to find it for about three days. It worked very easy, and I wouldn't have found it without it. So thanks again!!!
Brother, my wife has been after me to get that Pet Safe underground fence working. I’ve been putting it off for about a month. Blamed it on the weather. But, the reason I haven’t done it yet is I know how big of a deal it would be. I can’t wait to try this tomorrow!
Worked perfect with my John Deere 318 lawn tractor. Wrapped a section of 12 ga. invisible fence wire 4-5 times around the spark plug wire and spliced it in an easy to repair place. Tuned to AM530 and signal was clear as bell until I got to the break.
this worked great - i didn't even need the lawn mower as we only have about 500 ft. of line and our receiver makes a beep when there is a break which was picked up really well. i found the section with the break as the signal was very weak in that area. thanks!!
OMG Thank you Thank you My dog decided she wanted to start wondering so I fixed the line where I knew it was broken however it still said there was a break in the line. It's December in NY so cold. I was unable to get my lawnmower working however my snowblower was working just fine wrapped the cable and starting looking turns out a tree root broke the line. Would never of found this without the AWESOME video. THANK YOU THANK YOU
Great Post Kyle. I have done this job in the past and had to dig up approx. one hundred feet of wire. Your method is genius and worked flawlessly . Found the break within a few feet of where the signal stopped on the first try. You saved me ton of time effort! Thank You.
This worked like a freaking charm after they replaced the cable line to our house. Thought I was going to have to order an RF choke, but luckily found your video first. Thank you.
Love the resourceful innovative MacGyver use of a common item such as the AM radio to trace the underground wire and determine the point of break in it. Thank you.
Thank you!!!! Had 2 breaks in my 1 acre fencing, found both with this video. Thought I was going to have to redo the entire fenceing.... Used my snapper rider mower as the source.... and am radio.
Best and simplest way to do this. A lot of convoluted solutions out there on the web but this was the easiest and we found the break in no time. This should be the top rated video to fix breaks in a break fences and deserves a lot more views then just a couple thousand
Worked for me. Thanks Kyle. A mole had chewed thru the wire. Poss helpful to others - I have a 1500 ft loop but I found my signal became faint at about 500 ft. So I dug up the original splices ( spaced at 500 ft) and repeated the procedure at each splice.
I have sniffed with a frequency counter which has high sensitivity and works pretty well but not as good as this scheme. Great idea! I am going to give it a try tomorrow. Thank you
Thank you for the video, worked like a charm. For those of you with a riding lawn mower / garden tractor, try using that. I have a Scag Cheetah zero turn mower, wrapped the wire around one of the spark plug wires and it worked perfectly. Thanks again Kyle!!
Wanted to say thanks for posting this video. We have a Petsafe fence and we were going to try the RF Choke method until we saw this video. Although we found that the problem was in the settings on the fence transmitter and there was no break in the fence wire. We wouldn't have figured this out though without this video and testing the fence with our mower and AM radio. We adjusted the setting on the transmitter and the fence is working fine for now. I'm not sure what exactly happened to the Transmitter itself but it has 3 settings and the fence no longer works on 1 of those settings. The other 2 settings are fine. Soooooo thanks again for posting this method. It saved us a lot of time and frustration.
ROCK ON! This worked awesome and saved me from having to pay a technician or buy the wire-finder kit. I wrapped the fence wire right around the spark plug wire of my mower and headed out to find the break. It was a little difficult at first with my 1960s AM/FM radio that created a lot of background noise. But after tuning in and hearing the buzz, it wasn't bad. I have about 1.5 acre zoned off. The signal did get very weak about 2/3 way around the zone. I couldn't hear it to go further (probably partially because of my crappy radio). So I just dug it up where I last heard it and re-attached the mower wire at that midway point to continue the rest of the zone. Finally found the break. About 6 feet was ripped out of the ground, compliments of last summer's demolition crew removing a building from my property with an excavator! After all that work finding the break, my lovely wife finally confessed that she physically saw that portion ripped out last summer by the demo crew, but completely forgot and never told me! Ugghh!
This works! The AM radio will pick up a static/noisy signal when it is near the fence wire. I was able to trace one side of the loop for about 500 feet before the signal got too low to detect. To my amusement, when I traced the other side of the loop I discovered the broken wire sticking up out of the ground where some excavators had dug it up and cut it while working on my neighbors property. Using the lawnmower is a little inconvenient since it makes a lot of noise and can interfere with hearing the radio signal - nice is there was some easy way to generate the signal without the mower. A great poor man's way of diagnosing your fence!
I wonder if rigging it up to a car battery would do the same thing as a lawnmower just a lot quieter? There has to be something that can be quieter than the lawnmower.
@@JT-vj6id a very late reply here but you need an AC signal in the wire to create the radio signal in space. A car battery only provides a DC current, which won’t create the radio signal. Also, if you aren’t careful and you create a complete circuit you’ll fry the wire. Hope this helps someone!
After watching the video and reading the comments I found my break too. As others mentioned, I had the twisted pair section at the start, but you can still find the break using a little more logic. Connecting the wire to one “side” of the loop causes that side to have a much stronger signal on the radio. That noise will drop dramatically at the break. So don’t forget to try connecting it to each side individually and search with the strong signal side. Also, know that the “weak” side will still have a signal due to the twisted pair section. A signal is induced to that side too (but weaker) in spite of not having a metal to metal connection at all. (Without knowing this you might wonder how both sides could have a signal when there is a break in the line somewhere and you’ve connected it to one side only.) Keep following that strong signal, and where it dies, you are very close! My break ironically was in the exact location of where some daffodils will start popping up next spring...😎
@@doinkeroni I should have also said Kyle that I REALLY appreciate that you took the time to create such an informative video. I am a retired physics teacher and I went from feeling clueless as to how I was going to deal with this problem (a.k.a. “Forking over a bunch of money to have someone else solve the problem”) to feeling confident that this can be a DIY project. The solution is clever, safe, easy and best of all, free. Thank you!!
@@stevedail1 Thank you for the kind words and encouragement! I was so excited when I first discovered this that I just HAD to tell people about it. Sorry that the video production quality is low... I was going for content over flare. Thanks again!
@@doinkeroni Like I always felt when I was teaching physics, sometimes the best demonstrations are simple and to the point. Your video was exactly that! It was easy to understand and makes it so that even someone who isn’t a do-it-yourselfer feels confident they can do it. Believe me, the flair comes when someone indeed finds that break and solves the problem! It’s a great feeling! Thanks again! P.s. By the way, the physics teacher in me loves the fact that this is a perfect demonstration that involves Faraday’s Law. “When a magnetic field changes in a coil, then a voltage (which is also changing) is induced.” The AC signal in the spark plug wire creates a changing magnetic field in the wire you have wrapped around it (like a coil)...which causes an AC current in that wire...which is sent to the dog fence wire. In the twisted pair part of my fence, that current causes another changing magnetic field in the other twisted wire of the dog fence, which in turn induces an AC current on the other half of the dog fence loop! As I mentioned in my first reply, this can be tricky because although there is a break in the fence so you’d think only half of the fence would send a radio signal, the other side has an induced (and weaker) signal too. I had success when I used the stronger side and my AM radio. So thanks again Kyle and thanks to Michael Faraday! (And James Maxwell! He knew radio signals/electromagnetic waves are created from AC current...) 👍
Thanks for posting this! Going to give this a try.. Currently using a petsmart wire break finder which is very poor at best.. I will say one of the big issues is the wire itself super amplfies all of the local stations and you really cant find an empty spot on the radio, plus trying to listen for the tone changes on the loop in the background of the radio stations.. Hooking one end to the mower makes more sense in finding the break to me.. will let you know how it goes.
I been finding breaks for almost 20 years now, never thought about hooking a mower to the line. I use a wire tracker. You can usually do the same thing by boosting the signing on the transmitter, and track that signal.
Thanks for the comment! How do you boost the signal on the transmitter? On mine (petsafe), even with it turned all the way up, i cannot hear it using the AM radio.
Kyle by turning up the signal field on the transmitter. The more pro petsafe transmitters (pro tx) have a switch to for a small middle or large yard. If that’s what you have just set it for a large yard and turn the signal field up all the way. If you hold a radio up to the transmitter, you can tune into the signal it’s producing. And that will make it easier to track. The downside of doing it your way, is if the break is near the mower, you will probably miss it. If you plan to repair breaks regularly, getting a pro wire tracker would be the best option. They’re about 1000 bucks, but last forever if you take care of them.
Yeah I think I will try hooking up to my jeep. My lawn mower runs wide open, afraid it will burn it out! I remember back when a lawn mower actually had a throttle adjustment.
This is why I like TH-cam so much. This guy did all the research that I didn't want to do AND made a concise video on how to do it. This saved me money and more importantly, time.
Thanks for the kind words @95thousandroses! It isn't rocket science, but I am glad it helped you out!
Dude! You rock. I bought a cheap $5 radio at goodwill and found my 2 breaks due to aeration. Thanks a million.
Awesome!!!!
Works MUCH better than trying to track the weak radio signal from the Invisible Fence transmitter with an AM radio. Brilliant.
Best way by far. I hooked up my riding lawn mower. Found it 300' in, repaired it and rechecked 2500 feet loop and could hear it all the way around. Saved me a ton of time, thanks !
Thanks so much for the comment! So glad it worked for you!
Amazing! This worked like a dream! 3000’ of wire and the break was found and fixed within 30 minutes. THANK YOU!!
This lawnmower radio detection trick WORKS. I did as it was described (530 am) and found two yard sprinkler valves that was lost in the thick sod and the valve housing was full of sand. I used ear buds with the radio and followed the signal to each valve. Saved big bucks$$.
Thank You
Awesome!!! Great to hear! Thanks!
Wow! This worked like a charm. Had tried unsuccessfully several times just with the am radio. Tying it into my power washer ignition coil had me find two breaks in less than 15 minutes. Thank you!
You are very welcome! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
THANK YOU!! I fixed my underground fence today using this method! Spent 6+ hours yesterday to no avail using the OEM tool.
Happy it worked for you!
Fantastic technique. It worked like a charm. One big Caveat; many systems leave a common point on a twisted wire section until the main outer loop is encountered. The twisting imparts a weaker but detectable signal to the other side of the open loop.
One side as you mention you can walk up right. The other is there but much closer to the ground ; it faked me out.
I used recycled solid core Romex for my connection. I took one conductor out of the crappy 16 gauge Romex, wound it four times around my generator’s spark plug wire and connected it to my powered down invisible fence loop. I found the breaks easily, after spotting how much stronger the spark plug generated signal was on one side of the break and the other.
The signal only disappeared in an isolated part ( two breaks! ), strong all around from the connection side, weaker on the other side (the side with the twisted wire induced signal) and absent in the isolated segment.
Definitely worth a donation!
Thanks so much for the kind words and taking the time to comment! So glad it worked for you! Have a great day! Feel free to check out some of my other videos for useful diy tips, tricks, and hacks!
Watched this in 2019 and traced my power lines to irrigation pump. Worked Flawlessly!! Thank you so much and I’m on it again just wanted to make sure you were Thanked again 😁👍👍
@2005Pilot great to hear!!! Thanks for taking the time to write the kind message!!! The video is very old, but it seems like it is still helping people!
@@doinkeroni Absolutely Is!! 😁👍👍. From my tests today it seems I get better pick up using solid wire rather than the stranded wire.
Thank you for posting this video. I was off about 6 feet from the break on my first dig and my lot is two acres. Then I used a radio like yours WITHOUT an antenna and I was able to fine tune the location and was off by less than a foot. I made the repair and my invisible fence is fixed. THANK YOU!!!!
Great to hear! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
This was a huge help and greatly appreciated. Followed the steps, found the break where the groundhog living under our shed chewed through the wire. Spliced in a new section of wire and we are back up and running!!
I have used this method twice now. Has saved me a ton of money and works every time! Thanks for posting this video.
Amazing, sure enough wrapped my 14 gauge wire around the spark plug of push mower and walked around with a tape player that had am/fm and put it on 530 while mower was running and you can pretty quickly gauge the sound and exactly where the wire is. What a life saver. Thanks for making this video many years ago when you posted it. Didn't have a walkman but found that tape player at good will for $4.00.
This is by far the easiest and most successful way I have tried. I bought and FOUGHT with the Pet Safe system and the rotten AM radio gave me fits and I EVENTUALLY found the line and but it took me several days to find it and deal with it. I took my little sportsman generator and wired it up and took an old Sony BOOM BOX and what a difference.. Took me all of 10 minutes from setup to finding the wire. SO HAPPY.. THANK YOU!!! .
Have a Husqvarna dual plug KAWAi engine, and just wrapped the power wire to one plug wire and the method worked like a charm. Thanks for the great tip
Hey Kyle, Just wanted to thank you for sharing your great idea on fixing our underground pet fence wire. It worked perfectly! I was amazed on how simple and effective everything worked. We have about 2 acres of containment with lots of roots pushing up the wire. I had two breaks, one from a lawn mower hit and another from some drainage construction.Once I figured out what to listen to(signal) I found the first one in about 15 minutes. After that I was literally jogging waving the little receiver like a man possessed. I found the second break in about 2 minutes. Our boxer and Lab are free to roam again and give you the double tail wag. Thanks again brother.
jack covey thanks for the kind words Jack! Glad it worked for you!
Hey Kyle what a great idea you had. I'm getting ready to put in my third invisible fence. They always word great with the dogs but it was always a pain to find the breaks. Great idea keep them coming.
Thank you for this excellent overview. I could not have made this repair without your video. I have the Invisible Fence brand of containment system and this process worked perfectly. I had to make a stop at my local Goodwill to pick up an AM radio ($2). I connected the wire from the mower to the wires at the control box in the garage (just be sure they are disconnected from the electronics). I was able to find the break in the line in less than 15 minutes. Another 5 to repair it. And now the system is working properly. Thank you again for sharing your ingenuity.
Awesome Trevor! Thanks for sharing!!!
For those of you who don't want to use a lawnmower: I had 1,000 feet of wire and locating the break was easier for me. That is because I was able to leave the transmitter plugged in. I used an old AM radio with a broken antenna to scan for a break, set on about 530 channel. I simply followed where the invisible line was underground, you will hear the static. When the static stopped, that was where the break was. It worked like a charm. Thanks for your video. It was a BIG help since we had worked trying to locate the problem for 2 days before I seen your video. And that did the trick. Thanks!!
Hi Kyle, I watched several of these videos and yours was the best. After watching yours I went to Radio Shack and bought a $16 AM FM radio and my lawn tractor. Found the break in 5 minutes. I also reflagged the yard for my dog to retrain her. Thanks so much!!!
Best help Ive ever gotten from anyone.. Cant wait to try it. Ive got a five acre rectangle and have about given up.
This will do the trick for you! Thanks for the comment and let me know if you have any questions or trouble!
You are a genius! We could not get anything to work to find the break in our pet wire until we tried this! Thank you!
Thats awesome! I'm glad it worked for you! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Thank you! I found my break in less than 10 minutes. I had no idea how I was going to find it till I seen your video
Great to hear! Thanks for the comment!
Thank you so much for this! I bought a AM/FM handheld radio for 8 bucks, and I used a weed eater as the signal source. It worked like a charm!
The break was where a vehicle ran over the line and a sharp underground rock pressed against the wire causing a break. I would have never found it without having to replace the whole line! You saved me some serious time and money! Thanks again!
The only thing I would add is running the signal source through the line from both directions to really zero in on where the break is.
Thanks for the comment! My only concern with running both wires at the same time is: if the break area is very small, it might be easy to walk right past it and pick up the signal on the other side.
@@doinkeroni To Clarify; What I meant was... connect to one wire, Pin point the dead spot the best you can. Then connect with the other wire to pin point from the other direction.
Not both wires at once.
It helps with the accuracy which was particularly important in my case having to deal with a yard with lots of grass roots in almost rock hard soil.
Thanks again! huge help! My neighbors where getting pissed, you saved me a bundle on dog pound fees alone lol!
@@CSProduction12 Ahh, great idea! I'm so glad it worked for you! Thanks!
Invisible fence charges a $210 dollar "show up fee" then it's parts and labor on top. Thanks for posting this.
Wow! Great to know! Thanks!
That mower coil puts out a better signal than anything that I have used before. As you have said here, the am radio will find the break. I will fire up the mower for the next problem. Thank you.
You're a dog-life saver! My nine acres was about to have so many holes......look like someone forgot where they once buried a penny jar. Thank you!
Shana thanks for the feedback! I'm happy it worked for you.
Life saver! I thought I knew where the break was, but I couldnt find it. After using this method I found it close to where I was looking but I was just far enough away from the real line placement that I wouldnt have found it.
Awesome Tristan! Glad it worked for you! Happy Thanksgiving!
This works really well. I used a portable generator instead of the lawn mower due to wet,snow-covered lawn. One thing I experienced was that my radio antenna isn't as sensitive to the signal as radio body is.
Many thanks! This worked beautifully. Oddly enough, even though the line was broken, there was still signal throughout the whole fence. Maybe because wire ends were touching each other a little bit -- enough to keep signal going from spark plug but not enough to prevent the fence's transmitter from going into "System Failure" and "Break" mode. Your video said the static would go away completely when the radio was right above the wire. What we found was that a signal got louder and faster the closer we got to the intact wire. We found the break when the signal went from very strong to definitely weak. It was the change in signal that alerted us. WE dug and sure enough, found a break. So, thank you again! Oh, and tuning to 530 was perfect. Again, thank you.
Hi Ginger,
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I am glad it worked for you!
THANK YOU! WORKS!!
Was able to find line...BUT .....was getting some background frequency on the Invisible Dog fence line, I believe from underground powerlines or underground cable TV. Without lawnmower on , underground dog wire was emitting some sound on AM radio. This really complicated things but at least I knew where my buried wire was. I would recommend walking the suspected area of buried line with Radio first WITHOUT mower on to see if there is some baseline frequency.
It worked perfectly in damp sand under turf. I was trying to locate where the twisted pair to the loop actually joined the loop. Absolutely a life saver and avoids digging just to locate the wire. Thanks.
Great to hear William! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Unbelievable. I wore an AM/FM headphone and found all the breaks once I got the hang of it. Amazing. Thank you
Send me a link and I will make a donation. Saved me $150 or more
Thanks for the kind words @Bill Zumvorde! Glad it worked for you! The link is in the video description. Thanks soo much!!!!!!
About twice a year I have to refer to this to fix my fence. It works every time.
Lol! Sorry to hear that!!!
Used this and it worked excellent just bought my am fm radio 10 dollars on Amazon thanks alot
This worked for me. Thank you! Wish I would've watched this video before I dug up half my fence.
Great to hear!!!
2 acre yard. Found the problem using this method. It flat out works. In my case an exposed wire at a connector, not a break. Thanks a million, man!
Dan Pratte Great to hear it worked for you!!!
Just finished and worked. I have 3 acres enclosed. I must say, it really helps if you know where the line is underground. I installed my fence about 8 years ago and had a general idea. I first “wanded” my entire fence. I noted one particular area, about 20 feet or so that had a much weaker signal (very noticeably weaker) than anywhere else along the fence. I dug until I found the fence (carefully) and continued along the line until I found the break, about 3’ from where I started digging. Spliced it and checked the operation of the collar. Back to normal. Thank you Kyle!
Awesome!!! Thanks for the kind words and taking the time to comment!!
This S... Actually Works.. Dern.. I dug and found one break from surveyors.... I used this method and found two other brakes from the neighbor's dog a digging. Thanks Much. It saved me a Lot of time from redoing the entire line....
Worked great. I spent half a day using the old trial and error method and only found one break. Frustrated I did a google search at lunch and found your procedure and tried it after lunch. I found four more breaks in the afternoon. Your procedure was easy to set up. Wrap a wire around the spark plug wire and twist the other end onto one of the loop wires. We had a lot of utility crews digging in our yard last few weeks and also tree trimmers that accidentally cut the wires partially buried in the woods behind our house. Thanks for your video.
Grant Specia Great to hear! Thanks!
Dude. You're a either a mad scientist, it a flippin' genius. Either way.. THANK YOU!
Lol, thanks for the kind words... but I am neither.
I OWE YOU BIG TIME. I have a little over 2000’ of wire laid an I was effortlessly able to find the break with the application of your idea. For those curious about how long it’ll transmit the frequency, I had no issue on clarity of the signal At 2200’-2500’. After I fixed the break I tested the distance it’d transmit keep in mind this is 14g wire. Thanks for the video!
Robert Akers thank you for the kind comment and the distance test!! Nice work!!!
At first I thought this was a gag video when I seen the mower hooked to the wires lol and then you just blew my mind with that amazing knowledge you possess... I love learning new tricks of any trades so thanks man seriously!!!! Your pretty awesome!!!! Thanks again.
Lol, thanks for the kind words!
Came across this while troubleshooting a break in the coax line for my cable internet. Concept seemed the same so I gave it a try. Worked like a charm.
Awesome to hear! Thanks for commenting!
Great idea. My mower was broken but I used a 2 stroke weed eater and it had a similar effect. The am radio actually picked up the sound / frequency of the weed eater when near the wire and then stopped when I had a break. I needed a break! Thanks for sharing and saving me hours of work.
Thanks for sharing and commenting David! I am surprised the 2-stroke worked for you. What frequency did you tune to?
No problem, Kyle. I had it near 540 on the radio and just left the weed eater idling. It definitely sounded different than your example and didn’t go silent when over the top, but static got real quiet as I got away from the line and as soon as I crossed over the break.
Thanks Kyle, this was a great video and it worked great for me!
For my AM radio, I used lawn mowing headphones that play radio that my girls gave me for Father's Day. It picked up the signal well and muted out outside noises, including minimizing the lawnmower noise. As some have commented, doing smaller sections at a time may be best if you enclose a large area.
Awesome!! Thanks for the feedback Roger Kopa!
My mower wouldn't start, so I tried a different idea. I connected one side of the loop to the output side of an electric fence charger. My particular charger is a pulse type and the ticking was easily detected with an AM radio.
Worked like a champ and I found the break in no time.
Thanks for the excellent idea.
Brian Freeman awesome idea!! Nice work!
The world needs more people like you! Worked like a charm...Thanks!!!
Thanks for the kind words Kent!!!
I have an automower that works inside a low voltage loop. When the loop breaks, the mower gives an error message and won't work. I couldn't find an old Walkman so I picked up a cheap Sony AM/FM radio and it worked great. Found the trouble spot in about 10 minutes of tracing the wire. The docking port for the mower was my signal source, so I didn't need the lawnmower. Thanks for a great tip!
Thank you so much! It worked awesome! It really pinpoints right where the wire is and also the break! Cost me like $0.05 in gas. Way cheaper than $100.
Hi Kyle,
A big thank you for taking the time to make this video. I've used several different ways to find a break in my Robot Mower wire but this is by far the best method. I found the break within 10 minutes, thanks again from the UK :-)
Great Russ! Thanks for the comment!
You just saved me a ton of frustration. You trick worked like a charm. I have a 5 acre property and I found the break in no time.
Awesome Marty!! Thanks for the feedback!
You are amazing!!! Just found 2 breaks in our fence and just can not believe how well this worked! Truly genius.
5leestreet thanks for the comment!!!
How to keep beetles off plum trees
This is brilliant! You just saved me from buying one of the devices for this from the Jungle Website! Thank you!
Lol, thanks for the comment!
Thank you for posting! This method works VERY WELL! Tried the RF Choke without success, but once I hooked up a wire to the spark plug wire of my small Honda generator and connected it to the buried loop I was able to locate the wire quickly and accurately. Ended up have three breaks. Thanks again for posting.
Carl Beavers
Great!
This was amazing!! We were ready to just give up! Found the break easily!!🎉🎉 Thank you so much!
We have 5 acres fenced and this worked very well. The signal got weak about halfway around the fence so I just moved the connector wire to the other end of my fence line to check the other side. Found two breaks, repaired and back up and going. Thanks. I will contribute to you as this will literally save me hundreds of dollars a year.
Brian Wiskari awesome!!!! Thanks Brian!!! I'm glad it worked for you!
Kyle I wasn’t able to find the contribution link....
Brian Wiskari it is right in the video drop down descritpion information. Thanks again!
Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for showing the harbor freight centech cable tracker, I bought that thing for about $20 and found the break in my (above ground) fence in less than 30 min. I had been trying to find it for about three days. It worked very easy, and I wouldn't have found it without it. So thanks again!!!
This worked perfectly to find the break in our PetSafe fence - quick, easy, and effective. Very nice!
Great to hear Ted Fisher! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
@@doinkeroni Thanks for saving me the time and work of running a section of new cable!
Brother, my wife has been after me to get that Pet Safe underground fence working. I’ve been putting it off for about a month. Blamed it on the weather.
But, the reason I haven’t done it yet is I know how big of a deal it would be.
I can’t wait to try this tomorrow!
Thanks for the feedback! Good luck!
How did it go?
Worked perfect with my John Deere 318 lawn tractor. Wrapped a section of 12 ga. invisible fence wire 4-5 times around the spark plug wire and spliced it in an easy to repair place. Tuned to AM530 and signal was clear as bell until I got to the break.
Great to hear!!! Thanks
this worked great - i didn't even need the lawn mower as we only have about 500 ft. of line and our receiver makes a beep when there is a break which was picked up really well. i found the section with the break as the signal was very weak in that area. thanks!!
Great to hear!
OMG Thank you Thank you My dog decided she wanted to start wondering so I fixed the line where I knew it was broken however it still said there was a break in the line. It's December in NY so cold. I was unable to get my lawnmower working however my snowblower was working just fine wrapped the cable and starting looking turns out a tree root broke the line. Would never of found this without the AWESOME video. THANK YOU THANK YOU
impala323 Thank you for the kind words! I am glad it worked for you!
Great Post Kyle. I have done this job in the past and had to dig up approx. one hundred feet of wire. Your method is genius and worked flawlessly . Found the break within a few feet of where the signal stopped on the first try. You saved me ton of time effort! Thank You.
John Shields Great to hear! I'm happy it worked for you. Thanks for the comment!
Thanks for this-I was really not looking forward to Ohm checking ALL of our wires!
Lol! No problem! Thanks for the comment!
This worked like a freaking charm after they replaced the cable line to our house. Thought I was going to have to order an RF choke, but luckily found your video first. Thank you.
Justin Knull great!!! Thanks!!!
Love the resourceful innovative MacGyver use of a common item such as the AM radio to trace the underground wire and determine the point of break in it. Thank you.
sclm55 thanks for the kind words!!!
@@doinkeroni Your welcome Kyle.
Dude this worked for me. Thank you very much. Headphones made it so much easier.
Thanks for the comment! Glad it worked well for you!
Thanks for taking the time to share. A very ingenuitve solution to a common problem!
Thank you for the kind words James!
I used your technique for location a break in the wire for my robotic mower. It worked great! Thanks very much.
Great to hear! Good idea... robotic mowers use the same concept!
Thank you!!!! Had 2 breaks in my 1 acre fencing, found both with this video. Thought I was going to have to redo the entire fenceing.... Used my snapper rider mower as the source.... and am radio.
dogsarefun2 great to hear!! Thanks for the comment!
Brilliant! You've made my day. Giving me a method of finding my underground well head by using the pump wires.
Best and simplest way to do this. A lot of convoluted solutions out there on the web but this was the easiest and we found the break in no time. This should be the top rated video to fix breaks in a break fences and deserves a lot more views then just a couple thousand
Chris, thank you for the positive feedback! I am glad it worked for you!
This is genius! Great video. Thank you so much. Saved me time and money. I used my tractor mower.
Worked for me. Thanks Kyle. A mole had chewed thru the wire. Poss helpful to others - I have a 1500 ft loop but I found my signal became faint at about 500 ft. So I dug up the original splices ( spaced at 500 ft) and repeated the procedure at each splice.
Roger Johnson this is the technique I used as well. I found it was actually faster than messing with a faint signal over such a long run.
Worked like a charm... Saved me $200... Thanks buddy
Great Chris! Thanks for the comment!
Amazing! I've tried all the other methods and nothing worked. This worked perfectly.
Steve Smith Awesome! It is really easy right??
I have sniffed with a frequency counter which has high sensitivity and works pretty well but not as good as this scheme. Great idea! I am going to give it a try tomorrow. Thank you
Great! Let me know how it works for you!
Thank you for the video, worked like a charm. For those of you with a riding lawn mower / garden tractor, try using that. I have a Scag Cheetah zero turn mower, wrapped the wire around one of the spark plug wires and it worked perfectly. Thanks again Kyle!!
Matt Vano Thanks for the comment and for adding an additional option for people to use!
Wanted to say thanks for posting this video. We have a Petsafe fence and we were going to try the RF Choke method until we saw this video. Although we found that the problem was in the settings on the fence transmitter and there was no break in the fence wire. We wouldn't have figured this out though without this video and testing the fence with our mower and AM radio. We adjusted the setting on the transmitter and the fence is working fine for now. I'm not sure what exactly happened to the Transmitter itself but it has 3 settings and the fence no longer works on 1 of those settings. The other 2 settings are fine. Soooooo thanks again for posting this method. It saved us a lot of time and frustration.
Listen... You are my favorite person today.. keep being awesome brother thank you!
Thanks Jeremy.. lol
You are a rock star. This is by far the best and simplest method I have seen. Thank you very much for putting this video together.
You're welcome! I'm glad it worked for you!
ROCK ON! This worked awesome and saved me from having to pay a technician or buy the wire-finder kit. I wrapped the fence wire right around the spark plug wire of my mower and headed out to find the break. It was a little difficult at first with my 1960s AM/FM radio that created a lot of background noise. But after tuning in and hearing the buzz, it wasn't bad. I have about 1.5 acre zoned off. The signal did get very weak about 2/3 way around the zone. I couldn't hear it to go further (probably partially because of my crappy radio). So I just dug it up where I last heard it and re-attached the mower wire at that midway point to continue the rest of the zone. Finally found the break. About 6 feet was ripped out of the ground, compliments of last summer's demolition crew removing a building from my property with an excavator! After all that work finding the break, my lovely wife finally confessed that she physically saw that portion ripped out last summer by the demo crew, but completely forgot and never told me! Ugghh!
Great! I'm glad it worked for you! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
This worked great thank you! Hooked to my generator wire and used a cheap handheld radio. Found problem in no time
MAD PROPS TO YOU! Followed your directions and the hardest part was digging up the wire without breaking it (which I did once).
I have a special post hole digger that finds a wire or irrigation line everytime. Great vid. Thanks.
This works! The AM radio will pick up a static/noisy signal when it is near the fence wire. I was able to trace one side of the loop for about 500 feet before the signal got too low to detect. To my amusement, when I traced the other side of the loop I discovered the broken wire sticking up out of the ground where some excavators had dug it up and cut it while working on my neighbors property. Using the lawnmower is a little inconvenient since it makes a lot of noise and can interfere with hearing the radio signal - nice is there was some easy way to generate the signal without the mower. A great poor man's way of diagnosing your fence!
mrbondppk thanks for your comment! Glad it worked for you!
I wonder if rigging it up to a car battery would do the same thing as a lawnmower just a lot quieter? There has to be something that can be quieter than the lawnmower.
@@JT-vj6id a very late reply here but you need an AC signal in the wire to create the radio signal in space. A car battery only provides a DC current, which won’t create the radio signal. Also, if you aren’t careful and you create a complete circuit you’ll fry the wire. Hope this helps someone!
Thank you. This is a big help. Cheers from Tinonee, NSW, Australia.
Good video, thanks. No break just watched videos of interest in different
Things.
After watching the video and reading the comments I found my break too. As others mentioned, I had the twisted pair section at the start, but you can still find the break using a little more logic. Connecting the wire to one “side” of the loop causes that side to have a much stronger signal on the radio. That noise will drop dramatically at the break. So don’t forget to try connecting it to each side individually and search with the strong signal side. Also, know that the “weak” side will still have a signal due to the twisted pair section. A signal is induced to that side too (but weaker) in spite of not having a metal to metal connection at all. (Without knowing this you might wonder how both sides could have a signal when there is a break in the line somewhere and you’ve connected it to one side only.) Keep following that strong signal, and where it dies, you are very close! My break ironically was in the exact location of where some daffodils will start popping up next spring...😎
Awesome info! Thanks for sharing!!!
@@doinkeroni I should have also said Kyle that I REALLY appreciate that you took the time to create such an informative video. I am a retired physics teacher and I went from feeling clueless as to how I was going to deal with this problem (a.k.a. “Forking over a bunch of money to have someone else solve the problem”) to feeling confident that this can be a DIY project. The solution is clever, safe, easy and best of all, free. Thank you!!
@@stevedail1 Thank you for the kind words and encouragement! I was so excited when I first discovered this that I just HAD to tell people about it. Sorry that the video production quality is low... I was going for content over flare.
Thanks again!
@@doinkeroni Like I always felt when I was teaching physics, sometimes the best demonstrations are simple and to the point. Your video was exactly that! It was easy to understand and makes it so that even someone who isn’t a do-it-yourselfer feels confident they can do it. Believe me, the flair comes when someone indeed finds that break and solves the problem! It’s a great feeling! Thanks again! P.s. By the way, the physics teacher in me loves the fact that this is a perfect demonstration that involves Faraday’s Law. “When a magnetic field changes in a coil, then a voltage (which is also changing) is induced.” The AC signal in the spark plug wire creates a changing magnetic field in the wire you have wrapped around it (like a coil)...which causes an AC current in that wire...which is sent to the dog fence wire. In the twisted pair part of my fence, that current causes another changing magnetic field in the other twisted wire of the dog fence, which in turn induces an AC current on the other half of the dog fence loop! As I mentioned in my first reply, this can be tricky because although there is a break in the fence so you’d think only half of the fence would send a radio signal, the other side has an induced (and weaker) signal too. I had success when I used the stronger side and my AM radio. So thanks again Kyle and thanks to Michael Faraday! (And James Maxwell! He knew radio signals/electromagnetic waves are created from AC current...) 👍
@@stevedail1 as a mechanical engineer, I find your detailed comment simply awesome! Thanks and take care!
Thanks for posting this! Going to give this a try.. Currently using a petsmart wire break finder which is very poor at best.. I will say one of the big issues is the wire itself super amplfies all of the local stations and you really cant find an empty spot on the radio, plus trying to listen for the tone changes on the loop in the background of the radio stations.. Hooking one end to the mower makes more sense in finding the break to me.. will let you know how it goes.
Doug Scarborough great! Good luck!
Kyle just did this using my weedeater... worked great!!!! Much more powerful signal making finding the partial break easy
@@ashevillescarborough awesome! Do you have a 4 stroke or a 2 stroke weedeater? I am curious at what frequency it worked for you. Thanks!
Kyle 2 stroke ... I’m not sure of the exact frequency but it was down low on my am receiver... but not all the way down, if that makes sense
I been finding breaks for almost 20 years now, never thought about hooking a mower to the line. I use a wire tracker. You can usually do the same thing by boosting the signing on the transmitter, and track that signal.
Thanks for the comment! How do you boost the signal on the transmitter? On mine (petsafe), even with it turned all the way up, i cannot hear it using the AM radio.
Kyle by turning up the signal field on the transmitter. The more pro petsafe transmitters (pro tx) have a switch to for a small middle or large yard. If that’s what you have just set it for a large yard and turn the signal field up all the way. If you hold a radio up to the transmitter, you can tune into the signal it’s producing. And that will make it easier to track. The downside of doing it your way, is if the break is near the mower, you will probably miss it. If you plan to repair breaks regularly, getting a pro wire tracker would be the best option. They’re about 1000 bucks, but last forever if you take care of them.
Did this today using my snowblower (in June!) It worked and now the dog can run free!
Eric Edstrom haha! good to hear!
This is awesome!!! I tried this this morning and found the break in 20 minutes!!!
Awesome!!!!
I used a snow blower, because that is what I had. Worked great.
Excellent!
Thanks, it worked perfectly and saved me an expensive service call.
Great to hear!!!!
Thank you... this worked perfectly on my 3/4 acre lot. I hooked it up to my tractor and I found the break in less than 10 minutes.
Thanks for sharing
Yeah I think I will try hooking up to my jeep. My lawn mower runs wide open, afraid it will burn it out! I remember back when a lawn mower actually had a throttle adjustment.
Genius! Thank you- I just installed the fence and I'm sure I will be in need of a smart way to detect when the wire breaks!
Thank you for the comment! Good luck!
I watched your video found it very informational very helpful I used the information to find my break in my PetSafe invisible fence thanks
Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Can't thank you enough for the explaining and demo I could actually hear!
Thanks!
Thanks! I'm going to try this technique to trace a broken irrigation wire.
Great idea! It should work great as long as it isn't too deep. Good luck!