By Christie, Jim, John, and Terry Noe
Our dog, Maggie, loves to run around in our big yard. But how do we fence her in? Building a 500-foot fence is expensive and unsightly, so we use an “invisible fence.” This is a buried wire that runs around the edge of our yard. Maggie wears a radio collar that beeps when she gets close to the wire, or gives her a mild shock if she strays over the edge (it doesn’t hurt).
One of Maggie’s favorite sports is digging up the gophers that are endemic to our neighborhood. Unfortunately for us, the gophers have a hobby of their own, which is biting through the buried wire of our invisible fence.
How do you find a break in a 500-foot buried wire? Digging up the entire 500 feet would not be fun. You can buy commercial cable finders that will find buried wires and wire breaks, like the Armada Technologies Pro 700, but these cost from $500 to $2,000! We decided to make our own and use the money we saved for something useful, like building a big trebuchet.