Cables under the lawn?

[Dilbertian]

I want to replace the tiny lawn in my tiny front garden with shrubs, and maybe have a little path through the middle for maintenance.

Some years ago I was lifting and separating daffodils, when I found a cable of some sort that appeared to go diagonally across the garden, in the direction of some sort of box on the side of the house.

How do I find out where the cable runs, and what it is?

If it is something important, how do I protect it, or do I have to reroute it before I redesign the garden?

I suspect its cable TV, if its electricity and installed correctly it should have yellow tape like Crime scene tape saying electricity buried with it.

AFAIK we don't have cable tv.

From what I recall when I unearthed it years ago, it was dull grey-brown, thicker than an extension lead, and there was no labelling or tape on it. Mind you, I only exposed a couple of feet of it - how frequent would the labels be?

What's on the inside of the house where the box is?

How old is the house? Could a previous owner have had cable TV?

Telephone usually comes in above ground. Mains electricity is usually underground. How deep was it?

We have no cables over ground here. No phone poles, for example.

I was digging bulbs when I uncovered the cable, so it can't have been very deep. 1', maybe?

Added complication is that there were multiple cables coming in at multiple entry points on that wall when we moved in. We cut off some of the redundant ones and removed the above ground sections, but did not dig up the garden to remove the rest. There are likely to be more cables under the ground.

It looks like you don't have much option except to trace the cable to your house and onwards.

Or get a professional in. They have gear for detecting cables, and will know whetehr it's carrying current.

Ugh. That would make it a proper landscaping job. I've been doing it piecemeal over the years, working my way in, and hoped to continue this way.

If you know where a bit of it is can’t you just try and avoid it as you’re planting things? Be careful and dig gradually when you get close to its probable route?

If you know where a bit of it is can’t you just try and avoid it as you’re planting things? Be careful and dig gradually when you get close to its probable route? Start marking its route so you know where to be careful

You can probably hire a thing called a CAT scanner from your local plant and tool hire place. Have a google at how they work. This is the tool a pp mentioned for looking for cables.

That looks very interesting. The CAT might not be suitable because it requires you to send a signal down the wire - ie you need to know where one end is, which I do not know.

But there is a Ridgid which doesn't need this and can detect even dead cables. I shall investigate further.

Hang on, what were the cables you cut off?!

I don't remember It was 15y ago. The previous owners were masters of bodge and the house was festooned inside and out with cables, many of which ran from nowhere to nowhere.

I found a similar cable in the front garden. Tracing the line away from the house towards the pavement it lines up roughly with a cable TV metal cover (like a manhole but tiny, I don’t know the name).

I’ve just buried it a bit deeper where necessary and left it for the archaeologists.