On 3/18/2016 6:44 PM, David Lang wrote:
On 18/03/2016 18:28, Tim+ wrote:
Following an episode of depriving three flats of mains power for 8
hours I
thought I'd buy some of those cheap volt sticks mentioned here recently.

Seem to work fine on ordinary cable but not on my armoured incomer. I
suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this but clearly they're not gonna
stop
me drilling into another armoured cable. ;-)

Out of interest, would the type of armour make a difference (say steel
versus copper)?

Tim

They aren't meant to be cable detectors. Surely a proper detector would
be better?


Never heard of copper armour. I'm not too surprised that they don't
detect live SWA cable, especially at any distance. However a good "metal
detector" ought to work, also consider a rare earth magnet which (I
guess) might pick it up through up to a centimetre of plaster, but
probably not much further.