My former boss at the big city where I worked came up with the idea of using a condom over the bottom of the rod.?ÿ I told him that if he could get city stores to supply them we would all use them.
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A dozen newspaper wrappers duct taped onto the rod sounds workable.?ÿ You don't need a sharp tip on the pole to start with.?ÿ Completely remove the tip first.
Nobody likes to go fishing for corn-eyed brown trout. A Leica disto and a 4' lath have ended our days of fishing for lunkers. ?????ÿ
@edwidy, Lay the lath across the manhole rim and use the underside of the lath as the reference elevation. Then place the Disto in angle mode and shoot the inverts and bottom of barrel measure downs. We have tested this method on both low and high flow manholes and have always matched within +/- 0.02' of a level rod. For high flow manholes, we'll shoot the top of pipe and then use the pipe diameter + thickness of pipe to get the invert.
All of this is done for crew safety and hygiene. Our days of physically placing anything into the stream of waste are gone.
I use a Bosch "disto" that I picked up at Home Depot for exactly this. Works great. Best method I've ever used, and I've tried a lot of different things. Will penetrate an inch or two of water.
Look for a model that can be set to measure in decimal feet, and measure in "indirect" mode. Their cheapest models won't do that.?ÿ?ÿ
What about some easy way of cleaning the rod tip without having to turn it up and wipe it off??ÿ Seems like it always has dirt stuck to it when I'm placing it on a point, just one more little aggravation ???? ?????ÿ
I saw something like that happen on a historical archaeology project. Several people were issued treasure hunter type detectors and assigned 10-meter squares to search and flag hits.?ÿ One crew was getting many times as many hits as the adjacent squares.?ÿ The leader asked me to verify their flags and most of them didn't check.?ÿ I went over and waved the detector at the other operator's boots.?ÿ Yup.
