*
It is most certainly real. I had a local man who worked for the township where he lived come to my site and after some fake looking hocus-pocus he told me exactly where to drill,how deep, how many gpm, which way the stream ran. Put a flag in the ground and said “there she is, don`t go far off it, it`s pretty narrow.” Charged me $60.00 and away he went. Then I took accurate measurements and removed his flag. When the rig showed up a young guy jumped out with two bent up wires and started walking all around and finally scratched the dirt with his foot.He told me the stream runs east to west and it seems very narrow (I had heard this before). I then told him about the old guy and the $60.00. When I measured from my triangulation points the two drill spots were 8″ apart! Almost no one on that mountain ridge has any water to speak of. At the end of two days of drilling through iron stone at 310′, they hit more water than they could even accuratly measure. Don`t tell me it`s crap!
Discussion Forum
Discussion Forum
Up Next
Video Shorts
Featured Story
The RealTruck AMP Research Bedsteps give you easy access to your truck-bed storage.
Highlights
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Replies
*
Now I know us folks here in PA aren't the most progressive in the country (you can't buy a republican vote in some counties), but I've been surprised at the technology some of our water companies are using.
We needed to have a water line located, and the water guy pulls up in his $40,000 pickup stocked with $50,000 worth of tools. He proceeds to pull a couple of gizmos out of the side box and sets about his work of locating the buried water line. Let me describe these gizmos to you. Imagine a pair of old bicycle hand grips (surpringly, no tassles) each with an old radio antenna, hinged at ninety degrees where it comes out of the grip. They are loose in the grip so that they swivel. With a furled brow and pursed lips he marches around the front yard holding the grips in front of him vertically so that the antennas are pointing in the direction he is walking and parallell with the ground. Periodically the antennas pivot towards each other and cross in front of the man's chest until they are parallel with each other, one pointing left and one pointing right. The water guy stops and rubs the ground with his foot. He seems to wander about the yard aimlessly for several minutes repeating this ritual. Finally he walks to the truck, grabs a can of marking paint and proceeds to mark a line across the property. He proudly announces that this is the location of the water line, and shows us where it ends. After we brought in the hoe we were astonished to find he was within 6 of the actual location.
Let me tell you I was amazed but a little bit peaved that the water company spends all this money on hi tech equipment when a simpler tool can do the job. Handgrips and antennas! You can do the same gold-durned thing with a forked stick or a couple of properly bent welding rods and your own two hands. Sheesh, I ain't much for writin' no complainin' letter but this might be an exsepshum!
Any how, this isn't the first water guy I've seen do this, any comments!
Tom
*b TVMDCI've located both metal and PVC pipes many times using 2 wire coat hangers: cut off the hook and unwrap the twist, open one of the triangle legs out so it's inline with the base, open the other up so it forms a 90 degree angle with the base so you have a large piece of wire in the form of an "L".To use, hold the shorter legs in each fist so the long leg points out in front of you with a slight downward pitch to keep them parallel in front of you. When you walk over a burried pipe, they will swing in towards each other and as you walk past the object, they return to parallel.Doesn't cost $90,000, either.
*Dowsing definately works.
*Had local utility company try to locate a 12" watermain with detectors and couldn't. Next a foreman from another city utility with a piece of high tech detector tried and claimed it was on the other side of the road.One of the excavation foreman checked out the area with his wires during his break.We went with the excavation foreman's directions and found the watermain 12 feet down, directly under where he had been standing.Gabe
*I've seen it done but have been skeptical. Any advice for trying it myself and seeing if it works for me?
*There was a pretty good thread on dowsing/ "witching" several months ago.My Grandpa was well known around here for "witching" wells. I know it works, but dont believe there's any magic involved. I've heard of people useing everything from bent welding rods to forked limbs from a certain kind of tree cut at a certain time etc.Ryan, try a couple of welding rods bent at a right angle about four inches from one end. Hold the short leg loosely in each hand with the rods pointing straight in front of you. Walk around in an area that you know there is a water line buried. I think they are supposed to swing towards each other and cross over the line.My Grandpa would walk around a piece of property and find under ground streams [aquafers?] and recommend drilling the well where two converged into one stronger one. Chuck
*Only thing I've noticed is that the stick allways seems to point down at the most convenient place to set up the drilling rig.
*Part of my skepticism is that I've only see this done for wells and you can pretty much hit water anywhere if you dig deep enough. Finding water with a bent stick is kind of like finding dirt. But I'd love to see it done on pipe.
*Had a course in college on Physical/Environmental Sciences that touched on Dousing(sp?). The teacher had a book on the subject and it had a few chapters on how to do it. Basically just try and see if it works! Each year he'd take all his classes to the city park next to the school and have ya wander around. He said about 75% of the students would have some luck. We marked our finds with flags and he checked them with a city utility/sewer map. We all did surprisingly well(pun intended!). I did pretty good, and a female friend of mine found just about everything watery there. She could even accurately describe which felt closer to the surface and which felt stronger(more water flow). Do a web search and see if you can find any info. We picked it up in about a week of trying. We used the forked stick method, and also bent wire. My Dad used bent antenna's to find underground wires while working as a signalman on the railroad, some oldtimer showed him how years ago. Jeff
*b TVMDCTry it with a couple coat hangers in your front yard and advise.
*Like Chuck said, there was a good thread on this. One of the main theories is that your brain is devoted like 95% to keeping unnecessary stimuli OUT, so you won't be overloaded. Dowsing serves to focus your brain on stimuli it is already receiving, and bring it to the surface so you can get an answer to your question ("where is the water? or gold, or oil, or my keys, Roman artifacts, or the missing child," or whatever. it's used for all those things.)A lot of pros prefer the pendulum to rods. Some mechanics tune cars using pendulums. The only way to know is to try it; but be careful, it makes a lot of people feel kind of sick after a while.
*FWIW, Back in the 80's a roommate had some relative's visiting, one claiming to be able to douse.I sent him for a walk up the road at night to find the mill stream passing under the road, about 4' wide, up to 2' deep, and about 6' down, as I recall. (I didn't tell what he was looking for, just asked hime if there was any water there.He didn't come close.Bob
*I have seen dowsers work a dozen times, with forked sticks, wires, and rods of various sorts. On buried pipelines they have missed much more often than they have hit it. On well sites, I agree with earlier comments that the best site also has the best drill rig access.It's fun to do and watch, but it ain't real.
*It is most certainly real. I had a local man who worked for the township where he lived come to my site and after some fake looking hocus-pocus he told me exactly where to drill,how deep, how many gpm, which way the stream ran. Put a flag in the ground and said "there she is, don`t go far off it, it`s pretty narrow." Charged me $60.00 and away he went. Then I took accurate measurements and removed his flag. When the rig showed up a young guy jumped out with two bent up wires and started walking all around and finally scratched the dirt with his foot.He told me the stream runs east to west and it seems very narrow (I had heard this before). I then told him about the old guy and the $60.00. When I measured from my triangulation points the two drill spots were 8" apart! Almost no one on that mountain ridge has any water to speak of. At the end of two days of drilling through iron stone at 310', they hit more water than they could even accuratly measure. Don`t tell me it`s crap!
*b TVMDCScott, it certainly IS real. I had to find the shut-off valve for a fire hydrant that had been covered with asphalt in a very large parking lot. The valve was at the end of a long run parallel to the building where it turned 90 degrees away from the building.I used the coat hanger technique described above to find the lateral and then the 90. Took a propane torchand burned through the asphalt and found the valve dead-on!If you don't try it, you won't believe it. So take a cople wire coat hangers and try it.
*Skeptical Inquirer Magazine ran an article on research into witching several years ago. A number of well locations dug at random was the control group and was compared to those located by a witcher. The results were essentially the same! It's random. A well driller I've used told me you can dig almost anywhere and find water around here. It may be at 50' or 350', but you'll find it. If you had hired a witcher you would naturally think, "the witching worked!" DH
*"Skeptical Inquirer Magazine" is this what is required study for all PE's these days?Not every "witcher" is legitimate, just as not every anything is legitimate. I've seen all types and the ones that can do it consistently, are in the minority. Water is one of those things that, as advanced as we think we are, is taken for granted. We think that we know all that there is to be known about it, we think that we will never run out of it and that we can control it at will. Does the flow of water underground have some type of field around it that can be detected by primal means?Whatever, never discount what has been practiced for centuries.Gabe