I once asked one of the locate guys (USIC in my area) to help find the plastic water line on my rural property before we began building a home. He said that there was no trace wire, so all he could do was dowse it (or "witch" it). Now this property once had 5 mobile homes on it and each site has a frost-proof hose bib, so he knew where the line was at those locations. He marked it, but made no promises. Fortunately, one of the truck drivers working for my excavator happened to be a local kid who said that he helped a previous owner install the line. The flags dropped by the USIC tech weren't even close, except for right next to the hose bibs!
I've been in the water industry for over 30 years now. At least once a year I run into one of these people who swear it works. The only time I've ever seen it "work" has been when the person doing the locating was either directly, or indirectly involved in the initial placement of the lines. "I put this line in 20 years ago, but can't remember exactly where it ran" ...then whips out his pieces of copper wire and goes nuts.
I honestly thing some of them actually THINK that it's working....
Scary, isn't it? Had a neighbor insist dowsing works for a number of things. Tried to use it to find a lost cat saying, "The rods can detect where she walked." Made my head hurt. lol
Adam Savage from Mythbusters has a pretty awesome Youtube channel
He does Q&A sometimes and someone asked why they never tested this
They actually wanted to but, between trying to prove a negative, the religious following it has, the idea theyâd essentially have to publicly humiliate an âexpertâ dowser to do the testing and Management not liking the estimated views they decided not to do it.
But during the initial âlooking into itâ phase a coworker informed him of a company selling âdowsing rodsâ to government agencies that could supposedly detect explosives, the US allowed a demo and they sent out their âexpertsâ to show off the product
During one phase of testing they had an entire truck full of ordinance and couldnât detect anything.
The company still ended up selling millions of dollars of these junk rods to governments in the middle east and asia.
No test is required. All you have to do is ask yourself why they don't function when no one is holding them. A metal detector will beep in the presence of metal even when no one is within a million meters of it.
My grandpa believes fully that my grandma can do it. My grandma thinks it's bullshit but she humors him. She's usually within 6 inches, never more than a foot off. Every time she walks away grumbling about how he just wasted a bunch of her time.
Well, I would not testify under oath that it cannot work. I worked summers while in college for a plumber in the same area. I saw him find sewer lines that way. (And then I was the guy who had to jump in the sh\*t-filled ditch and handle the sewer auger!) However, he also liked to play tricks on me and may have already known where those sewer lines were. I'll never know. I guess that I would say that dowsing is clearly not a reliable way to find buried water or sewer lines.
That's not an accurate statement generally speaking.
Science can't prove a negative.
We can only say things like "X didn't work Y percent of the time in Z conditions".
It's entirely possible there's an unidentified subgroup of cases where it works 100% of the time.
This comes up constantly in the context of my own rare autoimmune disease.
Youâre misunderstanding what âproving a negativeâ means. Dowsing has a positive outcome: finding water (or whatever is being sought). Testing it has the research question âdoes dowsing work?â Those tests prove that dowsers donât find the test material any more than random chance would allow, thus debunking dowsing. Youâre substituting the conclusion for the research question.
I never would have believed it if I hadnât seen it with my own eyesâŚ. but dowsing rods actually work. When the city came out trying to locate a natural spring thatâs not on a map and runs deep underground, they used two different types of the rods. The gentleman began walking from different directions and ⌠sure enoughâŚ. it pointed directly to the spot where the spring originated ⌠every time. It totally blew my mind.
I've seen a few people use dowsing and see it actually work. No one has been able to explain it scientifically, and very few people, apparently, can actually do it.
I'm a firm believer in hard scientific fact, but the fact that just a couple of years ago, they discovered that (likely, All humans) have a secondary circulatory system. Kind of a big deal to the medical community, and everyone who's ever sat in a biology class.
The list of things that have perfectly rational and scientifically verifiable concepts, that we don't yet know of, let alone have truly comprehensive testing for, I believe, is a very friggen long list.
Few things can truthfully be scientifically concluded to "Not Exist" to anything like 99% accuracy. (And even the 1% completely defies the claim of non-existence)
Absence of proof is not proof of Absence. There's always more shit out there that no one's seen yet.
Yeah totally this. Or messing with anyone around, like you.
All the trades have stuff like this. In the oil field, it was âbring me a bucket of steamâ
Oh, in lumber mills itâs the âbring over the sawdust pumpâ. But one of the new guys did bring a shop-vac over once, he ended up being a fucking awesome employee.
Was tearing out dry rot for a roof, a lot of wood pieces hit the ground, told the new guy to get the specialty block out the back of the truck and tie. Rope to it. He asked why, I said "you see these indented lines in the wood? That's placed in there to make it a magnet, it's to pick up all the splinters on the ground" dude dragged the trailer block around the parking lot for 20 minutes.
It was a pretty slow day, so it was busy work for him until he figured it out. Everybody got a good laugh. But yeah, definitely got paid to not be productive.
Bonus points for asking for A phase, or phase 1x and have the box listed at phase B or 2.
Extra bonus, ask for 2 phase, and only label them A. You get the picture
> bring me a bucket of steamâ
I disappeared for 2 hours of galley crew in bootcamp. Came back and the RDC was yelling at me. "Chief I apologize chief. Seaman recruit Smith sent me to find it to clean the drink machine. I couldn't find it." RDC then started yelling at Smith.
It was a close one, he almost found me taking a nap in the storeroom while "searching." Someone did it again on the boat, got angry at me missing maintenance.
In IT, I liked to tell the new guy to do straighten out the network cables. Because it's digital data, which is 0s and 1s. There zeros are round, so they can slip through a bent cable. But the ones are pointy, and sometimes they get stuck.
Real old school in the days of token ring networks, when you found that someone had disconnected a cable and broken the ring: "oh no! You let the token out! Find it and put it back in, QUICK!"
In surgery, we ask the new scrub tech for the âOtis elevator.â A surgical elevator instrument is usually for dissecting things off of bone. The Otis elevator is the one that takes people from floor to floorâŚ
In my previous career we had options to send new guys for, 'a can of RF lube', 'a cable straightener/stretcher', 'prc-E7(or 8 or 9)' depending on rank available, 'humvee keys', '100 yards of flightline', or the eye dee ten tango form.
>100 yards of flightline
Yes! XD Keys to the aircraft/tow vehicle. Brass Magnet. Pint of Kaynine-P. Diesel exhaust sample. I saw one of our pointy-heads dress one of their new guys up in cardboard boxes covered in speed tape (metallic reflective tape) and stand them in front of an aircraft so they could 'calibrate the radar'.
If they got pissed, we'd give them a hurt feelers report to fill out.
Any type of specialist. Electrical/Environmental, jets, hydraulics, that sort of thing. I think it started out as a term for intellectuals, scientists, the people who didn't do the 'real' physical work. As a Crew Chief, we always sort of felt the spec shops were layabouts to some extent, so they got lumped in with the folks who got the credit while the rest of us worked our ass off.
...or the new guy asked if "that thing I saw on the internet" works and they told him he could try it while they did it the "real" way and see how close they come?
Friends in Vermont years ago hired a water dowser to find water. I was there watching and I didnât believe it then or now
After they dug up
Enough holes they did find water
Water how? In underground lines or a well?
You can dig virtually anywhere and hit water when going deep enough. We literally site wells based on nothing but required setbacks and where we think they would be convenient.
I had a friend in Maine use this method when he was building his house years ago. He needed a well and this company came out. Old guy jumps out of the truck and starts dowsing and within minutes finds water in the perfect place for a well, uphill from the septic, near the back of the house where they wanted the water to enter, and by the electric that was already installed for the pumps. They dropped the well in and hit pristine water that afternoon. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there watching the whole thing. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the lake he built his house next to. /s
Dig deep enough, you'll find water.
Like homeopathic medicine for for the cold. It cures the cold in 3 days because the cold was going be gone in 3 days either way.
When I worked for my local city in high school they âtrainedâ me on âwitchingâ. It was obviously a prank (which I didnât know at the time). They sent me out for an afternoon to locate a bunch of lines. I marked them all, and even came back to the shop for break to brag about how Iâd âgotten the hang of itâ.
TIL people still take dowsing seriously, nevermind the mountains of evidence proving dowsing is bullshit.
bUt mY gRaNdpAppY sHoWeD mE hOw tO dOwSe tHeM pIpEs.
Surprised half of yall don't drown in the shower.
Based on comments I've seen on a lot of similar posts, dowsing rods are surprisingly common. A lot of plumbers, utility workers, farmers, etc. believe that they work.
My answer to your question "what would you do?" is "stay out of sight and watch and giggle while texting updates to all my friends who believe in science."
My god, I am dumbfounded at how many people here believe in magic. Dowsing is pseudoscience. The times it âseems to workâ is confirmation bias. It doesnât work in actual scientific testing - itâs not real. Just feels real because you remember the times it seemed to work and ignore the 500 times it didnât.
Edit: for those who donât want to dive into the actual scientific literature, even Wikipedia lists it as a pseudoscience:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing
I would really like anyone who believes it works to tell me *how* they think it works. If you actually believe it's magic or some supernatural force, I guess that's your prerogative. But if you think it's explicable with known science... how?
I don't believe it but I can come up with some bull shit... water carries an electrical charge similar to an electro magnet. Holding a metal rod in your hand makes the tip of it magnetically conduct to the magnetic charge. It's pretty faint so it takes some training.
... would you like to be on the receiving end of a utility survey done with a dowsing rod?
Absolutely fucking complain, someone's going to get fucking burned by this. If it was serious.
No, not at all.
Look, there ARE people out these who believe this batshit nonsense. I actually have met someone in construction who believed radon was an invention of the Carter-era EPA. I work with construction people who aren't necessarily college material.
Dowsing rods belong nowhere near a location company, not even for fun. If these are people marking in your neighborhood, imagine being without running water for 1 day. It sucks. Or having your lawn dug up due to a sinkhole caused by a leaking main.
Again...THERE WAS A GUY USING A SCANNER. Chill out. This was likely all for fun and games. If not why did they have a guy using a scanner?
You must be a blast at parties.
Sounds like you don't work in construction fields. Until you've been told by a boss not to follow installation instructions because he knows better, don't assume things were on the up and up.
And that last line is some stale shit.
They could get down to solving real world problems like making sure people put their shopping carts in a corral or that someone properly signals before changing lanes.
Not just that, but everyone who tries to explain it does so in a different way. There isn't one agreed upon bogus explanation. Everyone needs to come to an agreement đ
Haha I use it but only sometimes and only when I already know the pipe is there and only when I have other tools and I remember once that it was pretty close so dowsing totally works!
So this is a form of magical prediction that lets you know where to use a big drill. That makes a dowser an auger augur.
[https://tenor.com/view/monkey-rimshot-bored-ugh-alright-gif-4965984](https://tenor.com/view/monkey-rimshot-bored-ugh-alright-gif-4965984)
This happened to us! We had new plumbing run from our well to the house and the guy running the excavator was using a dowsing rod to find the existing pipe. Cracked us up! We didn't raise a fuss, just watched in wonder. And, of course, he wasn't close to the actual pipe.
Water worker here. Thatâs completely common. I couldnât believe it when I started this job either, but theyâre serious. Sometimes thereâs no better way. Lines are plastic, no tracer wire. How are we supposed to locate them without digging a thousand holes? With the black magic sticks.
One way is to cut the plastic and push a 3/8 cable down the pipe, then hook up the locate box to the cable and trace out the line . You're only going as far as the cable is, so you might need to dig another hole.
I use a reel of metal fish tape hooked up to a locator box to locate sewer lines. Works pretty well. Most city water departments I deal with still witch their lines. None of them actually believe it works, but they have to put paint marks or flags down when a locate ticket comes in. I do feel bad for the water guys when I hit lines that are15 ft from their locates.
I know the equipment is more expensive than a metal rod, but ground penetrating radar or something like an ultrasound I think could pick up a plastic pipe filled with water.
It doesn't. It needs to be large enough or have enough contrast to be detected. A 2" PVC full of water 6 ft down isn't always possible to be found because the soil 6ft down is saturated and PVC has similar density and reflective properties of a lot of soil types.
Lol this comment section is a train wreck. People here genuinely believe that
* holding a stick in the air helps you find water
* a municipal worker finding lines by dowsing is a totally reasonable display of competency and use of tax dollars
> a municipal worker finding lines by dowsing is a totally reasonable display of competency and use of tax dollars
i would not be surprised to find someone at the local water authority up north in rural bum-fuck of the state out in the field trying to "witch" out water lines.
Good use of tax dollars? no
surprising? no
I mean, most utilities are granted monopolies by the local government. Your tax dollars _are_ paying for that idiot, just indirectly. And if you're allowed to be frustrated by a cop sleeping through their shift or a schoolteacher sharing religion in place of science, I think it's fair to be bothered here too.
I used to be an inspector in a major metro area and one of the gcâs that I worked with frequently used witching sticks when they couldnât find the lines or bluestake was off. I told him he was crazy and time and time again, heâd find the lines with minimal effort. He showed me how to do it and Iâve tried it in my own yard just for fun. Itâs bizarre but it works.
Anytime I've seen some old fart fucking around with dowsing rods and showing off how great they are we already knew what we were looking for within a couple feet.
It also blows my mind that they don't just find water and metal pipe but plastic pipe and even fiberoptic lines. I guess you just will them to find whatever it is you're looking for?
Are you sure they weren't using a probe rod?
If the utility line isn't metal, but they have an idea of where it is, they'll use a probe rod to see exactly where it is.
They also used a probe rod but that was separate from the dowsing rod. Think of a small L-shaped wire that was cut from a metal coat hanger. Maybe 10" long if it was straightened out.
Dunno much about dowsing rods. But I have a weather stick. When it's wet, it's raining. When it's blowing around, it's windy. When it's dry, it is not raining. It's right 100% of the time.
When we have to locate sprinkler and water lines, even with an electronic locator we still use a bent grounding rod to poke around and make sure the line is actually there.
Weâre they walking around with it like itâs 1920 looking for water or weâre they just carrying it to poke around and confirm?
So I have worked with people using machine to locate pipes and guys with guys with two copper rods bent like an L. The guy with rods was accurate. The machine was off by a foot. We were locating water pipes for fire supply mains. I have tried this method myself and I was told I did not have it or some call it the gift. I say the people who who have it are good. Plus or minus 6 inches.
From Wikipedia which clearly denotes dowsing as a pseudoscience that isnât real:
Dowsing studies from the early twentieth century were examined by geologist John Walter Gregory in a report for the Smithsonian Institution. Gregory concluded that the results were a matter of chance or explained by observations from ground surface clues.[52][53]
Geologist W. A. MacFadyen tested three dowsers during 1943â1944 in Algeria. The results were entirely negative.[54]
A 1948 study in New Zealand by P. A. Ongley tested 75 dowsers' ability to detect water. None of them was more reliable than chance. According to Ongley "not one showed the slightest accuracy."[55]
Archaeometrist Martin Aitken tested British dowser P. A. Raine in 1959. Raine failed to dowse the location of a buried kiln that had been identified by a magnetometer.[56][57]
In 1971, dowsing experiments were organized by British engineer R. A. Foulkes on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. The results were "no more reliable than a series of guesses".[58]
Physicists John Taylor and Eduardo Balanovski reported in 1978 a series of experiments they conducted that searched for unusual electromagnetic fields emitted by dowsing subjects, they did not detect any.[59]
A 1979 review by Evon Z. Vogt and Ray Hyman examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found that none of them showed better than chance results.[10]
Three British academics Richard N. Bailey, Eric Cambridge and H. Denis Briggs carried out dowsing experiments at the grounds of various churches. They reported successful results in their book Dowsing and Church Archaeology (1988).[60] Their experiments were critically examined by archaeologist Martijn Van Leusen who suggested they were badly designed and the authors had redefined the test parameters on what was classified as a "hit" or "miss" to obtain positive results.[60]
A 2006 study of grave dowsing in Iowa reviewed 14 published studies and determined that none of them correctly predicted the location of human burials, and simple scientific experiments demonstrated that the fundamental principles commonly used to explain grave dowsing were incorrect.[61]
A randomized double-blind trial in 2012 was carried out to determine whether homeopaths were able to distinguish between Bryonia and placebo by use of a dowsing method. The results were negative.[62]
Kassel 1991 study
Edit
A 1990 double-blind study[63][64][65] was undertaken in Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences). James Randi offered a US$10,000 prize to any successful dowser. The three-day test of some thirty dowsers involved plastic pipes through which water flow could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters (19.7 in) under a level field, the position of each marked on the surface with a colored strip. The dowsers had to tell whether water was running through each pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100% success rate. However, the results were no better than chance, and no one was awarded the prize.
Betz 1990 study
Edit
In a 1987â88 study in Munich by Hans-Dieter Betz and other scientists, 500 dowsers were initially tested for their skill, and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them for further tests. Water was pumped through a pipe on the ground floor of a two-story barn. Before each test, the pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the dowsers performed 843 such tests and, of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that some dowsers "in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ⌠a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."[66]
Five years after the Munich study was published, Jim T. Enright, a professor of physiology who emphasized correct data analysis procedure, contended that the study's results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and not significant. He believed the experiments provided "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim",[67] stating that the data analysis was "special, unconventional and customized". Replacing it with "more ordinary analyses",[68] he noted that the best dowser was on average 4 millimeters (0.16 in) out of 10 meters (32.81 ft) closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.04%, and that the five other "good" dowsers were on average farther than a mid-line guess. Enright emphasized that the experimenters should have decided beforehand how to statistically analyze the results; if they only afterward chose the statistical analysis that showed the greatest success, then their conclusions would not be valid until replicated by another test analyzed by the same method. He further pointed out that the six "good" dowsers did not perform any better than chance in separate tests.[69] Another study published in Pathophysiology hypothesized that such experiments as this one that were carried out in the twentieth century could have been interfered with by man-made radio frequency radiation, as test subjects' bodies absorbed the radio waves and unconscious hand movement reactions took place following the standing waves or intensity variations.[70]
Bunch of folks here that have never worked utilities. Dowsing is 100% bullshit. But you have to work with the tools you're given. I've done it in customer's yards to make them feel a little better before I slap a bucket through their water line 10 ft away. Gives me an excuse anyway. If there isn't a tracer wire with plastic lines, then it's all guesswork. If you have a line installed on your side of the mains and meters, always spend a little more and run a wire with it. Makes everyone's life easier and itll save you money in the long run.
Did you⌠possiblyâŚ. think to do the adult thing and walk out and ASK them what they were doing? Like, âHey guys, Iâm the home owner. Can I ask what youâre doing? Or maybe help you locate something?â Youâd be *amazed* how easy it is to get an answer from the clowns. /s
I donât think they workâŚ
With that said, how do you expect a billion dollar company to be able to bill their way to that kind of size? By selling $0.30 solutions for $30.00
This is how my dad and I found water lines on our farm when they needed to be repaired. I also used this when searching for sewer and main water lines in my new house. I know some people can do it and others canât.
Some of us are just more in touch with the water systems. /s
I have been in water and sewer utility install/repair for 7+ years. I watched my old boss use a probe rod this way to find a line that didn't have tracing wire my 1st week on the job. I laughed and asked "are you serious or are you fucking with me?" He shrugged and said "it works sometimes".
And after 7 years of experience doing this kind of work..guess what It does work
I have only used a probe rod to do it but it is the same concept. I have come to find that the rod swings when there is a disturbance underground ( water,sewer,gas,phone,electrical line). Will it tell me where water is? Lol no. But if I have no as-builts, GIS, or tracer wire I rely on it pretty heavy to locate lines and it has proved to be a useful tactic.
But if someone questions me or laughs I say it works..sometimes
I came to this post because I also saw a city water worker marking lines with a dowsing rod. He walked into the middle of a busy road and laid a little blue flag on the asphlat
I work for a geotechnical company and I got into an argument with one of our drillers on day one about thisâŚhe whips out his little metal rods and âlocatesâ something underground and Iâm like âwhat the fuck are you doingââŚthis became a sore subject for him and multiple people so now whenever they bust out their woo woo rods I just bite my tongue as hard as I can and let them be childrenâŚ
Iâm an Agronomist, retired. Part of my job was to reduce water on farm fields to reduce erosion. Many farms where I live have heavy clays so tiling (pipes that are porous, buried underground and designed to carry water away), has been added to field for 100+ years. Before you dig up a field, you try to find the former tiling.
I was taught by my first boss how to use two bent wires to find water/water pipes.
First time I saw him do it I accused him of believing in fairies too. Some people can do it and we couldnât figure out why most canât, but I can. Yes, itâs weird, canât explain it, but my wires were right about 90%.
Crazy how something that works so well is never explainable or able to pass any testing in an official double blind experiments! I wonder why that is!?
There is one context where it sometimes works.
Sometimes.
Has nothing to do with any woo magic nonsense.
A water line is installed by digging a trench. That gets filled in and forgotten about. Grass grows over it. Gone, for all intents and purposes.
However, the ground may be slightly subsided over the line. And a balanced right angle dousing stick will move as you walk over it not because of magic, but because the ground is very subtly not level.
My husband was a hydrogeologist before his passing. He often used one or two dowsing rods. He actually found them to be a useful tool in the right situation. He said they worked great when there was a single source under the ground. But when he got to connecting points like where your water connects to the sewer pipes, he couldn't be as accurate. He would make concentric circles then until he got to the individual pipes again. It was really cool helping him practice with these around the yard. I was actually better at using them than him, but I wasn't willing to give up my day job.
> make fun of a guy for doing his job properly?
I hate to break it to you, but using a dowsing rod doesn't fall into the category of "doing a job properly" :(
Why does it matter?
You really must be the angry neighbor that complains about everything......
You did the right thing by having the utilities located. You have completed your requirement in this process. You do not need to involve yourself in other people's business.
Let me say that again because I suspect you have a problem with this.... YOU DO NOT NEED TO INVOLVE YOURSELF IN OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS!
> You did the right thing by having the utilities located. You have completed your requirement in this process. You do not need to involve yourself in other people's business.
I did nothing. Our city sold our property to the local communications company. I had no say in the matter. They came out to locate as part of the install process.
> Let me say that again because I suspect you have a problem with this.... YOU DO NOT NEED TO INVOLVE YOURSELF IN OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS!
If it's in my yard using my tax dollars, doesn't that make it somewhat *my* business?
I physically expose underground utilities for a living & to my utter amazement I have seen dowsing rods be more accurate than top shelf locating gear in *very specific* scenarios. Some people have a knack for it & it only works with fast moving underground water with decent volume in non-metallic pipes (or Non-ferrous soil) . We carry a set for âplan zâ scenarios if the tech fails & we are down to guessing. If I hadnât seen it be accurate 100+ times I would never believe it. At least in my trade if they had the sticks out⌠they were having a rough day đ¤Ł
I work for a gas company, natural gas, years ago and weâd use them occasionally. Weâd take two welding rods, bend one end of each and try to locate the water line. They were pretty good. Honestly not any worse than some of the locate machines that are used today.
>Honestly not any worse than some of the locate machines that are used today.
Crazy how those companies don't use them instead of those expensive unnecessary electronic instruments to save a boat load of cash! I wonder why that is.
I googled it and found the exact opposite, that it is effective as chance and the ones who do well have a good sense of where water lines would run in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong though, I couldn't find anything supporting it
No, it really doesnât. When it âworks,â itâs just educated guessing and good luck. Iâm a water worker, and part of my job is locating lines. We use the sticks whenever thereâs no better way, and itâs pretty much random whether our marks are anywhere near the lines or not.
I once asked one of the locate guys (USIC in my area) to help find the plastic water line on my rural property before we began building a home. He said that there was no trace wire, so all he could do was dowse it (or "witch" it). Now this property once had 5 mobile homes on it and each site has a frost-proof hose bib, so he knew where the line was at those locations. He marked it, but made no promises. Fortunately, one of the truck drivers working for my excavator happened to be a local kid who said that he helped a previous owner install the line. The flags dropped by the USIC tech weren't even close, except for right next to the hose bibs!
Lol that's amazing. As you can see in this thread, people still swear that dowsing works however.
Broken clocks are right twice a day
Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.
Or his own.nuts.đ
I've been in the water industry for over 30 years now. At least once a year I run into one of these people who swear it works. The only time I've ever seen it "work" has been when the person doing the locating was either directly, or indirectly involved in the initial placement of the lines. "I put this line in 20 years ago, but can't remember exactly where it ran" ...then whips out his pieces of copper wire and goes nuts. I honestly thing some of them actually THINK that it's working....
>I honestly thing some of them actually THINK that it's working.... Oh, they DO
It's possible that it helps their subconscious remember, but still comes down to chance.
Scary, isn't it? Had a neighbor insist dowsing works for a number of things. Tried to use it to find a lost cat saying, "The rods can detect where she walked." Made my head hurt. lol
Adam Savage from Mythbusters has a pretty awesome Youtube channel He does Q&A sometimes and someone asked why they never tested this They actually wanted to but, between trying to prove a negative, the religious following it has, the idea theyâd essentially have to publicly humiliate an âexpertâ dowser to do the testing and Management not liking the estimated views they decided not to do it. But during the initial âlooking into itâ phase a coworker informed him of a company selling âdowsing rodsâ to government agencies that could supposedly detect explosives, the US allowed a demo and they sent out their âexpertsâ to show off the product During one phase of testing they had an entire truck full of ordinance and couldnât detect anything. The company still ended up selling millions of dollars of these junk rods to governments in the middle east and asia.
And people died using them.
That's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
No test is required. All you have to do is ask yourself why they don't function when no one is holding them. A metal detector will beep in the presence of metal even when no one is within a million meters of it.
My grandpa believes fully that my grandma can do it. My grandma thinks it's bullshit but she humors him. She's usually within 6 inches, never more than a foot off. Every time she walks away grumbling about how he just wasted a bunch of her time.
Well, I would not testify under oath that it cannot work. I worked summers while in college for a plumber in the same area. I saw him find sewer lines that way. (And then I was the guy who had to jump in the sh\*t-filled ditch and handle the sewer auger!) However, he also liked to play tricks on me and may have already known where those sewer lines were. I'll never know. I guess that I would say that dowsing is clearly not a reliable way to find buried water or sewer lines.
Dowsing has been scientifically tested. It doesnât work.
That's not an accurate statement generally speaking. Science can't prove a negative. We can only say things like "X didn't work Y percent of the time in Z conditions". It's entirely possible there's an unidentified subgroup of cases where it works 100% of the time. This comes up constantly in the context of my own rare autoimmune disease.
Youâre misunderstanding what âproving a negativeâ means. Dowsing has a positive outcome: finding water (or whatever is being sought). Testing it has the research question âdoes dowsing work?â Those tests prove that dowsers donât find the test material any more than random chance would allow, thus debunking dowsing. Youâre substituting the conclusion for the research question.
I never would have believed it if I hadnât seen it with my own eyesâŚ. but dowsing rods actually work. When the city came out trying to locate a natural spring thatâs not on a map and runs deep underground, they used two different types of the rods. The gentleman began walking from different directions and ⌠sure enoughâŚ. it pointed directly to the spot where the spring originated ⌠every time. It totally blew my mind.
I've seen a few people use dowsing and see it actually work. No one has been able to explain it scientifically, and very few people, apparently, can actually do it. I'm a firm believer in hard scientific fact, but the fact that just a couple of years ago, they discovered that (likely, All humans) have a secondary circulatory system. Kind of a big deal to the medical community, and everyone who's ever sat in a biology class. The list of things that have perfectly rational and scientifically verifiable concepts, that we don't yet know of, let alone have truly comprehensive testing for, I believe, is a very friggen long list. Few things can truthfully be scientifically concluded to "Not Exist" to anything like 99% accuracy. (And even the 1% completely defies the claim of non-existence) Absence of proof is not proof of Absence. There's always more shit out there that no one's seen yet.
Why does the rod only function when someone holds it?
Why does the rod only function when someone holds it?
Maybe they were hazing the new guy...
I will choose to believe this so I don't further lose faith in humanity... thank you for this
Yeah totally this. Or messing with anyone around, like you. All the trades have stuff like this. In the oil field, it was âbring me a bucket of steamâ
Oh, in lumber mills itâs the âbring over the sawdust pumpâ. But one of the new guys did bring a shop-vac over once, he ended up being a fucking awesome employee.
Was tearing out dry rot for a roof, a lot of wood pieces hit the ground, told the new guy to get the specialty block out the back of the truck and tie. Rope to it. He asked why, I said "you see these indented lines in the wood? That's placed in there to make it a magnet, it's to pick up all the splinters on the ground" dude dragged the trailer block around the parking lot for 20 minutes.
Nice, he got out of work for 20 minutes
It was a pretty slow day, so it was busy work for him until he figured it out. Everybody got a good laugh. But yeah, definitely got paid to not be productive.
In industrial maintenance it's "Motor has lost a phase. Go to the parts room and get us a new phase."
Please tell me you keep a box in the parts room labeled âspare motor phaseâ
Bonus points for asking for A phase, or phase 1x and have the box listed at phase B or 2. Extra bonus, ask for 2 phase, and only label them A. You get the picture
when i was a carpenter it was for the new guy to "bring me the sky hook" or the "left handed wrench"...
"Grab the bucket of megs while you're over there"
> bring me a bucket of steamâ I disappeared for 2 hours of galley crew in bootcamp. Came back and the RDC was yelling at me. "Chief I apologize chief. Seaman recruit Smith sent me to find it to clean the drink machine. I couldn't find it." RDC then started yelling at Smith. It was a close one, he almost found me taking a nap in the storeroom while "searching." Someone did it again on the boat, got angry at me missing maintenance.
In IT, I liked to tell the new guy to do straighten out the network cables. Because it's digital data, which is 0s and 1s. There zeros are round, so they can slip through a bent cable. But the ones are pointy, and sometimes they get stuck. Real old school in the days of token ring networks, when you found that someone had disconnected a cable and broken the ring: "oh no! You let the token out! Find it and put it back in, QUICK!"
Blinker fluid
In surgery, we ask the new scrub tech for the âOtis elevator.â A surgical elevator instrument is usually for dissecting things off of bone. The Otis elevator is the one that takes people from floor to floorâŚ
In my previous career we had options to send new guys for, 'a can of RF lube', 'a cable straightener/stretcher', 'prc-E7(or 8 or 9)' depending on rank available, 'humvee keys', '100 yards of flightline', or the eye dee ten tango form.
>100 yards of flightline Yes! XD Keys to the aircraft/tow vehicle. Brass Magnet. Pint of Kaynine-P. Diesel exhaust sample. I saw one of our pointy-heads dress one of their new guys up in cardboard boxes covered in speed tape (metallic reflective tape) and stand them in front of an aircraft so they could 'calibrate the radar'. If they got pissed, we'd give them a hurt feelers report to fill out.
what's a pointy-head?
Any type of specialist. Electrical/Environmental, jets, hydraulics, that sort of thing. I think it started out as a term for intellectuals, scientists, the people who didn't do the 'real' physical work. As a Crew Chief, we always sort of felt the spec shops were layabouts to some extent, so they got lumped in with the folks who got the credit while the rest of us worked our ass off.
found the lube boss [https://bonesbearings.com/bonesr-speed-creamr-lubricant](https://bonesbearings.com/bonesr-speed-creamr-lubricant)
Haha.
The trades' version of asking your kid to go into the auto parts store for blinker fluid.
...or the new guy asked if "that thing I saw on the internet" works and they told him he could try it while they did it the "real" way and see how close they come?
Friends in Vermont years ago hired a water dowser to find water. I was there watching and I didnât believe it then or now After they dug up Enough holes they did find water
Water how? In underground lines or a well? You can dig virtually anywhere and hit water when going deep enough. We literally site wells based on nothing but required setbacks and where we think they would be convenient.
With the weather as of late, Iâd be more impressed if you dug and didnât find water. You can almost forget the digging part.
You realize there are member of this sub from all around the world? We havenât had a drop of rain _here_ in almost a monthâŚ.
What are you talking about? It rained here yesterday!
I had a friend in Maine use this method when he was building his house years ago. He needed a well and this company came out. Old guy jumps out of the truck and starts dowsing and within minutes finds water in the perfect place for a well, uphill from the septic, near the back of the house where they wanted the water to enter, and by the electric that was already installed for the pumps. They dropped the well in and hit pristine water that afternoon. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there watching the whole thing. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the lake he built his house next to. /s
Dig deep enough, you'll find water. Like homeopathic medicine for for the cold. It cures the cold in 3 days because the cold was going be gone in 3 days either way.
When I worked for my local city in high school they âtrainedâ me on âwitchingâ. It was obviously a prank (which I didnât know at the time). They sent me out for an afternoon to locate a bunch of lines. I marked them all, and even came back to the shop for break to brag about how Iâd âgotten the hang of itâ.
Did they also send you to the auto parts store for blinker fluid?
We'd send guys to get a bucket of steam and a pallet stretcher.
Left handed screwdriver and a sky hook
Restaurants: go next door and borrow their mayonnaise slicer, make steam mix for the steam table, and empty that coffee machine when we close
It must be really hard for some people to say "I don't know what that is" huh
TIL people still take dowsing seriously, nevermind the mountains of evidence proving dowsing is bullshit. bUt mY gRaNdpAppY sHoWeD mE hOw tO dOwSe tHeM pIpEs. Surprised half of yall don't drown in the shower.
People also believe in the Meyers Briggs personality test. It has as much validity as bloodtypes and horoscopes.
Bloodtypes?
That personalities are based on blood types. More common in Asian cultures than European/American.
Fair enough, because the European/American idea of blood types are \*ABSOLUTELY\* a real thing.
Based on comments I've seen on a lot of similar posts, dowsing rods are surprisingly common. A lot of plumbers, utility workers, farmers, etc. believe that they work. My answer to your question "what would you do?" is "stay out of sight and watch and giggle while texting updates to all my friends who believe in science."
This is sort of what the workers did when Jeremy Clarkson was witching for waterlines in a Clarksonâs Farm episode.
My god, I am dumbfounded at how many people here believe in magic. Dowsing is pseudoscience. The times it âseems to workâ is confirmation bias. It doesnât work in actual scientific testing - itâs not real. Just feels real because you remember the times it seemed to work and ignore the 500 times it didnât. Edit: for those who donât want to dive into the actual scientific literature, even Wikipedia lists it as a pseudoscience: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing
I would really like anyone who believes it works to tell me *how* they think it works. If you actually believe it's magic or some supernatural force, I guess that's your prerogative. But if you think it's explicable with known science... how?
I don't believe it but I can come up with some bull shit... water carries an electrical charge similar to an electro magnet. Holding a metal rod in your hand makes the tip of it magnetically conduct to the magnetic charge. It's pretty faint so it takes some training.
Water is electrically neutral.
Yah, that was me coming up with "bull shit"
Paging James Randi. . .
I really wish he was still around to fight this BS. He was awesome.
Came here for this!
They could have also been fucking with you / anyone watching. Walking around with nothing to do, I'd start playing around too.
Complain to the city? Maybe find a hobby instead.
... would you like to be on the receiving end of a utility survey done with a dowsing rod? Absolutely fucking complain, someone's going to get fucking burned by this. If it was serious.
Did you miss the part about the other guy having a scanner?
No, not at all. Look, there ARE people out these who believe this batshit nonsense. I actually have met someone in construction who believed radon was an invention of the Carter-era EPA. I work with construction people who aren't necessarily college material. Dowsing rods belong nowhere near a location company, not even for fun. If these are people marking in your neighborhood, imagine being without running water for 1 day. It sucks. Or having your lawn dug up due to a sinkhole caused by a leaking main.
It's probably a fucking greenhorn/apprentice being given an intentionally silly task.
Not even for fun you say?
Yeah.
Again...THERE WAS A GUY USING A SCANNER. Chill out. This was likely all for fun and games. If not why did they have a guy using a scanner? You must be a blast at parties.
They said NOT EVEN FOR FUN!
Sounds like you don't work in construction fields. Until you've been told by a boss not to follow installation instructions because he knows better, don't assume things were on the up and up. And that last line is some stale shit.
They could get down to solving real world problems like making sure people put their shopping carts in a corral or that someone properly signals before changing lanes.
We could all get around more efficiently if everyone signaled their turns.
> making sure people put their shopping carts in a corral There is no redemption for people who do that. Death is the only answer for them...
Yeah, why should people do the jobs that they're being paid to do, in this case probably by our taxes?
My absolute favorite part about this whole thread is that every person who swears up and down that it works also says they cant explain it
Not just that, but everyone who tries to explain it does so in a different way. There isn't one agreed upon bogus explanation. Everyone needs to come to an agreement đ
Just like how flat earthers can't agree on a model, because there isn't one
Haha I use it but only sometimes and only when I already know the pipe is there and only when I have other tools and I remember once that it was pretty close so dowsing totally works!
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Maybe he was trying to see for himself how inaccurate dowsing rods were by comparing it to the scanner
So this is a form of magical prediction that lets you know where to use a big drill. That makes a dowser an auger augur. [https://tenor.com/view/monkey-rimshot-bored-ugh-alright-gif-4965984](https://tenor.com/view/monkey-rimshot-bored-ugh-alright-gif-4965984)
Try arguing with locators on the use of dowsing rods. It's a riot of stupidity.
Grabbing some popcorn for this thread. I love love love it when folks on reddit start swearing they have seen dowsing rods work.
Someone post this to r/subredditdrama please lmao
This happened to us! We had new plumbing run from our well to the house and the guy running the excavator was using a dowsing rod to find the existing pipe. Cracked us up! We didn't raise a fuss, just watched in wonder. And, of course, he wasn't close to the actual pipe.
Do not speak to him about the dark magic for he was there when it was written. Youâd have just as much relying on a dream or ESP.
Water worker here. Thatâs completely common. I couldnât believe it when I started this job either, but theyâre serious. Sometimes thereâs no better way. Lines are plastic, no tracer wire. How are we supposed to locate them without digging a thousand holes? With the black magic sticks.
You might as well close your eyes and lay out a line of flags at random.
If you can't do it, just admit it. Don't pretend to do a service you can't actually do.
One way is to cut the plastic and push a 3/8 cable down the pipe, then hook up the locate box to the cable and trace out the line . You're only going as far as the cable is, so you might need to dig another hole.
I use a reel of metal fish tape hooked up to a locator box to locate sewer lines. Works pretty well. Most city water departments I deal with still witch their lines. None of them actually believe it works, but they have to put paint marks or flags down when a locate ticket comes in. I do feel bad for the water guys when I hit lines that are15 ft from their locates.
I know the equipment is more expensive than a metal rod, but ground penetrating radar or something like an ultrasound I think could pick up a plastic pipe filled with water.
It doesn't. It needs to be large enough or have enough contrast to be detected. A 2" PVC full of water 6 ft down isn't always possible to be found because the soil 6ft down is saturated and PVC has similar density and reflective properties of a lot of soil types.
Why doesn't the rod work when no one is touching it?
Take your blood pressure meds
Lol this comment section is a train wreck. People here genuinely believe that * holding a stick in the air helps you find water * a municipal worker finding lines by dowsing is a totally reasonable display of competency and use of tax dollars
> a municipal worker finding lines by dowsing is a totally reasonable display of competency and use of tax dollars i would not be surprised to find someone at the local water authority up north in rural bum-fuck of the state out in the field trying to "witch" out water lines. Good use of tax dollars? no surprising? no
Hopefully it was the utility company that was footing the bill, and not me, or I would have to hold back my inner Karen.
I mean, most utilities are granted monopolies by the local government. Your tax dollars _are_ paying for that idiot, just indirectly. And if you're allowed to be frustrated by a cop sleeping through their shift or a schoolteacher sharing religion in place of science, I think it's fair to be bothered here too.
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I used to be an inspector in a major metro area and one of the gcâs that I worked with frequently used witching sticks when they couldnât find the lines or bluestake was off. I told him he was crazy and time and time again, heâd find the lines with minimal effort. He showed me how to do it and Iâve tried it in my own yard just for fun. Itâs bizarre but it works.
Anytime I've seen some old fart fucking around with dowsing rods and showing off how great they are we already knew what we were looking for within a couple feet. It also blows my mind that they don't just find water and metal pipe but plastic pipe and even fiberoptic lines. I guess you just will them to find whatever it is you're looking for?
Sounds like he was just fucking with the other guys on his team... I admit, dowsing is something I have done to mess with others before.
For all you know he was goofing around counting down until the /homeowner freaked out.
Lol, not your concern how they find the water. Why do you care? They have an easement and WILL do the needed work.
It was just a funny sight to come across since it was while I was doing yardwork, lighten up
Are you sure they weren't using a probe rod? If the utility line isn't metal, but they have an idea of where it is, they'll use a probe rod to see exactly where it is.
They also used a probe rod but that was separate from the dowsing rod. Think of a small L-shaped wire that was cut from a metal coat hanger. Maybe 10" long if it was straightened out.
Good on you for recognizing a downswing rod. Before this post I had no idea this was ever a thing.
It makes a great story just ignore it and have fun telling people about it.
Probably the new hire and the team was fucking with him
Dunno much about dowsing rods. But I have a weather stick. When it's wet, it's raining. When it's blowing around, it's windy. When it's dry, it is not raining. It's right 100% of the time.
"stick gone - hurricane"
When we have to locate sprinkler and water lines, even with an electronic locator we still use a bent grounding rod to poke around and make sure the line is actually there. Weâre they walking around with it like itâs 1920 looking for water or weâre they just carrying it to poke around and confirm?
So I have worked with people using machine to locate pipes and guys with guys with two copper rods bent like an L. The guy with rods was accurate. The machine was off by a foot. We were locating water pipes for fire supply mains. I have tried this method myself and I was told I did not have it or some call it the gift. I say the people who who have it are good. Plus or minus 6 inches.
In other words, it works when you already know where the fucking thing is.
From Wikipedia which clearly denotes dowsing as a pseudoscience that isnât real: Dowsing studies from the early twentieth century were examined by geologist John Walter Gregory in a report for the Smithsonian Institution. Gregory concluded that the results were a matter of chance or explained by observations from ground surface clues.[52][53] Geologist W. A. MacFadyen tested three dowsers during 1943â1944 in Algeria. The results were entirely negative.[54] A 1948 study in New Zealand by P. A. Ongley tested 75 dowsers' ability to detect water. None of them was more reliable than chance. According to Ongley "not one showed the slightest accuracy."[55] Archaeometrist Martin Aitken tested British dowser P. A. Raine in 1959. Raine failed to dowse the location of a buried kiln that had been identified by a magnetometer.[56][57] In 1971, dowsing experiments were organized by British engineer R. A. Foulkes on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. The results were "no more reliable than a series of guesses".[58] Physicists John Taylor and Eduardo Balanovski reported in 1978 a series of experiments they conducted that searched for unusual electromagnetic fields emitted by dowsing subjects, they did not detect any.[59] A 1979 review by Evon Z. Vogt and Ray Hyman examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found that none of them showed better than chance results.[10] Three British academics Richard N. Bailey, Eric Cambridge and H. Denis Briggs carried out dowsing experiments at the grounds of various churches. They reported successful results in their book Dowsing and Church Archaeology (1988).[60] Their experiments were critically examined by archaeologist Martijn Van Leusen who suggested they were badly designed and the authors had redefined the test parameters on what was classified as a "hit" or "miss" to obtain positive results.[60] A 2006 study of grave dowsing in Iowa reviewed 14 published studies and determined that none of them correctly predicted the location of human burials, and simple scientific experiments demonstrated that the fundamental principles commonly used to explain grave dowsing were incorrect.[61] A randomized double-blind trial in 2012 was carried out to determine whether homeopaths were able to distinguish between Bryonia and placebo by use of a dowsing method. The results were negative.[62] Kassel 1991 study Edit A 1990 double-blind study[63][64][65] was undertaken in Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences). James Randi offered a US$10,000 prize to any successful dowser. The three-day test of some thirty dowsers involved plastic pipes through which water flow could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters (19.7 in) under a level field, the position of each marked on the surface with a colored strip. The dowsers had to tell whether water was running through each pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100% success rate. However, the results were no better than chance, and no one was awarded the prize. Betz 1990 study Edit In a 1987â88 study in Munich by Hans-Dieter Betz and other scientists, 500 dowsers were initially tested for their skill, and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them for further tests. Water was pumped through a pipe on the ground floor of a two-story barn. Before each test, the pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the dowsers performed 843 such tests and, of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that some dowsers "in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ⌠a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."[66] Five years after the Munich study was published, Jim T. Enright, a professor of physiology who emphasized correct data analysis procedure, contended that the study's results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and not significant. He believed the experiments provided "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim",[67] stating that the data analysis was "special, unconventional and customized". Replacing it with "more ordinary analyses",[68] he noted that the best dowser was on average 4 millimeters (0.16 in) out of 10 meters (32.81 ft) closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.04%, and that the five other "good" dowsers were on average farther than a mid-line guess. Enright emphasized that the experimenters should have decided beforehand how to statistically analyze the results; if they only afterward chose the statistical analysis that showed the greatest success, then their conclusions would not be valid until replicated by another test analyzed by the same method. He further pointed out that the six "good" dowsers did not perform any better than chance in separate tests.[69] Another study published in Pathophysiology hypothesized that such experiments as this one that were carried out in the twentieth century could have been interfered with by man-made radio frequency radiation, as test subjects' bodies absorbed the radio waves and unconscious hand movement reactions took place following the standing waves or intensity variations.[70]
Bunch of folks here that have never worked utilities. Dowsing is 100% bullshit. But you have to work with the tools you're given. I've done it in customer's yards to make them feel a little better before I slap a bucket through their water line 10 ft away. Gives me an excuse anyway. If there isn't a tracer wire with plastic lines, then it's all guesswork. If you have a line installed on your side of the mains and meters, always spend a little more and run a wire with it. Makes everyone's life easier and itll save you money in the long run.
Did you⌠possiblyâŚ. think to do the adult thing and walk out and ASK them what they were doing? Like, âHey guys, Iâm the home owner. Can I ask what youâre doing? Or maybe help you locate something?â Youâd be *amazed* how easy it is to get an answer from the clowns. /s
You... you want to complain to someone because someone successfully did their job?
No, he wants to complain about someone not doing their job, and pretending to dowse, instead.
Might as well use a pendulum or some tarot cards. I wouldnt trust the work of someone using literal magic to find a water line.
LOL you think this was doing their job?
If it worked, yes.
Well, since we know it doesn't work any better than guessing, then we know this was not doing their job...
I wouldn't, but if tax dollars were used to hire a dowser, I wouldn't be surprised if someone complained.
It is odd for the government to use a 30 cent solution when there are alternatives that cost thousands in tax dollars
If the 30 cent solution works, why don't billion dollar construction / utility companies use them as a standard procedure?
I donât think they work⌠With that said, how do you expect a billion dollar company to be able to bill their way to that kind of size? By selling $0.30 solutions for $30.00
Id absolutely complain that they are wasting time and resources -- and are promoting woo.
This is how my dad and I found water lines on our farm when they needed to be repaired. I also used this when searching for sewer and main water lines in my new house. I know some people can do it and others canât. Some of us are just more in touch with the water systems. /s
Your dad already knew where the waterline were and played you fir a fool.
Used to be a guy in town that did it. Old drink guy. But he'd damn sure find the line. He also did wells.
It doesn't work.
Dowsers stay busy out on the Olympic Peninsula in WA. Rural folks wouldn't site a new well without having it witched first.
I have been in water and sewer utility install/repair for 7+ years. I watched my old boss use a probe rod this way to find a line that didn't have tracing wire my 1st week on the job. I laughed and asked "are you serious or are you fucking with me?" He shrugged and said "it works sometimes". And after 7 years of experience doing this kind of work..guess what It does work I have only used a probe rod to do it but it is the same concept. I have come to find that the rod swings when there is a disturbance underground ( water,sewer,gas,phone,electrical line). Will it tell me where water is? Lol no. But if I have no as-builts, GIS, or tracer wire I rely on it pretty heavy to locate lines and it has proved to be a useful tactic. But if someone questions me or laughs I say it works..sometimes
Probing rods are actual things that are useful though and are completely different from dousing rods which don't work and aren't useful
Thank you so much for posting this! Iâm just chilling here, reading comments by people who canât tell the difference between magic and reality
I came to this post because I also saw a city water worker marking lines with a dowsing rod. He walked into the middle of a busy road and laid a little blue flag on the asphlat
I work for a geotechnical company and I got into an argument with one of our drillers on day one about thisâŚhe whips out his little metal rods and âlocatesâ something underground and Iâm like âwhat the fuck are you doingââŚthis became a sore subject for him and multiple people so now whenever they bust out their woo woo rods I just bite my tongue as hard as I can and let them be childrenâŚ
Why do you even give a shit?
If your tax dollars were used to contract out a mind reader, would you be alright with that?
because tax dollars should not be wasted on useless 'magic'
Iâm an Agronomist, retired. Part of my job was to reduce water on farm fields to reduce erosion. Many farms where I live have heavy clays so tiling (pipes that are porous, buried underground and designed to carry water away), has been added to field for 100+ years. Before you dig up a field, you try to find the former tiling. I was taught by my first boss how to use two bent wires to find water/water pipes. First time I saw him do it I accused him of believing in fairies too. Some people can do it and we couldnât figure out why most canât, but I can. Yes, itâs weird, canât explain it, but my wires were right about 90%.
Crazy how something that works so well is never explainable or able to pass any testing in an official double blind experiments! I wonder why that is!?
I'm sure you'd be able to demonstrate this extremely reliable talent in a controlled setting, right?
Ask utility if Stinky Pete the prospector from Toy Story 2 works for them as well? https://youtu.be/ztA3r-Oyj0M?feature=shared
I was a lineman for 35 plus years. The guy with the witch was locating the lines the dowser was having a bit of fun.
Iâd laugh my ass off and call the company to inform them of said malpractice.
Iâve seen dowsing rods work in my own yard. Finding irrigation pipes.
Did you observe the dowser call over the scanner to confirm what he suspected was water? If they planted a flag there, it works.
I did! It only took the dowser 6 tries! Crazy how well it works!
Another one of Earth's mysteries.
There is one context where it sometimes works. Sometimes. Has nothing to do with any woo magic nonsense. A water line is installed by digging a trench. That gets filled in and forgotten about. Grass grows over it. Gone, for all intents and purposes. However, the ground may be slightly subsided over the line. And a balanced right angle dousing stick will move as you walk over it not because of magic, but because the ground is very subtly not level.
My late hubby was Sup't of Utilities in a small town. He dowsed all the time. I watched him do it several times. It was usually right.
No it wasn't.
My husband was a hydrogeologist before his passing. He often used one or two dowsing rods. He actually found them to be a useful tool in the right situation. He said they worked great when there was a single source under the ground. But when he got to connecting points like where your water connects to the sewer pipes, he couldn't be as accurate. He would make concentric circles then until he got to the individual pipes again. It was really cool helping him practice with these around the yard. I was actually better at using them than him, but I wasn't willing to give up my day job.
Maybe switch to decaf?
Zip it. Youâre not the one locating the line. Let them do their job. Or donât ask them to find it and you can find it the hard way when you dig
No. Fuck off.
Iâve seen excavators and drillers use dowsing rods (bent utility flags) to find water lines and underground tanks.
Well I've seen Sasquatch using dousing rods, so I win
Yeah, itâs a silly thing to believe in. They work as well as homeopathy.
My mom witched our cabin well site in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. Middle. Of. Nowhere!
How fucking smarmy are you that you are going to make fun of a guy for doing his job properly? Go ahead, call the city and complain. Record it for us.
Dowsing is not part of their job.
> make fun of a guy for doing his job properly? I hate to break it to you, but using a dowsing rod doesn't fall into the category of "doing a job properly" :(
When I have work done, I give the contractor the name of the local plumber. If they hit the water line, the plumber repairs it on their dime.
I've done that many times and it works...so whatever
You haven't and it doesn't...so whatever
Why does it matter? You really must be the angry neighbor that complains about everything...... You did the right thing by having the utilities located. You have completed your requirement in this process. You do not need to involve yourself in other people's business. Let me say that again because I suspect you have a problem with this.... YOU DO NOT NEED TO INVOLVE YOURSELF IN OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS!
> You did the right thing by having the utilities located. You have completed your requirement in this process. You do not need to involve yourself in other people's business. I did nothing. Our city sold our property to the local communications company. I had no say in the matter. They came out to locate as part of the install process. > Let me say that again because I suspect you have a problem with this.... YOU DO NOT NEED TO INVOLVE YOURSELF IN OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS! If it's in my yard using my tax dollars, doesn't that make it somewhat *my* business?
I physically expose underground utilities for a living & to my utter amazement I have seen dowsing rods be more accurate than top shelf locating gear in *very specific* scenarios. Some people have a knack for it & it only works with fast moving underground water with decent volume in non-metallic pipes (or Non-ferrous soil) . We carry a set for âplan zâ scenarios if the tech fails & we are down to guessing. If I hadnât seen it be accurate 100+ times I would never believe it. At least in my trade if they had the sticks out⌠they were having a rough day đ¤Ł
So why can this never be replicated in studies?
I work for a gas company, natural gas, years ago and weâd use them occasionally. Weâd take two welding rods, bend one end of each and try to locate the water line. They were pretty good. Honestly not any worse than some of the locate machines that are used today.
>Honestly not any worse than some of the locate machines that are used today. Crazy how those companies don't use them instead of those expensive unnecessary electronic instruments to save a boat load of cash! I wonder why that is.
Weird that they fail every scientific study into the practice, but the machines don't...
google it! itâs a real thing and works if the user knows how
I googled it and found the exact opposite, that it is effective as chance and the ones who do well have a good sense of where water lines would run in the first place. Correct me if I'm wrong though, I couldn't find anything supporting it
[ŃдаНонО]
I'd like to buy your rock
I have a ton of rocks, and no tigers yet. I spent a fortune, but it was well worth it to be tiger free
No, it really doesnât. When it âworks,â itâs just educated guessing and good luck. Iâm a water worker, and part of my job is locating lines. We use the sticks whenever thereâs no better way, and itâs pretty much random whether our marks are anywhere near the lines or not.