My wifeÛªs grandfather became fascinated with dowsing towards the end of his life. I had the good fortune of spending a fair amount of time with him on his farm during those years. He once had me pick an object around the barnyard and focus on it for 2 minutes. He went into the shop during this time, and eventually returned with a few pencils. My back was to the shop, and he carefully dowsed a semi circle around where I was standing and put a pencil in the ground where he got signal. Then he backed up 30 or so feet and repeated. One more repetition, and he had a clear line of pencils running from me, projecting straight to the martin house in which I focused on earlier. My mind put a line on the ground, and he picked up signal from it.
I've done it a bunch, but the way I proved it to myself was to dowse a pipeline, mark it with pin flags, then come back and use a pipeline locator, hooked to the lead, to check the flags.
Drilled most of them. It can be problematic when there are multiple lines/utilities in a ditch. I use it sparingly because of liability. All of the municipalities that locate water lines around here, have some form of dowsing rods. They are even sold commercially on ball bearings with a magnet on the end at a 90å¡ angle. I don't know of a single water line that is laid in with a tracer wire and all of the new ones are PVC. They find them all with their gear or brasing rods.
Andy J, post: 422884, member: 44 wrote: Let me clarify. I find it fascinating that people believe this is a real thing.
I'd love to try it in scientific way, though.
I have seen it done when I was working in Engineering. One of our clients was a local MUA who employed an old timer that swore by it and went as far as to make his rods out of telescoping old school radio antennas and a pair of wooden jump rope handles. In areas where I knew the location of the old asbestos concrete water mains his locations were pretty tight. Who knows, maybe he had some sort of strange ability.
I found it astounding about 10 years ago when I was considering buying property in West Virginia. The average depth of a well in the locality I was considering was 400'. When I spoke with local residents to see how they went about finding a suitable water supply most referred me to a local "water witch" who used willow branches as his rods and they swore by him. I'm sorry but when I'm paying somebody to drill 400' in rock for my well I want a more scientific method than a tree branch to confirm that I'm not wasting money.
I would never, even for a second, consider using this method to plat any pipe, cable or other utility unless the locations were confirmed with test holes prior to the plans being issued. The liability is just way to high to rely on coat hanger technology.
Andy Bruner, post: 422888, member: 1123 wrote: I can't explain it but I've seen it work too many times not to believe it "can" work.
I believe that a person with some knowledge of how things like ground water and/or water pipes work can often locate such things by observing the ground. If it makes them feel better about it to hold a pair of bent coat hangers while doing so who am I to stop them.
Though I am firmly in the skeptical camp in most instances, I wouldn't completely discount dowsing based solely on scientific principles. Holding two metallic rods parallel with minimal resistance, a specific distance apart, will in all likelihood react to a minor change in the magnetic field around some buried object having some kind of magnetic field of it's own. Water, being an excellent conductor of electricity, will have a different resistance than the surrounding materials and would probably create a flux in the surrounding magnetic field to which in theory, could be detected. How that would work with a green stick off a willow is beyond me, but if someone was very sensitive to the subtle changes ... with enough experience, why not?
I was shown how to do it once by someone who was determining where to drill a water well. He first had me test it by walking over a 5 gallon bucket of water. We were using bent welding rods, which this guy favored over other materials. The rods crossed for me over the bucket, but I wasn't convinced that I had just subconsciously tipped my hands just enough to cause the rods to move. I repeated the process a few times with that suspicion in mind and honestly couldn't tell one way or the other, but the rods crossed every time. He then had me walk around the property to see if I could identify a good well location. The rods moved a little toward each other at several locations, but crossed very definitively at one, and doubled back to my opposite elbows as I passed the location. Kept walking around and got the same reaction several times at the same location.
He then took the rods and identified the same location I had. They got a good well out of it. There is at least one utility locator in this area that dowses, also using welding rods. His locations appeared to be pretty accurate.
I believe it works consistently for those who practice it and have a good bit of experience with dowsing. It appeared to work for me on that one occasion, but I wouldn't trust results of my using it without verifying by some other method. One of my early party chiefs used a dip needle to find buried iron monuments. I could find monuments with that, sometimes. He had a lot more experience with it and could find monuments that I was unable to find with it. I never doubted that it worked as a method to find monuments just because it wasn't as reliable for me as an electronic metal detector would have been. I simply had a lot less training and experience using it than my chief. And it was very reliable when used by him.
Dowsing works on pretty much the same science as a dip needle, although perhaps more reliant on the user's personal magnetic field. Most users of dowsing may not be able to explain the science behind the method, but that doesn't make it "magic" or make-believe. Most people, for thousands of years have also known how to start, feed, and use a fire for warmth and cooking, yet relatively few can explain or understand the science behind fire. Yet, none of us question that fire exists and is useful for many purposes.
Williwaw, post: 422949, member: 7066 wrote: Water, being an excellent conductor of electricity,
Water is a terrible conductor of electricity. Pure water is actually a good insulator. However, water is a great ionic solvent: liquid in which ionic compounds can dissolve easily. It's those dissolved ions that can conduct well - and when water contains many dissolved ions, those ions make a good conductor.
RADAR, post: 422974, member: 413 wrote: What makes water a good conductor of electricity?
I learn something new every day!
Positive ions man! I gave an example on the last post of finding iron pipe when we forgot the locator. Another time I pulled up in my brothers asphalt driveway and he was punching holes in the asphalt looking for the top of his septic tank (last owner told him it was there) I asked him if he had witched it? He looked at me like I was crazy. I went in his garage and got two pieces of bailing wire and started witching. They crossed in a couple of places but in one particular place they moved quickly. He dug there and found the top of the tank. One of the first time he started thinking of me as his equal and not his little brother :). Jp
it appears the usgs is skeptical...... https://water.usgs.gov/edu/dowsing.html
strip the flagging from pin flags, bend one end into an "L" w/ about 4" to hold in your hand
I use it to locate water lines. it has worked on other things, but mainly used for water lines.
I too use bent clothes hangers....have impressed a lot of non-believers....used them to find a deep huge water line along Hwy. 580 and 19 in Clearwater....if you take two bent clothes hangers and walk up to the toilet, watch them bad boys cross .....it's magic baby...
I've found a watermain using it. The rods spread apart when I crossed the main. They would cross at a valve.
paden cash, post: 422881, member: 20 wrote: I wonder why no clairvoyant has never been able to "foresee" the winning numbers in a Mega-Million...or even a $500 "pick 3
[MEDIA=youtube]r3UANEflcX0[/MEDIA]
The most logical explanation I have seen is that the rods are just "balance indicators". When you walk you don't normally fall over (not before opening time anyway). This is because you automatically sense changes and adjust your balance by infinitesimal amounts - if you try and think about making the adjustment you fall over, hence why you can walk along a white line but panic if you have to walk along a beam suspended above the ground.
Rods held loosely in your hands will swing as a result of those balance adjustments. The logic is that buried objects change the gravity or magnetic fields and hence you adjust accordingly. I can often get it to work, but the most convincing demonstration was when somebody suggested it method ought to find the floor beams - it didn't and we scratched our heads over the pattern plotted until we realised that I had traced out the exact location of all the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling. Presumably they generated enough magnetic field to affect the balance - they had diffusers on so it wasn't a case of shadows.
I always carry a pair of brass rods, bent not quite to an L shape, internal angle of around 100 degrees as I find that most comfortable. When it doesn't work you aren't any worse off; when it does work then you've saved a lot of time looking for the buried cover. I don't claim to know what is buried until I find a surface object.
I use brass rods, 24" long, with about 6" bent into an ell, and can usually get underground water pretty well. I never trusted myself, thinking it was a "trick" until on a highway project one time, the water dept called out an old Mexican to dowse a place they needed to dig. He told them there was a line underneath the spot they need to dig, and that it was deep. They dug as deep as their excavator would go, and found no line. The supervisor called in a bigger excavator, took 2 swipes, and found the pipe. it had been run many years ago. After talking to the Mexican, who gave advice to "just let the rods do what they wanted to" I started trusting the rods more. I can follow pipelines, or find pools where a pipe has a leak.
well, I have to say I'm pretty surprised at the results. Again, I wish I had limited it to one response, but there are only a few that answered in multiple places.
I've seen it work consistently for well drilling atop the mountains near Boone, NC. The trick for wells is to remember that water runs in veins which tend to be where the path of least resistance (soft rock) is.
Also, after a few hundred feet of drilling, the head of the drill can be nearly 50' from a line normal to the point of entry. Have the dowser stake out as many points as possible and then drill in the center of them to increase your odds of the drill finding the soft rock and eventually the water.
I can't believe what I'm reading here
