Water witching RE: how-to-find-drain-pipe

[ZRX61]

And you accept that as proof?

Doc.

I needed to find the water line.
I dowsed
I found it
Case closed.

 

[DocsMachine]

I needed to find my 7/16" wrench. All three were missing. I found it.

You knew were yours was, I knew where mine was. You simply used a hokum method to find yours, and when you stumbled across the thing you knew was already there, you declared the hokum method legitimate.

Doc.

 

[DocsMachine]

And I always love how this sort of discussion always ends with the dowser stating something very much like that- I did it, you weren't there, case closed!

As if that was hard fact.

If that was hard fact, I'm a multi-billionaire, I own six Chirons and a used Veyron, I've slept with Keira Knightly, I'm good friends with Elon Musk and Albert Einstein (who's still alive thanks to the time machine he invented in 1938) and I've won three Golden Globes and an Emmy.

Nope, sorry. I've heard stories like that from hundreds of people. "Oh sure, it's easy, my Uncle Albert found the water line with a coathanger!" "Oh yeah, my grandmother could do it, found the best spot to dig the new well!" Ad nauseum.

Except there hasn't been a single legit paper writing up the phenomenon, no research team has ever used a grant to study it, no school teaches how to do it, no legitimate demonstration has ever been recorded, and no person tested under proper conditions has ever been able to do it.

Not one. Ever.

THAT is the 'case closed' fact.

Again, yes, I'm sure you found your water line. And David Copperfield made that tank "disappear". Penn & Teller can make a russet potato appear from nowhere at the end of the "cups and balls" bit. I, once, on stage even, cut a three-foot length of clothesline in half, tied it back together, wadded it up, and when I stretched it out again, the knot was gone, and the rope was in one piece.

The difference is simply that everyone knows the latter were tricks. You, on the other hand, believe your trick was real.

Doc.

 

[CraigStu]

Whatever.

 

[Bighead38]

Wish he lived near me, I would love to bring him to work and show him. Curious what the explanation would be when it works. Once again I don’t use it to locate water I use it for finding pipes at work. It doesn’t work every time but easily in the 80-90% range.

 

[DocsMachine]

Don't show ME, I've seen plenty of magic tricks in my time- and I could easily prove to you that it doesn't work. What you and so many others don't seem to grasp is that it only 'works' when you already know where the object IS. IE, it's a parlor trick.

Show it to a scientific institution of some sort. Prove it to MIT, or Max Planck, or Stanford, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth or Rensselaer. Every single one of them know it's utter bunk. So head on over there and prove them wrong.

Doc.

 

[FredWanaker]

I tried it once at a party and it kept pointing at the same cute gal. We eventually met and got married. She eventually divorced me and left me with a well full of debt. See it works.

 

[speed bump]

Didn't work at 6'6" for a contractor I used. He bragged it up, marked out a whole pipe run and dug the wrong direction for 6 hours. In fairness the utility locator couldn't find it either but he chose a lot less than per hour than the contractor.

 

[LOW1]

I have seen it successfully used by an old codger.

Could well have been a “broken clock is right twice a day“ moment.

Could also have been that the old codger latched on to the top secret underground force field reachable by only The Chosen Few.

If it works why do I care?

If it works with pipe why can’t it also work for water?

I would try it if I needed to find either.

 

[Forgottonia]

It defies explanation. But I have friends I know and trust who swear it works. They've seen it done many times. I'd like to see a demonstration myself sometime.

 

[tncatadjuster]

My neighbor did it for me when my sewer collapsed, worked as stated. I was able to repeat it myself for finding pipes, no idea how it works but it does.

 

[Dagny]

I know where my well is and I know where the pipe enters the house the barn and the shop pipe cost money as well as back hoes so I am reasonably sure the pipe doesn't head for the back forty make three figure 8s then head to the house. What is shocking is how many people believe in it.

 

[ZRX61]

I know where my well is and I know where the pipe enters the house the barn and the shop pipe cost money as well as back hoes so I am reasonably sure the pipe doesn't head for the back forty make three figure 8s then head to the house. What is shocking is how many people believe in it.

It's not a *belief*, you're thinking of religion or superstition. Dowsing works, but it does frighten some people. My late father in law accused me of being a satan worshipper over it.

 

[DocsMachine]

It's not a *belief*, you're thinking of religion or superstition.

-It's not? It supposedly works by some unexplained and unknowable means, can't be tested in the lab, and even the practitioners can't agree on how it works, why it works, what it can find or what tools are used to do it.

That's not a religion or superstition?

From Wikipedia:

• Dowsing studies from the early 20th 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 1943–1944 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.[6]
• 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]

I repeat: Not one successful test. Plenty of successful demonstrations of a parlor trick, yes, as well evidenced here, but just as a magician can't pull a rabbit out of an actually empty hat under proper test conditions, said parlor trick cannot be done successfully in the lab.

Doc.

 

[kelpaso1]

-It's not? It supposedly works by some unexplained and unknowable means, can't be tested in the lab, and even the practitioners can't agree on how it works, why it works, what it can find or what tools are used to do it.

That's not a religion or superstition?

From Wikipedia:

I repeat: Not one successful test. Plenty of successful demonstrations of a parlor trick, yes, as well evidenced here, but just as a magician can't pull a rabbit out of an actually empty hat under proper test conditions, said parlor trick cannot be done successfully in the lab.

Doc.

While I kind of agree with you, but how do you explain the successful finds by dowsing. As I said before, I didn't believe in this till I tried it. And it worked every time. I'm still on the fence weather it is my mind doing it somehow, or some kind of magnetic type of force. But it is interesting.

 

[DocsMachine]

While I kind of agree with you, but how do you explain the successful finds by dowsing.

-I've said several times in this thread, and several of those linked videos explained further.

It's the ideomotor effect. A subtle, subconscious movement that you make, yet aren't aware of doing so. Again, like keeping your balance, or knowing where to put your hand when somebody throws a ball at you. It's precisely the same phenomenon that makes the Ouija board planchette move.

As for "finding", you 'find' it because you already know, subconsciously, where the thing is. As in the earlier examples; you know where the meter is on the house, and you 'know' the cable is basically buried in a straight line- or at least, very predictable path- to the road or utility trunk, etc.

Ditto water lines- such things are buried in predictable paths. If you think about it, you could almost always find the line without the wires.

As for where to dig or drill a well, groundwater exists nearly everywhere. If a dowser "looked" for groundwater pretty much anywhere in Alaska that isn't on the side of a mountain, their stick/pendulum/wires would go nuts the minute he picked them up.

And that's the same case throughout the majority of the states.

You "know", consciously or otherwise, where the thing is, and ideomotor makes the tool move when you get there. It's sort of like the Clever Hans effect.

In that last video I linked, the gentleman with his wagging stick could "find" the stone he knew the location of, 100% of the time. But he could NOT 'find' the identically-enclosed stone, in the same room, under the same conditions, with the same device, if he did NOT know where it was.

That's precisely what happened in virtually every "successful" anecdote posted here. Whether the person consciously knew or not, they did in fact 'know' the location of the object in question.

(If you really want to get pedantic, there's also what's known as Survivor Bias- that is, everyone remembers and talks about the "hits", but forget about the "misses." This is why everybody "believes" horoscopes- the predictions, even vague as they are, may only 'come true' a few percent of the time, but it's those occasions they remember. If the horoscope says "you will find love", and nothing like that happens that day, you forget it. It's an nonevent. It didn't happen. You don't remember things that didn't happen. Then, when the horoscope says "fortune will be yours", and you find a $20 in the pocket of an old jacket, THAT you remember, and tell your friends about it. That's exactly what's going on here- for every 'successful' find posted here, there's been ten thousand or more UNsuccessful ones. The person tried it, got no results, forgot about it. It's a nonevent.)

Doc.

 

[58Yeoman]

"-It's not? It supposedly works by some unexplained and unknowable means, can't be tested in the lab, and even the practitioners can't agree on how it works, why it works, what it can find or what tools are used to do it."

And NO ONE has seen the unseen entity up there, but people still believe in him. Sorry, I don't. But, I've seen witching work. You haven't, so you don't believe it. That's your right.

 

[DocsMachine]

You haven't, so you don't believe it. That's your right.

-Never said I haven't seen it done. I have, several times- and virtually always successfully.

The difference between us is that some believe it was real, while others know it's a parlor trick.

I've seen a guy pull a rabbit out of hat and a pigeon out of a handkerchief. I saw a guy cut a woman in half and then pull her out of the box intact. There's a video where Harry Anderson tore up a guy's $5 bill and then handed it back to him intact.

Were any of those real?

Why is dowsing supposedly real, while the Ouija board, which works on exactly the same principle, considered a parlor trick? Or do you believe Ouija boards can, in fact, communicate with the dead, too?

And again, as I keep asking, but which no one has yet answered: If it's so easy that virtually anyone can do it, why has there never once, in well over a hundred years of attempts, been one single successful demonstration under proper test conditions?

Doc.

 

[Holt]

I worked for a utility and we never had a locator that cost $20,000.

I work for one as well and our locator do not cost anything close to that. Also the quote true locator equipment you can purchase does not have a 100% accuracy rate. I've had to repair a lot of damage from inaccurate locates.

Neither method is 100%. I didn't believe in dousing rods either until I tried it....I don't understand it, but it was super trippy having the dousing rods move on their own and locate the same spot regardless of the direction I came from.

 

[dfiler2]

Of course "science" isn't always right.

5 Times People Thought a Science Idea Was Crackpot, And Were Proven Spectacularly Wrong

Science has the power to change the world, but it's not always an easy path to enlightenment.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[bbbarracuda]

I've tried to do it. It didn't work for me. But, I've seen others do it.
I've also seen others fail at it.
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
Hundreds of years ago, everyone knew the Earth was flat. Now only a few loons think that.

 

[Mallen]

... You people can't be serious.

No, dowsing does not work. The proof of that is that the utility companies use a $20,000 tool for detecting pipes, lines and wires. You think they'd buy one of those if you could pay an apprentice $15 an hour to use a couple bent coathangers?

Yes, I'm quite sure many of you have experienced "successful" trials, and will argue that point endlessly.

But the fact is, James Randi offered a million dollars to anyone who could demonstrate the ability under test conditions. They tested something like a thousand applicants, over the course of some thirty years- tests that that doswers themselves agreed to beforehand, and who, prior to the test, had successfully 'detected' samples of water, pipes or wires.

Not one of them claimed the prize. Many didn't even reach the level of statistical probability- that is, a certain number of 'correct' results that would be expected if a person was just guessing blindly.

And yes, I've heard every single one of the explanations as to why the dowser can do it easily in grandma's backyard, but couldn't when properly tested. And they're all horseshit.

It's very much like the old "car battery on concrete" thing- it's utter ****, but people keep believing it because it's an easy-to-do parlor trick (look up the ideomotor effect) and people want to believe it just as they want to believe in the 'power of crystals', UFOs, ghosts and other hokum.

Doc.

Yup. Been tested under rigorous scientific conditions and it's no different than a Ouaji board. The fact is, the OP likely had a good clue as to where the pipe was already. Probably knew where it came into the house and maybe it ran perpendicular to the street or he had seen a manhole or where the cutoff valve was even if he didn't remember it. Our brains are a bunch of very sophisticated interconnected neural network processor modules. They are good at recognizing patterns and drawing inferences and connections. Sometimes we have that "eureka" moment and realize "oh,yea the pipe must run between the curb valve and where I see it enter the house in the basement." and pat themselves on the back for their clever deductive reasoning. Others just know that it must be there and think nothing of it, because it's "obvious". Still others get out a dowsing rod and go through some mumbo jumbo ritual. But in the end it's really no different that stepping back and thinking about if for a few minutes and having that "eureka" moment. Your brain did the same thing.

But for the record, the best way to find the pipe is a magnetometer like we had when I worked at Caltrans. That thing could not only see a pipe, it could see the difference between undisturbed earth, and where the dirt was dug up and then filled back in 50 or 100 years ago. They are commonly used to figure out where someone buried a body as well. A metal detector would do the trick to, for a metal pipe. Depending on how deep it is, you might see it with an or camera. Another way might be to crawl along the ground with a stethoscope and have someone tap on the pipe with a wrench. (Not your idiot cousin hell bang on it with a hammer and break the pipe )

But if you MUST result to superstition, my GF is a fully trained "Roof Witch". If you pay me $5000 Ill have her come around and fix your leaky roof. Much cheaper than that professional roofer.

 

[Terry D]

Some things just can not be explained. To me its no different about a dog being dropped off hundreds of miles away, but yet still found its way back home. Not saying every dog can do that, but it has happened.

 

[gordo9742000]

I had a friend of a friend come to the house to help locate a water line that I had a rough idea where it was. He found it in a different location. I told him he wasn’t even close. He wanted to dig in the spot to see what he was finding. Since my yard is far from nice I let him. Come to find out he had located a washing machine discharge line that I didn’t know was there. I still don’t believe in it.

 

[PWC Repair]

Well hell!!....Now I suppose you guys are gonna tell me there are NO aliens...?

 

[Holt]

Well hell!!....Now I suppose you guys are gonna tell me there are NO aliens...?

There are definitely aliens

 

[Holt]

I had a friend of a friend come to the house to help locate a water line that I had a rough idea where it was. He found it in a different location. I told him he wasn’t even close. He wanted to dig in the spot to see what he was finding. Since my yard is far from nice I let him. Come to find out he had located a washing machine discharge line that I didn’t know was there. I still don’t believe in it.

Wait.... your washing machine discharges outside?

 

[gordo9742000]

Where does yours discharge?

 

[DocsMachine]

Of course "science" isn't always right.

-Certainly it's not. "Science" is not One Big Book Of Facts, to which no additions or alterations can be made. (Unlike some famous books out there. ) 'Science' is the process of discovery. Some things are discovered to be true, others are discovered to be false.

And, of course, just because some things turned out to be incorrect, does not in any way refute the ones that were not. Dowsing, as has been shown in this thread several times, by several sources, has been directly and deliberately tested thousands of times. Houdini tried it and declared it bunk over a hundred years ago.

Hundreds of years ago, everyone knew the Earth was flat.

-Hundreds? Try thousands. Most Greeks knew the earth was round by 500 BC, and Eratosthenes actually measured the diameter to a surprising degree of accuracy in 240 BC.

That's not to say people weren't idiots back in the day, but on the other hand, we're not bleeding people to remove "bad humors" or burning witches anymore, either.

I don't understand it, but it was super trippy having the dousing rods move on their own and locate the same spot regardless of the direction I came from.

-Bingo. It's a funky effect that the average man-on-the-street can't explain. It seems real, like any well-done parlor trick. That's why it's so pervasive, why so many people believe it- it's easy to do, and looks like it's doing exactly what you think it's doing.

But it's still a parlor trick.

Doc.

 

[FMB4]

Water witching can both work and not work. My psychic told me so.

 

[Jackfre]

I don’t have the touch for dousing water. On our last property there were old lines run all over the place. I wanted to locate whatever was underground prior to digging. I used two 36” pieces of brazing wire bent at 90* about 6” from the end. Holding them straight ahead, walking slowly they would spread pointing parallel to pipes and wires underground. Worked well for me.

 

[chris142]

When my well dried up last year I had several well guys come out and give me a quote. Every one of those clowns walked around my yard with bent wires and every one of them chose a different spot saying it was the best to drill.

If it worked why didnt they all pick the same spot? Some of them walked right over the spot the last guy picked.

 

[bassJAM]

Old thread from the grave!!!

I had a fence put in a few years ago. While I'm working in the house one of the workers calls me and asks for a metal clothes hanger. I'm like "WTF do you need a clothes hanger for" and he says that they need to mark the water line through the yard. I told him that I could just show them but he's like "no, you gotta watch this ****, my partner can find it with his crazy voodoo".

So I give the other guy a clothes hanger, he cut cuts it and bends it to an "L" shape and starts walking back and forth and putting a mark with spray paint every time the hanger turns 90° to him. Darned if he didn't nail it to within inches, all the way from the water main at the road (which was covered under 3" of pine needles) to the exact location it enters my basement 70 yards away. It's possible they found the water main themselves before I came out, but the pine needles looked completely undisturbed and they certainly hadn't been in my basement.

He showed me how to do it, and yeah it worked for me too but by then the line was already marked so I can't say for sure I wasn't subconsciously doing anything. I'm a pretty scientific person, but I'm still not sure what I witnessed that day. The first guy claimed he's worked with that partner for 15 years and never seen him mess up and drill into a water line while installing posts.

 

[PopcornSutton]

I can't comment on dowsing for water, but using diving rods to locate buried lines does indeed work.

 

[dcg9381]

And you accept that as proof?

I accept data from peer-reviewed studies personally.

In the mean time you guys can pay $95/hr + $500 travel expenses to this guy. He's been 100% accurate so far and is a trained psychic.

 

[egdede]

Yup. those diving rods actually can work. As long as the buried line is shallow enough that you hit it when you 'dive' the tip of the rod into the ground. Even in sand, most aren't strong enough to locate rods more that 90" deep. And in clay soil, forget about it : )

 

[WildBill]

The small farm my mom bought had around 15 spots where the previous owner had hired numerious people to dig wells over about 30 years, none of them hit water. She hired a guy who guaranteed he could dig a usable well and gave her a very inexpensive quote to do it, think it was something like $700 for the whole well setup. He spent a whole summer periodically stopping by and digging more holes but never hitting water. Out of desperation the well guy brought in a guy who said he could find it with a coat hanger. The dowser spent an afternoon walking in bigger and bigger circles outward from her house, he finally found a spot about 350ft away across a road and in the middle of a cow field, horrible location for a well. He said it was the dryest property he had ever worked on. Well guy dug there and hit water, forgot the numbers but it's a great well. That made around 20 spots experts had tried before the dowser found it. The well guy had even brought in an geologist to help and he failed. I was talking to the well guy and he figured he lost about $5k digging holes on my mom's property, he was dead set against dowsing and only did it because he was desperate and losing so much money on the deal.

I also know a power company guy that says they have numerious employees that use it to find buried lines with really good success. Sometimes he brings one of them to trouble areas where there is to much interference for their normal equipment to work properly. I don't know what type of interference he was talking about.

 

[Bodj Built]

Hah! My parents recently had a well dug at their property. A well regarded drilling company that frequently drills the area came out and used witching sticks to find the location. My parents were amazed! They tried themselves and found the same location he did. They came home and told us all about it. I called BS, and they offered to prove in my backyard where our sprinkler lines are. Pops grabbed a couple of bent pieces of welding wire and walked over a line and they immediately x'ed. He repeated it over and over, going over all of the pipes. Well, a bit of info to know is that he was there helping me lay the pvc, so he knows where they are! I had him close his eyes and repeat the process and he couldn't find a single one. He walked aimlessly over the yard with no luck. I showed him the way the rods are bent has a large end sticking out of the hands and the small end in his hands. Because of that large mass hanging out, a small angle change in your hand yields a large angle change of the rod, so even if you aren't consciously angling them, your subconscious will make small, unnoticable adjustments in your hands to get them to cross.

The guys doing it for a living aren't dumb, and they know topography features, where standard lines/pipes are run (pretty obvious that most PVC lines are going to be around the perimeter of the lawn, etc.). The guy drilling on their property knows they are at the base of a mountain that gets a tremendous amount of snowmelt each year, and the ground is essentially saturated. When digging a well it isn't like there is only one open pocket of water that you have to poke into. In most places if you dig deep enough, you'll hit water. Turns out he had to dig a few hundred feet more than he anticipated to hit water.

 

[Mudhog03]

I used to do it all the time to find lines in fields I never been to or know if any lines exist or not. We were trenching for underground power lines across farmland. I do not know what my success rate was, but the diggers said they wanted me on all the dig jobs, Everywhere I marked they found lines, but they also found a few that I did not find. I never been a magician and don't claim to be one, I just do what is necessary to get the job done.

 

[NUTTSGT]

I've locked this thread as it was brought back by a now banned "new" member. It was also started by a former member who is no longer with us, so out of that respect as well.

If another member wants to start a thread on Water Witching, feel free to do so.



RIP Kelpaso.