OT Divining Rods. Do they work?

I need to run power to an out building on my property and I was talking to this guy about it, when he tells me that he can find the existing underground wires and pipes with Divining rods. Now I am the type of fellow that thinks that to find these things it takes a little more sophisticated equipment. He is persistent about proving to me that Divining rods do work. Is he a quack or is there something to this?

I know some folks who claim to be able to find pipes by divination. The only one who tried in front of me spent my time and money showing me that he could not find a thing, $30 rented a radio location dingus that mapped the pipe in an hour. Had I used it first I would have saved a couple hundred bucks.

My suggestion is to only pay on success with a predetermined way of calculating success. If he doesn't take you up on those terms then he can't be all that confident of his 'divining' skills.

I'm sure he believes with all his heart that is does work. However, just because you believe it doesn't mean it's true.

This practice is called DOWSING. Dowsers tend to be very self-deluded as to the efficacy of their "art". It has been shown many, many times in double blind studies to be merely the product of, for lack of a better term, "wishful thinking".

Read more at:

http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/

Gary

They work real well when the person using them has a good fore-knowledge of where the lines are or should be.

Most underground runs are straight. Find the two ends and draw a straight line. 99% of the time you will hit it. With or without a divining rod.

Electricians and plumbers have a variety of ways of locating lines. Detectors, cameras, common sense with a good dose of experience. Call a good one of each trade. Also local utilities keep track of their lines. Many communities have a single number to call before digging. All the utilities will come out and mark their lines. It's illegal to dig in your own yard in some locatalities without calling first.

Paul A.

I had a well drill years ago and the old timer father made a big production with the willow branch etc, that is after asking where we wanted the well. his son drilled the well and struck water at 130 foot, and said he could of gotten that anywhere on the property and his father knew that too.

My dad used them a hundred times when he re- did the irrigation system on our property when I was a kid. I never saw them fail even though I was there every day (at age 10) telling him it was BS. He'd make them out of a wire hanger.

He'd find the spot and say "ok Dave start digging", then I'd promptly break another pvc waterline.

I've seen it work...Within a foot or two. Don't expect to be dead on. I have done it numerous times, with relative success. The best rods I have everused were solid brass bent in an ell shape about 24" on one leg, and six inches on the other leg. The six inch leg is then placed inside a copper tube that fits the brass rod nicely. Hold one in each hand, sorta balancing the rods straight out in front of you 12-16" apart. People can say what they want, but when you pass over a pipe, wires, and sometimes it just does it for the heck of it. The rods will gravitate toward each other! I hae also seen people that got absolutely no results. I can't explain it, but I believe that there is some sort of force there.

My graphic arts teacher in high school used to teach these to us. He said for some of us it was simply "fun"...for others, it could come in useful some day.

He knew where the irrigation lines were right outside the room. He'd send us out there one at a time, give us a quick run through with a piece of black pipe tossed on the ground...then tell us to find the pipe.

75% of the class found the pipe within a couple feet...which in my opinion is pretty damn good.

We were using a bent coat hanger.

He was an interesting teacher full of strange knowledge...kept kids interested though.

-Jacob

There are people who dowsing works for; others, it doesn't. I have seen my grandmother use a willow branch to tell the well diggers where to try, after two failed attempts on our property, during a particularly bad drought. They hit water at 200'. That well never went dry. I have also seen an electrician/plumber that I worked for use two ell shaped copper wires, to find water and electrical lines. I tried; it doesn't work for me. I would follow rke[pler 's advice; agree beforehand on what constitutes success, and what the payment will be.

RAS

i recall a few years ago that Arthur C. Clarke hosted a show abouit dowsing. At the end, he had about 30 dowsers try to find water, oil, gold, and jewels, all buried undergroung specifically for the test. Predictably, their aggregate performance was within a couple of percent of "pure chance." "The Amazing Randy" (see the link above) was introduced as guest commnetator and thoroughly debunked the myth of dowsing. I would tend to agree.

However, Clarke then pointed out that while the aggregate perfromance was dismal, the performance on finding water (which ran through underground pipes) was something like 11,000% more accurate than chance.

Hmmmm...

Hello,
I can do it! I've used two copper wires to find water, gas, and electrical lines. These are lines that their location is totally unknowen to me before I start. One was a water line that had 2 bends in it from when they installed it around a building. The building had been removed a few years after the line had been installed, and they couldn't figure out where the old line was. I nailed it nuts on. Also found a forgoten gas line that had gone to the building that they had totally forgot about. It still was hooked up with gas in it. They had just capped the end and filled the hole where the building was! That would have been a interesting find for sure.

See Ya!
Richard

how can you have 11,000%?
100% is all there is unless your NASA.
you see the shuttle runs at 104% of power after they have gone thru maximum dynamics.
its like sports figures giving 200%...jim

I've used a couple pieces of bent hanger to find drainage tiles. Old school farmer showed me how to do it when I was a kid.
I've never heard of anyone trying to find electric lines or gas lines Sounds a little dangerous to me.

I can't do it myself, but I've seen it done. I understand that oil drillers use dowsers when the stakes are high. When I was about 12, I held the other end of the forked twig a dowser was using to smell for water while he walked the land, and when he passed over an underground spring, the twig just about yanked itself out of my hand pointing at the ground. I wasn't strong enough to keep that flexible little twig from doing what it did. I've been a believer ever since, and I'm a pretty skeptical person.

I'm also skeptical about Skeptics with a capital S, like James Randi and CSICOP. Rather than open minded skeptics, I think they are 'true believers' in scientific rationalism, and have an agenda to debunk anything that disagrees with their world view. It's a well known phenomenon that you will tend to find whatever it is you are looking for, positive or negative, and I believe their tactics affect their experiment's outcomes. Because some so called dowsers can't find water doesn't condemn dowsing any more than a bad doctor's failures condemn medicine.

Divining Rods DO work. I have been using them for the last 32 years to find buried pipes, conduits and septic field piping. I use any sort of light, straight metal wire- coat hangers, brazing rods, TIG wire... Just bend two pieces into "L"'s with the short legs being about 8" long, and the long legs on the order of 18" to 24". Hold the short legs loosely in your hands so the long legs point straight out in front of you and are approximately level. Start walking in the area where you want to locate buried lines. When you cross the buried lines, the long legs of the rods will swing. They will swing about 90 degrees, so they are, in effect, "blocking your path". Mark the spot this happened. Keep walking in a lazy "S" course and you will be able to extablish a series of points. That is where the buried line is routed. I do this routinely and will take bets on the accuracy of divining rods.

My intorduction to divining rods came on my first job out of engineering school in 1972. It was a construction site to add some oil tank farm capacity and some peaking units at a big existing coal fired power plant. The routing of some new underground fire protection and fuel oil piping had to cross a road on the power project. The power company had warned us that there were numerous telephone cables under that road. They told us that if these were damaged, it would likely shut down the 1300 Mw powerplant since these phone lines handled signals for protective relaying and similar between the powerplant and the high voltage switchyard and some distant substations. The construction project superintendent was my boss. He was an oldtimer, raised on a Texas sharecropper's farm, who claimed he did not get shoes until he went into the service. He looked at me and said: "Joe-boy: d'you believe ?" As a brand-new young engineer, I didn;t ask the project super what I was supposed to believ ein, just said: "Yessir, I believe". With that, he told me to go to the operating engineer master mechanic and get a couple of thin uncoated brazing rods. I did just that and hot footed it back to our office trailer. The old Porject Super bent the two rods into "L"'s and took a can of surveyor's spray paint. We went to the area of the jobsite where we were thinking of excavating accorss the road. The old super took the two brazing rods and began walking in a kind of zig-zag course along the road. Every so often, those rods would swing out and twitch. He'd stop and say: "Joe-boy: didya see that ? Mark the spot." I would paint a dot of orange surveyor's paint on the pavement. Soon, we had a few lines corssing the road and knew where we could not excavate. After about 40 minutes, we had a couple of areas where the divining rods showed things to be clear of any buried lines. Then, the old project super put the rods into my hands and told me to shut my eyes and start walking down the road. I felt the rods twitch and pull and could feel them swing until they touched my chest. I stopped walking. The project super told me to open my eyes. I was standing with the rods swung out on the line he had divined a few minutes preciously. The project super told me I had it, obviously did believe, and would be OK to use divining rods to locate underground lines and conduits. I tried a few more wlakings up and down the road with my eyes closed and the rods twitched and swung and confirmed what the project super had previously spotted. I told the project super that I believed.

We asked the resident engineer from the power company to come take a look. He did and had complete doubts as to the use of divining rods. He told us not to do anything until he got someone on site with proper instrumentation to trace signals and locate the phone lines. The power company called in some technician from the phone company. The guy arrived with some electronic instruments and went to work. He marked the pavement with spray paint to indicate where the lines were. His locations differed widely form what the divining rods had showed us.
He and the engineer from the power company indicated a location for us to start excavating. The old project super had no faith whatsoever in the electronic locating instruments. His faith in his divining rods was so unshakable that he had me get a backhoe with an operating engineer to stand by to dig a test hole as soon as the technician with the locator instruments gave us a location. As soon as we got the location from the technician and the power company engineer OK'd it, the old Project Super muttered a few choice things to me and told the operating engineer to take a backhoe and did a test hole on the shoulder of the road. The operating engineer grinned and fired up the backhoe. The old project super looked at me and asked again: "Joe boy, d'you believe ?" I said I did, and he told me to watch the show. The backhoe dug down about four feet and all hell broke loose. Up came the bucket of the backhoe with a hunk of phone cable, all frazzled out so umpteen pairs of conductors stuck out. A tremendous noise was coming from the powerplant. It was the lifting of many safety valves on a 650 megawatt boiler. Safeties on the steam drum and reheater had lifted. The boiler ran at 3200 psig, so the noise of the steam blowing off was not to be believed. The backhoe had just dug up a phone cable which handled the protective relaying between the powerplant and its switchyard. The severing of that phone cable tripped the one running generating unit in the plant off line.

The project super looked at me and grinned, then told the utility engineer and the technician they were full of s--t, their instrument wasn't worth s--t, and the whole matter of a forced outage on a 650 megawatt unit and all the mess that was going cause (and cost) was on their heads. He then told the operating engineer to take the backhoe and dig where we had determined the area to be clear of underground lines by the use of the divining rods. We got a clean hole without hitting any buried lines of any sort. I have been a believer in divining rods ever since.

I use the divining rods routinely when doing home inspections for prospective buyers. With the rods, I locate buried well heads, waterlines between the well head and the house, and locate the spetic tanks and leach fields. Digging around will invariably prove the accuracy of the divining rods. Sometimes, a home buyer wants the septic tank located and pumped. SOmetimes it is the location of a buried wellhead. I will take bets anytime I use the divining rods unless there are overhead power distribution lines. The fields associated with overhead power distribution lines can mess up the accuracy of divining rods.

I use them occasionally at the powerplant where I work to locate buried lines as well. Up at the plant, most people tend to believe in the divining rods as well as dowsing. Around here, local people often will have a site "witched" to determine the best spot to drill a well. That is true dowsing, done with a forked stick. I have seen it done and tried it, but don;t get as good a pull or indication as I do with the divining rods. Friends who are proven dowsers have put the dowsing stick into our son's hands. He has it- I have seen him hold a forked stick in as strong a grip as he can get on it, walk accross a site, and have the stick twist until it nearly breaks. When older dowsers walk over the same spot, the result is the same. I can offer some possible explanation for the divining rods response to buried lines, but have no explanation for the dowsing stick. Meanwhile, out in the cab of my pickup, there is a set of bent pieces of 1/16" diameter TIG wire- divining rods- ready for action.

how can you have 11,000%?

Click to expand...

I think the IRS invented 11,000%. I think thats the figure they used to figure my taxes last year.

Clairvoyance is simpler -- you don't need to fool around with the rods and everything.

I was always a non-believer...until I tried it.
I was helping doing some spring cleanup at the inlaws' place. Mowing, weedeating, remodeling, that sort of stuff.

I found a broken car antenna in the weeds. It was the top and second section of a telescoping antenna. The top section was bent 90 degrees where it came out of the second section. It swung feely.

Joking around, I said "it looks like a divining rod!" I started walking around, holding the larger section horizontally in my hand. The tip was pointing toward the ground.

Imagine my surprise when I walked over a garden hose that was stretched out, and the tip of the antenna swung and pointed toward it as I approached, and swung the other way as I walked away!

I was flabbergasted, as I had never believed in this type of "spookery". I tried it over and over, and without fail, the tip would "point towards the water".

I can't explain it, and wouldn't bet the farm on it, but I do believe that there is some force that affects the rods.

It works great!Used to hire a company to bore telephone pole holes for me.Their operators always used the bent wires! Many times the telephone company in Tucson would call one of the drill rig operators to locate phone wires for them.An old lady who lived near us, in her 90's used a blue bottle her granddad gave her to find water.Had a string tied to the top of the bottle.She'd walk around with the bottle swinging from the string in her hand till the bottle stopped swinging.She'd say there's water down here.Then sit down on a small wooden stool and still holding the string,ask out loud,"How far down to water"?The bottle would start swinging back and forth,she said each swing equaled one foot.She'd come up with some figure.Then she'd ask,"How much water"?Each swing of the bottle would equal one gallon. She made a lot of drillers mad and red faced in these parts!She was always correct!Never charged a cent for her findings.

Gees, I thought that every response would be to proclaim that anyone who uses a divining rod is a nut case, but not so. I must admit that now I am more confused. I guess I could understand this if there were some kind of scientific explanation. Thanks for your advice.
Karl