Divining rods, oy vey!

[Dan Hintz]

How many here watch American Woodshop with Scott Phillips? Anyone catch the episode a few weeks back where he used (in all seriousness) a pair of divining rods to determine where his water lines were? He was digging post holes for an archway/pergola.

I was stunned... here we have a fun show with some useful techniques being taught, only to be sideswiped with such bunk. My uncle tried to teach me divining when I was much younger, and although the science behind it sounded plausible to some degree, even at that young age I felt something just wasn't right. Time and time again divining has been proven in double blind tests to be pure hokem, yet people still swear by it. Prior knowledge of line location was the major factor in affecting the rods (i.e., it's the user, like the horse who could do math), consciously or not.

All of that aside, what bugged me the most was his suggestion, nay, his flat out statement that divining would help you track down your water mains and avoid punching through them. I can see someone who has no clue where their water mains are getting out there with a post digger and going to town. Gusher city...

[jim mills]

Funny thing...My brother built a house on a acreage about 25 yrs ago and the well driller (a large reputable local company) "witched" (is that the term?) for water before he dug. Said "plenty of water here, and not too deep either". Sure enough, 60' of drilling later and he hit water. Well still flows today! Now how can you argue with that?!?!?!?

[Ryan Hellmer]

Yeah the "science" behind divining. Sheesh. As for the well driller, what part of the country? Around here you could drill a hole anywhere and hit water in 60 feet. Move 300 miles to the west and it's closer to 600 (and more in many places). Go to Louisianna and you can't set a fencepost without hitting water. If you want to find your lines, call the local dig safe program, but even then, use some common sense.

[John Coloccia]

A friend of mine showed me how to make a diving rod with a couple of tubes and some bent welding wire. He was the guy who replaced my septic tank, by the way. Anyhow, we used these rods all over the lower part of my property to trace the pipe all the way from the septic tank down to the leech field. We even found the individual pipes that made up the leech field.

A couple of weeks later, I spoke with the old owner of the house, and I told him what we did and how we tracked everything down with divining rods. At that point he informed me that when he first moved in, the area were we "found" all the pipes was overgrown with bushes and trees, and that the leech field was 100 feet away, way on the other side of the clearing. We had a good hearty chuckle and my world made sense again

[Dan Friedrichs]

What a sad state our science education is in in this country when otherwise intelligent people can't fathom that this is nothing but "witchcraft". It's really disappointing to hear that Mr. Phillips believes it.

[John M Wilson]

I had a friend who used a special divining rod hooked up with a bleeder resistor. When hooked up in series (or maybe parallel) it could detect buried hot dogs. Sadly, he forgot to detension it one night, and the resulting static charge buildup ruined it. Otherwise, I would supply pictures...

[Dan Hintz]

I had a friend who used a special divining rod hooked up with a bleeder resistor. When hooked up in series (or maybe parallel) it could detect buried hot dogs. Sadly, he forgot to detension it one night, and the resulting static charge buildup ruined it. Otherwise, I would supply pictures...

Ouch... that chuckle snort now has a piece of taco meat lodged into a nasal cavity. That'll teach me to eat lunch while reading a thread such as this... meh, maybe not.

[lowell holmes]

Dan,

I've seen it work. Two bent welding rods were used. They crossed over each other as they passed over the line.

[Harry Niemann]

Do you suppose this might work to find nails in used lumber?

[Jeff Bartley]

Dan,
I've also seen this work. In a former career (just north of you in Baltimore) I worked for a Geotech engineering firm. While there I would go out with the drillers to log and interept the borings. The drillers we used always walked the site with the rods before putting the drill bit in the ground. Time and time again they found utility lines that weren't marked, or were marked in the wrong place.
I've also seen this topic cause some heated arguements....one young engineer (at a different firm) practically got red-faced mad he was so adamant that this was bunk!
Now, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just saying that I've seen it in action.
As for an explanation I can only offer this: soil density and the interaction between the magnetic pole and two metal rods. Can I prove this? No. But may be someone here can add some objective science to this topic....people are too quick to dismiss things which they can't explain as 'witchcraft'. Remember the scientific method!

[Dan Friedrichs]

The scientific method has repeatedly been used to discredit the validity of water witching. Scientists have done blinded trials where they ask "expert" dosers to locate hidden lines, and none have ever been able to find the lines more accurately than chance would predict. A few individual anecdotes about having personally seen it work means nothing.

The suggestion of "magnets" really frustrates me. Americans spend millions of dollars a year on pseudo-medicinal "cures" that are based on the "power of magnets" (eg - magnetic "healing bracelets", etc). None of these have any basis in fact whatsoever - but people have a specious understanding of the magnetic force, and are quick to credit it with things they don't understand.

[Jeff Bartley]

Dan F.,
I wasn't talking about "magnets" I was referring to the magnetic field that surrounds the earth. And I'm not talking about water witching, only finding buried utilities.
Can you explain why this can't work?? If someone had never seen an airplane fly and they were shown an airplane they might argue that it's inconceivable that it could fly. But Bernoulli's principle easily explains how it works.
In our case here we just don't have an explanation. I've heard a lot of people say that 'so and so scientists' has proven that this doesn't work, but I've never seen one of these 'blinded trials'.
What I have seen is drillers refusing to drill where the boring was marked because their rods indicated something buried. And after a lot of arguing a backhoe was brought in and an old line was found...exactly where they said it would be. I didn't just see this once, I saw it work consistently over and over again.

[Dan Friedrichs]

I've heard a lot of people say that 'so and so scientists' has proven that this doesn't work, but I've never seen one of these 'blinded trials'.

Take a look at the wikipedia article on the topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing

There are several links to excellent studies like you requested, all of which prove that it's nothing but chance.


The problem is one of probability - you can blindfold yourself and wander around your yard (like Lee S. apparently did), but even if you do it for days on end and keep getting the same result, you aren't aware of the other person doing the same thing and consistently getting false results. In order to ascertain whether or not it actually "works", you need a large enough sample size, and even then, you can never be 100% sure. What the scientific establishment provides us is methods (like statistical analysis) that can tell us whether or not a result is significant. For instance, if you gave a new drug to 10 people, and all of them got better, did it work? You might say, "yes", but in reality, there was a chance that they would have all gotten better without the drug, a chance that placebo effect made them better, etc - without statistical analysis, you have no idea if the drug actually worked or not.

The same is true for dowsing, but even more complicated because of all the other factors (prediction effect, etc).

[Dan Hintz]

The suggestion of "magnets" really frustrates me. Americans spend millions of dollars a year on pseudo-medicinal "cures" that are based on the "power of magnets" (eg - magnetic "healing bracelets", etc). None of these have any basis in fact whatsoever - but people have a specious understanding of the magnetic force, and are quick to credit it with things they don't understand.

I tried explaining this to my grandfather, who was a big proponent of said bracelets... I never got through to him. The best "unscientific" blip I've seen on these was someone placing a paperclip against the bracelet and it holds. Then a couple of sheets of paper were placed between the bracelet and the paper clip... the clip fell right off. The magnetic field was so weak when distanced from the bracelet by only a few sheets of paper, it was pretty strong unscientific proof that no field of any significant strength would likely penetrate even the epidermis, let alone into the major bloodstream. Given the distance squared dropoff of magnetic field strength, well... you make the call.

But people want to believe...

[Jerome Hanby]

I think trying to explain dowsing scientifically is absurd. However it could be explained psychology. Operating the rods could serve to focus the attention and a subconscious recognition of some trait of the ground could trigger the "slip" to let the rods cross. That would explain why some old (read experienced) codger is the one it always seems to work for and why some fabricated study wouldn't work (no time for any tell tale signs to have developed).

On the other hand people believe all kinds of crap from their chance of winning a lottery to invisible men that live in the sky...