Do pros use dowsing to locate buried supply or drain lines?

Is this nonsense voodoo magic but I understand some people swear by it and say it works to locate pipes. How can it possibly work?





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IF you believe init, it "works". I do not so it doesn't for me and never has, but I have dug a lot of dry holes for believers who have tried to convince me.

sum.i used this many times i found waterlines at 8 ft,sewer lines at 12 cast iron pipesdeeper that that.always used coat hangers bent with a 4in.90at one end

Although I would agree that dowsing or "witching" for underground water must be a hoax, I have on several occasions found it to work:

1) Decades ago we wanted to drill a well at a summer camp for developmentally disabled children in Santa Cruz County, CA, and we hired the largest well driller in the state to do so. The location was at the top of bone dry Loma Prieta Sandstone hill, 350 feet above the nearest open stream or creek. The driller brought out a dowser and after several circuits across the top of the hill, he rubbed the toe of his boot across the surface of the rock, and said "There's two veins of water that cross here. The driller set up his rig, and found 1.5 gpm at 145 feet and the well has delivered at that rate reliably ever since.

2) Recently, at the same location, we hired a registered geologist to survey the same hill top for foundations for two buildings that we are in the process of constructing. We alerted her that a grey water leach line from the kitchen drains crossed the area, but that none of us could recall the exact location. She pulled two metal rods from her backpack, did several traverses across the ground and identified two positions on the ground, tens of feet apart where she found the line. We excavated at each location and found the perforated leach pipe directly below...

So, although my brain says dowsing just should not work, my experience demonstrates otherwise.

that's amazing, now I don't know what to think!

a geologist used dowsing?

and a driller using it to drill 150'?



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