Divining

[Buggerallbandwidth]

OK today I spent all day on a mini digger trying to locate a supply pipe which used to come onto our fields from the neighbouring farm as it has sprung a leak. Buggered if I can find it. I see where it is showing at an old trough site, now removed, filled in and seeded, as it has caused a sink hole and its as wet as you like.
I have dug around the area down to the depth of the digger arm about 5 foot. No luck.
How do you divine and can anyone have success at it with the right gear? Thought if I could intercept it before the boggy area I might succeed. Advice pls.
Many thanks.

 

[valtra]

My divining rods made from 10mm copper pipe, hold them loosely in your hands don't grip them and slowly walk across the area your looking for your water pipe or drain hopefully they will ever so slowly start to turn inwards locating what your looking for..it usually works for me within a meter each way of what Iam trying to find but for many folk it doesn't work but give it a go nowt too loose...some say it's witch craft [emoji3] but works for me.

 

[teslacoils]

I thought the old boys were taking the pee when they did this - knowing where the stuff was in advance. But I tried and bugger me it worked!

 

[Slippery Slope]

I just bend some straight metal rod (approx 4 mms thick) and as said above just hold loosely. I'm as sceptical as the next bloke but it seems to work!!

 

[tepapa]

Bend some plain wire, i make them about 12" long with a 4" handle out of 4mm plain wire or 2.5mm if that's all I have to hand.
Walk slowly and don't hold tightly. Don't do anything with your thumbs or little fingers , just grip the wire loosely.

If you've got the gift they'll cross over the pipe.

 

[Buggerallbandwidth]

Thank you all. Going to see if I have the gift today! From the sound of it any wire/pipe will do. ?

 

[melted welly]

I reckon my bent bits of wire are about 60% accurate.

Divining is a strange subject, showed my wife, who is a scientist by trade and was massively sceptical. That was a can of worms...........a few yrs, a lot of research later and apparently the field behind the house (which is a bit of a barsteward to work) has a powerful leyline through it, our old house has “cup marked” stones in the walls that make the wires cross and any walk up the hills now needs to take in some standing stones.

 

[Scribus]

OK today I spent all day on a mini digger trying to locate a supply pipe which used to come onto our fields from the neighbouring farm as it has sprung a leak. Buggered if I can find it. I see where it is showing at an old trough site, now removed, filled in and seeded, as it has caused a sink hole and its as wet as you like.
I have dug around the area down to the depth of the digger arm about 5 foot. No luck.
How do you divine and can anyone have success at it with the right gear? Thought if I could intercept it before the boggy area I might succeed. Advice pls.
Many thanks.

Don't worry, the usual tiresome nerds will be along shortly with a list of apps for the job! Divining rods? Pfft, the great god technology will provide a proper solution tomorrow, or maybe next week....

Other than that I could never get the hang of it although my brother was a wizz , there is more going on in this world than we know about.

 

[Farfrae]

It's bunkum of course (just like homeopathy and accupuncture), not one single scientic study has shown it works. Detailed experiments conducted in Germany in the 1980s showed that the dowsers tested weren’t locating water at levels better than random chance. But people like to believe ths nonsense (just like believing in a particular god).

Water divining is bunk. So why do myths continue to trump science? | Philip Ball

The use of dowsing by major water companies shows that the appeal of natural magic needs to be understood – and, where needed, confronted, says science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

 

[Buggerallbandwidth]

It's bunkum of course (just like homeopathy and accupuncture), not one single scientic study has shown it works. Detailed experiments conducted in Germany in the 1980s showed that the dowsers tested weren’t locating water at levels better than random chance. But people like to believe ths nonsense (just like believing in a particular god).

Water divining is bunk. So why do myths continue to trump science? | Philip Ball

The use of dowsing by major water companies shows that the appeal of natural magic needs to be understood – and, where needed, confronted, says science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

Haha thanks for the balancing argument! I fail to see how it can work but like Severn Trent Water am going to give it a go - you never know! ?

 

[som farmer]

It's bunkum of course (just like homeopathy and accupuncture), not one single scientic study has shown it works. Detailed experiments conducted in Germany in the 1980s showed that the dowsers tested weren’t locating water at levels better than random chance. But people like to believe ths nonsense (just like believing in a particular god).

Water divining is bunk. So why do myths continue to trump science? | Philip Ball

The use of dowsing by major water companies shows that the appeal of natural magic needs to be understood – and, where needed, confronted, says science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

old chap came out to tell us where to drill for a bore hole, site he chose, told us we would find water at 9 metres, but not enough, go down to 29 metres for a good supply, he did this with 2 graduated metal rods, obviously manacfactured some years ago, they were in a nice wooden box, he also went over the same area with hazel twig The hazel looped the loop in his hands, impossible to fake, and when we drilled, the depths were spot on. I am now a believer.

 

[Scribus]

It's bunkum of course (just like homeopathy and accupuncture), not one single scientic study has shown it works. Detailed experiments conducted in Germany in the 1980s showed that the dowsers tested weren’t locating water at levels better than random chance. But people like to believe ths nonsense (just like believing in a particular god).

Water divining is bunk. So why do myths continue to trump science? | Philip Ball

The use of dowsing by major water companies shows that the appeal of natural magic needs to be understood – and, where needed, confronted, says science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

When I read passages like this -

The news that many water companies use dowsing to locate underground water has prompted outraged demands from scientists that they desist at once from wasting time and money on “medieval witchcraft”. They are right to call this practice deluded.

-my response is that any such outraged scientists can go feckulate themselves. If I remember correctly the research was done using small tanks of water buried under the soil rather than natural accumulations of water in soil or rock, which may not have the same effect at all.

As for acupuncture -

Acupuncture is a treatment derived from ancient Chinese medicine. Fine needles are inserted at certain sites in the body for therapeutic or preventative purposes. It is used in many NHS GP practices, as well as in most pain clinics and hospices in the UK.

Acupuncture

Read about acupuncture, a treatment derived from ancient Chinese medicine in which fine needles are inserted at certain sites in the body to relieve or prevent health problems

www.nhs.uk

 

[Slippery Slope]

It's bunkum of course (just like homeopathy and accupuncture), not one single scientic study has shown it works. Detailed experiments conducted in Germany in the 1980s showed that the dowsers tested weren’t locating water at levels better than random chance. But people like to believe ths nonsense (just like believing in a particular god).

Water divining is bunk. So why do myths continue to trump science? | Philip Ball

The use of dowsing by major water companies shows that the appeal of natural magic needs to be understood – and, where needed, confronted, says science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

You obviously haven't been blessed with the gift then!

I'm not brilliant at it but there's no denying that it works when the rods are swinging around in your hands and as I said before I'm a sceptical type!

 

[valtra]

My grandad used divining to find water to then dig wells for people..also 5years back I spent the day with a bloke who had a bore hole drilling business he'd done for fourty years and used copper rods to divine never used any other method it always worked for him but not everyone can do it..

 

[Paddington]

Man from Severn Trent was walking up and down the lane with his electronic detector trying to find the main before they replaced it. Just for a laugh I went out with my calibrated lengths of 2.5mm galvanised wire which started twitching after a few seconds. He commented he hadn't tried where I was standing...
Anyway they replaced the main but cut our BT cable in the process. I won't interfere next time.

 

[renewablejohn]

Couple of bent welding rods work for me. Some people grip the rods to tight making it so that they dont work. To overcome this get a couple of BIC biro's and take out the middles and replace with the wires,

 

[renewablejohn]

It's bunkum of course (just like homeopathy and accupuncture), not one single scientic study has shown it works. Detailed experiments conducted in Germany in the 1980s showed that the dowsers tested weren’t locating water at levels better than random chance. But people like to believe ths nonsense (just like believing in a particular god).

Water divining is bunk. So why do myths continue to trump science? | Philip Ball

The use of dowsing by major water companies shows that the appeal of natural magic needs to be understood – and, where needed, confronted, says science writer Philip Ball

www.theguardian.com

Load of cobblers it has been shown to be based on good scientific basis. Have been through all this before on another TFF thread.

 

[Buggerallbandwidth]

Update. Got my heavy gauge copper wire and whittled the rods. Tested over a known water pipe supplying a field trough and bugger me if they didn't cross over. Unfortunately my initial excitement was tempered when I walked back over it and nothing happened. Tried a different known pipe and they did twitch but not cross.
Anyways, my son back from uni for the weekend, who had never heard of divining tried it and every time it worked for him. So off to the field to try. Found the line of the pipe from several "crossings" too much in line to not be right. And a rambler wandered over to watch as he had done some divining in the past with an ash twig in a Y shape. He said it pulls down to the ground when over water, but asked to try our copper rods - and they crossed same place as my sons had! I could barely believe it.
So we dug and dug and dug until we ran out of digger - 5 foot. No pipe. WTF. Who would bury water pipe that deep?
Light failed us so we need to get a bit lower another day. I'm convinced its there !
I did an Ag science degree at uni and was sceptical to say the least, but having seen two people get the same result has me on the verge of being a true believer. Just need to prove it yet. ?

 

[Paddington]

Years ago when we put up some pig paddocks in the corner of a field, little did we realise that there were drains running under the land. The pigs soon found them after digging down a few feet and decided they really needed a water feature behind their ark. Of course after we replaced the broken tile pipes with perforated pipe held down by large stones the pigs still craved their garden fountain.

 

[glasshouse]

When looking for a water pipe , my polish digger driver nearly died laughing when i cut two pieces of wire off an old fence and set to.
I pointed to the spot where they crossed, he was still laughing until the moment the black pipe appeared.