Stop tap in street (update)

So the water board man officially uses dowsing rods - which are known to be superstitious nonsense?

Sounds like he showed up and drew a pattern in order to appease the water gods. Now he's sending a real engineer out...

You are so wrong! I have seen it done regularly both by my late grandmother and the wife of a friend.

Peter Crosland

They normally use a long wooden rod with a flattish piece at the end that they place against their ear and listen for running water .

Rubbish, I worked for a large power company on mains cables for 30 years & many a time where records were sketchy we located cables using 2 lengths of copper wire, bent at 90 degrees to form a handle & a longer part which were held parallel & about 3" apart from each other. I can't recall the method ever having failed us.

The thread is about detecting water pipes. It is conceivable that detecting power cables is possible but there is no scientific proof that water diving works. In fact there is proof that it doesn't work.

That could work, but the long wooden rod should not be called a dowsing rod.

Actually lots of very big companies use dowsers. Seems to work. I can dowse water as I discovered by accident of few years ago. And I was always sure it was superstitious rubbish.

I still think that 99% of so-called dowsing is bullshit though. Maybe it's some residual sixth sense we have from 1000s of years ago when water was hard to find.

Al.

Everywhere under the ground is a water table, so it's not surprising if water is found when a bore is sunk.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Peter Crosland" saying something like:

I must say, your family is very broadminded.