WATER WITCHING:WHATS YOUR STORY?

[escavader]

HI ,
At my mountain retreat over the weekend,a fellow i recently met was raking the road with a rock rake,and i invited him over for a morning coffee.Our conversation turned to water and i told him i was gonna try to install a wellin the near future.He asked"has anyone witched it?"I told him no .He bolted up like a house on fire went into the bushes and came out with a crotched stick.Holding it in his hands,he proceeded to walk about ,mysteryously and then it happened it flopped down like it was on a lever.When he continued a few steps it came back up and pointed towards him ,or where he had just been.He said theres a good deal of water not too deep either ,He walked the area and as i watchedhe showed me exactly ,where the vain flowed,and gave me a couple good options for my well.He even thought id be able to get to it easy with my little KUBOTA,but i asked him to bring his hoe upand dig it for me,i got some stuff to do for him with mine,sort of a trade off.This fellow not only is road foreman.he has his own excavater business,and has installed wells all his life.The storys he told of wells and witching just facinated me.iD LIKE TO LEARN MORE AND HEAR ANYONES STORY THEY HAVE ON THE SUBJECT.
ALAN

 

[3RRL]

OK,
I'll bite.
Several years ago when we were going to put in a well, my driller told us to witch the area first. Of course I thought he was joking. So we looked on the Internet and found several suggestions how to do it. We use coat hangers straightened out except one end had a bend for a handle. Sort of an"L" shape. Then we walked around the area holding the two coat hangers by the handles, with the long ends straight out.



This is what it looks like close up.



Anyway, when you walk over a spot that holds water, the coat hangers are supposed to cross over each other. The well guy said you will know when that happens because it is a definite feeling, different from when you move them yourself. It is really a different feeling, let me tell you. I walked over this one spot and couldn't believe the two coat hangers just moved together quickly! It blew my mind.



I must have walked over that spot ten times to see if it would do it again, and every time it did!



In the mean time, Loretta was also walking around in a different area. So without telling Loretta, I called her over and asked her to check around the area where I was. When she walked over that EXACT same spot, her coat hanger flipped together too!

We marked the spot and had the hard rock well drilled right there. We got 100 gals/min + out of our well at 442' deep.

 

[RonMar]

You can also find buried pipes and wires this way. When I was a little kid, my dad taught me how with the bent wires Rob describes. If you have a pocket full of markers to drop, you can plot a trail of how underground streams and water lines run. When I was about 8, I showed our new neighbor and his wife(good cookies) where their water was on their new property. This was in central oregon out by Sun River and they were living out of a trailer there on weekends while they worked on their property and planed their house. They didn't really believe me at first till I took them up to where our well was and showed them the underground stream it was drawing from and the buried waterline to the house. Then I showed them how to find these things with the wires(coat hangers) and they were able to go back over to their place and re-create my findings.

 

[Tig]

The widow next door had well trouble and did not know where her buried well was. I witched it for her within 3 feet. I was just fooling around but the wires did cross and uncross as I walked forward and back over the spot. Although it was a curious phenomenon I am not convinced that I have the ability to witch wells in a more chalenging setting.
My parents had their well witched and are convinced the man had special abilities. Well is still good after 47 years.

 

[Spiveyman]

Yep, this works. My business partner had a fence put in on his farm. The guy who does the fencing would not drive a post until the guy from the water company marked the lines in the area. He showed up, got two wires out and commenced to finding the lines as described above. Freaked my buddy out, so he told the guy to back up and do it with his eyes closed. He was exactly in line with the other markers. The fence guy said he's never hit a water line when this guy marks the pipes. It's supposed to have something to do with how the water affects the earth's magnetic field, but I don't understand it exactly. If that is true then there are certain types of rods that shouldn't work, any alloys, Vs. steel rods that should. He said he'd show me how it's done next time I'm out there.

 

[Podunkadunk]

I agree with the theory of the water breaking up or distorting the earth's magnetic lines of flux. Earth is a huge magnet with, of course, a north and south pole. Lines disseminate from each and intersect. This is normally a smooth laminar flow. When something breaks the lines, it interferes with the magnetism. (This is a very simplified version of what the Navy teaches in relation to anti-submarine warfare).

The P-3 Orion has a "stinger" on the back called a Magnetic Anomoly Detecting (MAD) Set (see my avatar pic over there <----------). It reads (like the witching wires) the distortion in the water a submarine creates by breaking up the magnetic lines of flux. Once a submarine is located using passive or active tracking, a "MAD" run is always made to confirm, then the torpedo or depth charge is dropped.

(Basic sub-hunting 101).

So, although it seems kind of hokey-pokey, there's logic to it

My .02..

Podunk

 

[Bird]

I've seen it work and I've seen it fail. I've even done it myself, found water that way once for a shallow well. The last time I saw anyone do it, he was trying to locate a 3" water main and he marked where it was; had no doubt about it. The only trouble was, he was wrong; it wasn't there. I later found it on the other side of the borrow ditch. So I still don't know whether I believe in witching or not.

 

[Spiveyman]

(This is a very simplified version of what the Navy teaches in relation to anti-submarine warfare).

The P-3 Orion has a "stinger" on the back called a Magnetic Anomoly Detecting (MAD) Set (see my avatar pic over there <----------). It reads (like the witching wires) the distortion in the water a submarine creates by breaking up the magnetic lines of flux. Once a submarine is located using passive or active tracking, a "MAD" run is always made to confirm, then the torpedo or depth charge is dropped.
(Basic sub-hunting 101).

Very cool! Thanks for the sub hunting tips. I'm building a lake on my property, so you never know when that little tip might come in handy!!

I also see you are from Kentucky, as your profile says "God's country."

 

[jdbower]

The only problem with the magnetic field disruption theory is that a handheld gauss meter would be much more efficient and accurate, but I don't think that's in the arsenal of professional well drillers even though it would pay for itself by correcting a single mistake. Most of the studies I've seen show dowsers have no greater chance at finding water than random drilling, including one where the water was clearly marked (flowing through large plastic pipes 1.5' below the surface) and they just had to guess which pipe had the water. We tend to remember the hits and forget the misses with things like this. Science is great in that it doesn't have to explain WHY something happens, but if it really works it would be predictable and repeatable and therefore able to be scientifically tested. Of course, I'm a born skeptic so I fall into the same trap a lot of other people do - I pay a lot more attention to the studies that I agree with and I'm also exposed to those studies a lot more than ones that have to be qualified with "known to the state of California"

 

[Podunkadunk]

Very cool! Thanks for the sub hunting tips. I'm building a lake on my property, so you never know when that little tip might come in handy!!

I also see you are from Kentucky, as your profile says "God's country."

Yeah, got on my soapbox there for a moment with the P3 MAD lesson...It's an interesting topic and I saw my opportunity

I guess there are more than two "God's Countries" in the U.S.