re: #235 SanFranciscoZionist

Someone who gets very, very upset with the people saying that dowsing isn’t scientifically verified, and might, therefore, be silly.

While not scientifically verified, I must admit, I have a pair of steel wires I carry in the car for dowsing shallow cast iron lines when I go to Emergency Response sites. We often have to do excavations to access utilities or install vapor or phase-separated product recovery trenches, and we don’t have time to get One Call out to identify utilities in the excavation areas. I think dowsing for water and oil is bullshit, but it often works a treat with shallow iron lines. I have personally identified three black iron pipes that are laterals off of gas mains one to two feet below asphalt/soil. The first time, the gas guy pulled out his maps and said the excavation area was clear. I asked him to stick around. Ten minutes later, the backhoe popped a one-inch line to an abandoned building slab across the street. He looked at me funny, because I had marked it in chalk on the asphalt. “How did you know that was there?”

“Magic.” I said.

I have no idea why it works, although I posit that bare steel lines of any type are oxidizing and losing electrons, and thus create an electrical field. All I do know is that when you walk across one, the wires cross. Doesn’t work with galvanized pipe. Hit a 2” gas main once (also off the charts) and had to shut down everything that had a motor and evacuate a two block radius. Hassle.