Posted on 07/01/2011 4:06:31 PM PDT by bgill
Using a couple of brass rods and a big helping of ingenuity, one tiny Texas town has managed to subvert a drought-related crisis and bring water to the people.
The Llano River was dangerously close to drying up as Texas faces a punishing and record-breaking drought. Residents of this Hill Country town west of Austin depend on the river for their entire water supply.
It neared zero flow this week, and the city was looking at trucking in water from 20 miles away, when city leaders employed the old-fashioned "witching" technique to strike water in the limestone bedrock near the city's water treatment plant.
"It was done by the use of two brass spindles ... and you walk with them in either hand," said City Manager Finley deGraffenried.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I heard of that..and brazing rods. Never saw it done that way though.
The old guy told me that you had to have faith in it to make it work.
Calcium...
Well, Mrs. Slim won’t have to take suppliments.
Perhaps, but my well has been productive for 16 years in an area where 5 is good.
Maybe I got lucky, but I’ll take it.
“Limestone usually has large solution channels which carry large volumes of ground water.”
One geophysical method used for locating water-filled fractured rocks is VLF Electromagnetics. Uses the VLF energy from the land-based submarine antennas that are constantly sending the VLF energy through the earth. The energy will be concentrated in fractures and other conductive linear features, like metal pipes, wires, and even in PVC pipes with water in some situations. It is one way that typical utility locating wands work.
I am not so sure that (or how) the willow branches work. But, the wire rods will be affected by the VLF current in pipes (I can even do it once in awhile). I imagine if the limestone fracture was large enough (and at the gpm it was it must have been!), I would not be too much of a sceptic of the wire rods. Although would prefer a bit more scientific method using geophysics. But the physics is there. Although I’m not sure why some folks can do it and others can’t - no doubt something in the chemical makeup of the person (iron, salt, etc.) that makes them a better “antenna” than others.
We used VLF to locate wells in a tight formation in New Jersey. Typical wells were just barely enough for a house 4 to 6 gallons/min. With the VLF we would locate fractures and wells would be in the upper thousands of gallons a minute. Twice we found wells where the owner sold most of the water to the local town. Didn’t use metal rods though!
Another mechanism might be the water flowing in the limestone channels, which creates an eletrical field (streaming potential). Again, better ways to measure and detect that, but I wonder if the metal rods might be affect by that as well (if large enough channels, shallow enough, etc.)
I’ll have to search for the NGWA results.
What IS interesting is what deperate people will turn to.
Most of the valleys out that way are actually old river or old lake beds. Aint hard to see if you look at it and think that water wont lay on top of hills.
I got a place in Golden Valley AZ. Kingman is in the next valley. Along the Golf course on the side of the cliffs you can see where the water had washed out bowls against the sandstone ages ago. Yet..it wont take that long to suck those dry if they over populate. Phoenix is actually sinking from the draw off the aquifer. The problem isnt the water, its the lack of amount of rain they get to regenerate that aquifer.
Funny thing, the higher up the mountains you go the shallower the wells are. Up the mountains, some wells are just 80 feet down and endless recovery. Down in the valley they can drill a thousand feet before they get water. I know one lady who has a well just down from me who has a well at just over 250 feet and the recovery is at about 50 gal. But, you can bore some dry holes there also.
Does it point DOWN when I get over a dead democrat voter?
Maybe to their abode?
The reason is that most drillers and all geologists know the facts about ground water: that it is almost everywhere. Non-scientists think water is in "underground streams" scattered here and there; that's false. When I was involved with drilling in limestone (the rock in the Texas story), the problem was not finding water; it was 1) finding clean water, because the large conduits are easily contaminated, and 2) avoiding creating sinkholes at the surface when the well is pumped.
You get a good 'witcher' and they can not only FIND water but tell you how deep and what volume,
Just because one doesn't know about something - doesn't mean it doesn't work.
I worked for WSSC one summer and watched often as one guy on the truck would bring out his brass rods and find the water main. I never saw him miss.
Not everyone can do it, but some can.
People believe in water witching or divining rods, because people still believe in ghosts, psychics, and demons. If you go to more remote uncivilized areas, people can believe in evil spirits causing disease, drought, volcanic eruptions and bad luck. There are people that believe anything under the sun. Humans are a gullible bunch.
Dousing is nothing new in GA and the Carolina’s. Up in the mountains most of the water is found via dousing. They are hardly ever wrong. In the old days they just used willow sticks for rods.
She not only found it, she rendered it inert.
Did she render anything else inert? :-)
That’s funny, I can witch. Found myself a nice shallow well to water my garden with.
Some can and some can’t. With the same tools in the same place. It’s an innate “gift” or ability to sense the presence of water or other naturally occuring elements. I’ve heard of those who can witch for gold. Never tried THAT.
here in Indiana, we also call it witching for water. Everyone in my immediate family can do this to some extent. My dad, both of my brothers and me, our biological children, all have this ability. Some of us are stronger “watervanes” (that would be the descriptive my friend made up) than others, but we can all do it. My mother could not. We use branches or just a couple of metal clothes hangers.
Think of water as a liquid asset.
“Humans are a gullible bunch.”
If you’re ever in the Dallas area, drop by and I’ll shown you how it’s done. I learned dowsing (I don’t like the connotation of “witching”) 25 years ago as a young engineer.
I’ve never used it to did a well but for years I used rods weekly to find buried water and other utility lines. Even though I changed careers to the software field years ago, I still keep several pair in my trunk, including some thin wires that i used to use to find rebar so that I could tell drilling crews where to install groundwater monitoring wells and not have the drillslowed down by rebar.
Now I mainly use them when planting a shrub or tree and want to avoid hitting anything underground, including old tree roots.
The best I can tell, the rods somehow detect changes in density or electrical conductivity. I have no idea why some people can do it while others can’t. Also, some people mark the pipe or utility ith their heels and others with their toes. I’m a heel man myself.
I walk with the rods to find the rough location then usually get close to the ground to find the exact location. When I do that, the rods swing over the location of the object.
Don’t knock it till you’ve seen it. The odds are about 50-50 that you can do it yourself.
“Humans are a gullible bunch.”
If you’re ever in the Dallas area, drop by and I’ll shown you how it’s done. I learned dowsing (I don’t like the connotation of “witching”) 25 years ago as a young engineer.
I’ve never used it to did a well but for years I used rods weekly to find buried water and other utility lines. Even though I changed careers to the software field years ago, I still keep several pair in my trunk, including some thin wires that i used to use to find rebar so that I could tell drilling crews where to install groundwater monitoring wells and not have the drillslowed down by rebar.
Now I mainly use them when planting a shrub or tree and want to avoid hitting anything underground, including old tree roots.
The best I can tell, the rods somehow detect changes in density or electrical conductivity. I have no idea why some people can do it while others can’t. Also, some people mark the pipe or utility ith their heels and others with their toes. I’m a heel man myself.
I walk with the rods to find the rough location then usually get close to the ground to find the exact location. When I do that, the rods swing over the location of the object.
Don’t knock it till you’ve seen it. The odds are about 50-50 that you can do it yourself.
Nope, not knocking it. I have never used peach branches, but I have sucsessivly used metal clothes hangers and cleaned off welding rods. I have had to find water lines tile beds. I cannot dowse as good as some, but generally have been successful.
Sure hope your weather conditions improve.
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