Successful Dowsing Experiment
Hi all - My dowser friend and I tested his skills, using the attached protocol. Everything went well and we were all (my husband recorded the data for the dowser) satisfied the test was fair. And the results are...
Three hits in ten trials - my dowser had said in advance he expected at least 5 hits and, using MS Excel's BINOMDIST, 3 hits has a 15.5% probability by chance, and was well under the 50% or better the dowser expected.
As I mentioned, the dowser is my friend and I am happy to say he is still my friend. He was bemused by the results, but did not try to explain the results away. He said several times "I thought I'd do better" and things like "but I feel them move, I'm not making them move." (He used a pair of wires bent at 90 degrees.) He told us a few stories about dowsers he thinks are successful and admitted that he's had several dowsers go over his property and while they shared some hits, they also had unique hits.
Thanks
to everyone for your suggestions and assistance. If you're interested, I've included some details about the area I live below.
Grant County New Mexico is in the state's dry SW. My immediate area is mountainous (my house is at 6905 ft elevation). I live on a thick layer of Lake Valley Limestone over Percha Shale, but the water is deep in a lower layer of dolomite (I think it may be a water-bearing layer with dolomite above and below.) As you travel east from Silver City towards the Rio Mimbres Valley, hitting water gets deeper and chancier. Drillers often hit "cracks" and "lose circulation" which means they can't continue drilling. Sometimes cracks can be filled with concrete and they keep drilling, but often pumping concrete has no effect before they give up. Some holes suck air in - some suck very strongly. Every time I hear a dowser talk about underground rivers I wonder if there are caverns deep below me - maybe there is a "lake" down there someplace..
Dry holes are fairly common (the State posts well data) and yet there are a few shallow wells. Some wells produce low flows, some ten times more, and such differences are found on adjoining properties. In my immediate neighborhood half the holes were abandoned due to cracks or "dry." ("Dry" may mean the owner ran out of money before hitting the water or they may have gone what seems from the State data far enough but were unlucky.)
Hitting water is very important and expensive and the outcome uncertain. As my driller told me - "I'm a well driller, not a hole driller." They hate dry holes - some drillers refuse to work in my area because of that. It's the perfect situation to develop superstitions. All the drillers use dowsers in my area (they each seem to have a favorite), but south of us in flat land around Deming, as one driller told me, there's an aquifer and he can say within 5 feet when he'll hit water and he never dowses.
To answer a question you may have - yes, I paid my driller to dowse my well (both of them - I also have a crack-stopped dry hole.) I told him the area I wanted and he found a spot to drill. I knew it would be a deep and difficult well - I wanted him to feel good about the job so he'd stick with it. And I do have a well - about 2.5 GPM - hurray. My dowser-neighbor also has a crack-stopped dry hole and a well. His water is just about the same amount and depth as mine. Go figure.
