Wow. What else can I say? Magic? Fraud?
I had the well driller, Wilkinson Enterprise, come out to inspect the lot in preparation for a bid on well drilling work. The fellow who came brought along this little homemade device: a rod attached to a handle that allowed it to move extremely easily. He held it out, closed his eyes and started mumbling 6 gallons at 140, 20 gallons at 187,....
In retrospect I am a bit sorry that I let him see the soils report beforehand - it would have been interesting if he had been able to locate the high water table area at the fault area with the rod alone.
I don't have any problems accepting that some people may have special abilities to "read" the land and combine these reading with whatever the rod might indicate. So it seems fine to use an expert "dowser" to locate likely places. The problem though is how to decide if a particular individual is a true or false dowser.
Now, in this case I was worried that he seemed to go too far. He claimed he could tell how much water production I would get at different boring depths. That's almost ;-) OK with me. Where I hit the brake was when he claimed he could tell me the age of the water. He "read" that some of the upper chambers were 18 years old, that the average was 6 years, and that the level he was aiming for was only 1 year - presumably meaning that is was an actively renewed source.
Aug 31: The dowser/well driller sent me a quote of 17K, of course with no guarantee whatsoever that the borings would have any value. I wouldn't be surprised if that is actually close to the avg. price for any well drilling, guided by dowsers or geologists, so I am definitely going to pass on the well idea.
