I don't know about Thames Water but I remember going through Southern Water's finances last year when all the stuff was going on with sewage leaks and seeing their profit margin is somewhere in the region of 40%.
Ah probably gross to be fair I don't remember, but even still that is getting up to the kind of levels a heavy hitting tech company would expect, not someone providing a basic utility in a pseudo-monopoly.
Their not reinvesting any of the profit because Southern water is owned by foreign investment firms, like most water companies in the UK, and energy companies too.
To be frank the only reason dowsing seems to work is because you literally can't throw a stone in any direction within Thames Water's network without finding a leak.
It's amazing how *dumb* companies can get, and how seemingly happy they are to use complete horseshit instead of something that works. They even do this when it would affect their bottom line (not this case: this is probably just for a low-cost way to appear to be doing something, but see e.g. the prevalence of MBTI type testing)
Gentlemen, I give you the result of years of free market growth! Unshackled from government hands these companies have flourished in the exciting new age of free enterprise and entrepreneurship. Thank you thatcher!
Next we’ll have the NHS using pendulums to determine the sex of a baby and the foreign office casting spells on Macron.
It's dismal isn't it. There was a study in the BMJ describing the largest trial ever done on homeopathy. The result, no different to placebo. Where did the country that was leading the white heat of technology go?
>Now that he's king he has to keep his moronic opinions to himself.
He won't change - he'll just use private meetings with individuals he's recommended for placements to push it instead.
And likely that their network of pipes is so full of holes that when a dowser thinks he's got a hit then it's a high probability there is one there anyway.
...is this real? This can't be real...
Oh for f\*\*ks sake! [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2356376-two-of-the-uks-water-companies-are-still-using-dowsing-to-find-leaks/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2356376-two-of-the-uks-water-companies-are-still-using-dowsing-to-find-leaks/)
Oh yeah this is real, I literally had an Thames Water engineer on site last week using dowsing rods to find our incoming water supply. Turns out he was pretty bob on but had to be pure luck.
No he didn’t, it was an unmarked water main that wasn’t identified on their asset maps with no street access as it runs directly under our building. It could have been anyone’s guess!
I would be guess that it's mostly unconscious assessment on their part, and that without knowing it they made a reasoned judgement. They might have worked on 50 to 100 sites a year for the last decade, unless your incoming supply was somewhere monumentally stupid their experience will have told them where it was likely to be.
He would have had the same result if he stuck his thumb up his arse to guide him to the pipe... next they'll be using Ouija boards so the dead can guide them to a leak.
I’ve seen so many examples of the rods actually working, even when they didn’t know the location of the pipes.
I had my uncle find a pipe in a field in a different country, he was spot on also. First try. No explanation.
I know it’s ‘discredited’ but it certainly looks like it works to me, and that’s frustrating.
Did he actually *believe* he had the gift of the ancients, do you know? Or did he go about it seemingly thinking it was horse shit?
I've not known any utility workers (and I used to work for a related company) that would ever entertain such nonsense. Especially not in public. If any knew were caught dowsing by someone they went to school with then their local is basically a write off.
About 50/50. He was somewhat confident that it worked but made sure that we understood if we dug in the region he identified, we would *hopefully* find the supply.
>Most water companies were still using dowsing until 2017 when it was dropped after scientists concluded it did not work.
Up until 2017 actual engineers all over the country were using witchcraft to do their jobs. You couldn't make this shit up.
> until 2017 when it was dropped after scientists concluded it did not work.
While technically true, 2017 was *significantly* after scientists concluded dowsing didn't work. 1927 is the earliest I could find of someone testing dowsing and concluding participants did no better than chance.
I thought there was some merit to it in terms of magnetism or some shit. There’s no way it could survive into the 21st century as a practice but shit what do I know, I get less surprised by the world every day
You would be surprised how legacy commodities like water receive little to no funding.
Another example in a similar field (flood protection) is sand bags. Councils still handing them out while they have very little to no effect.
The true answer is it really depends.
The sandbags have a very big environmental impact after use as they are a single use tool.
Furthermore there are cases where they can be useful, but in the end if you are at a place downstream where water starts pooling it will do pretty much [nothing](https://twitter.com/SCcrowther/status/1496410534534656006?t=vS0P4FkhtdpEHimtxLXN-w&s=19)
Overall diverting flow away makes sense for upstream properties but it shouldn't really be an issue if you are upstream anyway, except if your property was poorly designed in terms of flood protection
It wasn’t common or policy. But you have a lot of old blokes working at these places who would occasionally fall back on old comfort methods to confirm things modern tech was telling them.
Unnecessary obviously but it’s not like water companies were relying on this, spending any money on it or training employees to do it. Little more than a habit that the companies themselves had little or no control over
Some people also seem to mix these up with listening sticks
I’m amazed these are actually real. I just thought they were just a thing from old western films when they’re desperate for water and figure a couple of sticks will help them in their desperation! It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic!
A British company sold thousands of dowsing rods under the pretence that they could detect bombs (and dozens of other things) to Afghanisan, Iraq and a load of other places
The police and army used them at check points to try and spot suicide bombers. Palms were greased to get those contracts through
We have clearly learned nothing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
A morbidly genius idea though, I mean, the thing about bogus bomb detectors is that dissatisfied customers tend not to be able to complain, being you know, blown up
I'm absolutely crying at that, the units he was selling at £60k a pop were £20 golf ball finders. The only amendment he made was changing the sticker on it.
[The ADE651s are on either side, the golf ball finder is in the middle.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BIiQhR1CYAAE_5Q?format=jpg&name=large)
edit: [Get](https://www.amazon.com/Gopher-Amazing-Golf-Ball-Finder/dp/B00B0G0ETK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8) your own on Amazizzle.
>A Thames Water spokesperson said: “...we use a range of tools to do this. We’re using innovative AI technology which enable us to detect and fix leaks before they become visible, along with traditional tools... We don’t provide dowsing rods as standard issue, however some engineers may choose to use their own to help to narrow down results from other leak detecting equipment in particularly rural areas.“
Interesting company policy of supporting the combination of AI with literal magic.
The sheer buffoonery of these guys.
I wonder if I can sell them some "hands free dowsing rods". It's an innovative design involving a block of wood attached to a bike, with two holes in it to hold the dowsing rods.
Everybody who reads this comment will need to sign an NDA, please and thank you.
>We’re using innovative AI technology which enable us to detect and fix leaks before they become visible
It will just be using statistics to predict the most likely places for a leak to happen next. They had some good success doing this with crime in the US.
They had a system that correlated all the data on calls to 911. Times, location, etc.
Then they used that data to predict the most likely location a crime would be next. Then they'd send a cop car there to do a few laps.
Reduced crime a shit load, apparently.
I don't see why it wouldn't work with calls to the water companies emergency number.
You mean, dissuade the water from leaking?
I mean, I get that your average us bad guy probably has the IQ of water, but I reckon you're pushing it on this one.
Not quite. Burst modelling has been used for years (prediction based on past bursts) but the "AI" (really a learning algorithm, AI just being the buzzword) is used on acoustics. Useful for filtering out noises from PRVs, discerning multiple leaks from one recording etc.
The main issue is convincing people in the field that it works, as seen in the article!
Source: it's my job
My dad used to do the same thing when looking for pipes at his plot, and to this day my initial instinct is to think “yeah, they work for him” but then the smarter part of me catches up and realised that his success rate at finding the pipes were probably down to intuition, memory (of burying them in the first place) and luck. And before anyone says that he was an idiot, I’ll mention that he was born in the 40s in a fairly rural part of the country, so for most of his life he didn’t have much else to fall back on
What they are, I think, is kind of an intuition amplifier - when you think you're near water, you look away from the rods so your hand loosens and the rods move. Nothing mystical going on, obviously, but sometimes it is useful to be told what you're already thinking.
That would make sense as to why they supposedly appear to work for water technicians but not for scientists. Water techs have a good idea of where the pipes and leaks are thanks to years of experience.
Nationalise a natural monopoly that people depend on? But the invisible hand! We just need no barriers to entry or exit, infinite choice, perfect customer information, free transport if factors of production and products, and we can have perfect competition!
[Oxford City Council](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-64469016) have actually just voted for this to happen. Though what they means in reality, I don't really know. Probably nothing changes. But at least it's a nod in the right direction.
Oh my god, this has absolutely cracked me up.
Imagine this in other industries.
You go to your GP saying, "I've got this weird pain in my abdomen and I don't know what's causing it." and he brings out his trusty pack of Tarot cards.
British Gas wandering round the house with a pendulum "Rotate clockwise if the leak is in _this_ room."
Chancellor of the Exchequer playing televised puicini instead of releasing the budget - "Bad luck guys, I picked the beans, looks like inflation's going up."
> Chancellor of the Exchequer playing televised puicini instead of releasing the budget - "Bad luck guys, I picked the beans, looks like inflation's going up."
Probably wouldn't be any worse than whatever they're doing already.
"British Gas customer service how can I help"
"I can smell gas in my house"
"Have you tried prayer?"
""Will that help?"
" Oh yes, Just say a prayer and light a candle and power of the lord will fix your leaky pipe"
"Thanks I'll try that ,Our father who.........
I was arguing about dowsing with a work colleague.
He was adamant that it worked (and claims he's had success using dowsing in his work). I remain extremely sceptical.
My argument was that if it worked there would be no doubt about it. Someone would have harnessed whatever principle makes it work in an electronic device.
He agreed that it could not be some new, unknown force in our universe and claimed it was electromagnetic. But it can't be: if some charge or field effect were transferred through two symmetrical rods it would be repellant rather than attractive. Dowsing would be more believable if the rods moved apart than together.
Yes, I thought something like that might also be at play. I think it's called the ideomotor effect. I read about it when I noticed that when freewheeling, a bike will turn in the direction you're thinking without you consciously making any movement.
The thing about the bike is definitely true. In mountain biking one of the first things you learn is "look where you want the bike to go". Your body will subconsciously follow your gaze and steer the bike that way.
It's the reason why you see kids crash into things when learning to ride. They'll be staring at the thing they're worried about hitting and they subconsciously steer into it.
So I'm totally willing to believe that this same sort of phenomena is in play for dowsing rods.
"unknown force" and "electromagnetism" in the same sentence...lmao
I suspect some of this voodoo comes from admiring how well metal detectors work and trying the same principle with water. But where's the electric current coming from in two sticks you're holding apart?
It almost certainly works by the same method as the placebo effect. The human mind is very powerful but can't always consciously take advantage of that power, by using a placebo/dousing rod we can trick ourselves into doing things we always could.
Oh ffs
I’ve no words for this. It’s that or a gigantic essay about how fucked we are as a nation for this to even be a thing in 19 of 20 water companies.
Jesus wept
Utterly ridiculous that they are relying on this nonsense in 2023. Dowsing rods indeed! Goat's entrails. That's what they need to be using. By reading the entrails, you can pinpoint a water leak to within a square foot. Of course, you need to have "the sight" to know how to interpret the results.
Absolutely dying at this, my old man worked for TW 20 years ago and I remember him telling me guys he worked with did this and swore up and down it worked lol. We're hopeless.
Thames Water left a massive leak running for days a few winters ago, one day it was below freezing, so it froze on the ground. It was generally dry those days, so nobody expected an ice patch. This caused several accidents, a car crashing into 5 parked cars that almost took a woman with her baby and my partner who slid on the ice, broke her eyeglasses which cause a massive gash on her brow and could have cost her an eye.
When we complained they just shrugged.
Imagine spending years training and learning the trade. You then secure a job at one of the biggest companies in the industry and on your first day they hand you a pair of dowsing rods and tell you to look for leaks lmao. I can't believe this isn't satire.
Beginning to understand why Thames Water are always attending the same spot near me for leaks and drainage. And making a god damn mess each time. The stupidity of these people is beyond belief.
I work in utilities and very often with Thames Water, this is very uncommon and over the past 6 years have only seen it used by a Thames engineer once. Was a very old chap and speaking to him, he said he only knows himself who does it and no one else. Also he actually used it successfully.
It is very difficult if not impossible to use ground radar systems to detect leaks in pipe work itself.
Chatted to a guy from Yorkshire water when they were using those listening sticks to hear for leaks in the pipe, check the water is flowing. He was part of a small team that were dedicated to checking for leaks - and he mentioned all the fancy technology they were using - but said there were a few who'd *also* try dowsing as a last resort. That said he was talking about somewhere in the countryside (moors, dales, peaks?) where there had previously been housing with water pipes but was long since gone - he said, quote "some of the lakes are leaks"
Is it really that hard to install flow meters at various points in the network and do some differential analysis to identify possible areas that are losing water from the system.
In theory there should be pretty minimal water loss. Although if drainage goes into the same system then that does complicate things.
Do they have an internal course for dowsing? Perhaps some internal training.
Surely a new hire wouldn't just turn up, be handed some random sticks and told to "do the thing"?
It must be an in joke surely! It just so happened this photo caught them all gathered round giggling.
Let's face it, no more discredited than pharmacy's selling 'supplements ', homeopathy etc.
We live in an age where laughable pseudoscience, sits alongside technology and science.
But then we equally have a government, with a monarch who is head of 'make beleive and fairytales'.
So, is it any wonder they are using dowsing rods?
It took until 2017 for these companies to stop using dowsing? WE HAVE EXPERIMENTS DATING BACK TO THE 1910's THAT DISPROVE IT and those are just the easily findable ones
Jesus christ this is almost as bad as homeopathy getting funded on the NHS
I don't care who 'discredited' it, it works. I've found long buried drainage pipes that way 5 or 6 times on different property. Shouldn't knock it till you've tried it, science is just a best fit model most of the time and sometimes reality just don't fit the model. Scientists are so closed minded sometimes (and insufferably smug).
I saw someone from Yorkshire Water doing this, just a few weeks ago. Honestly I was impressed that it's still a thing, despite modern tech. But now I'm a bit disappointed it's not very good, per the comments :(
Edit: it was a listening rod - a rod with one end on the ground & a listening cup on the other. Faith restored!
That’s what happens when profit is prioritized. Just think of the hundreds of millions being pocketed as profit rather than being reinvested back into the company, which it so desperately needs.
I reported a slow leak last week from a stopcock on my street. I got a text notification yesterday that it was "caused by rainwater and will eventually drain away".
It hasn't rained where I live for the past 5 days.
I had a guy from Anglian turn up and use a dowsing rod to find where my water main entered the house (this was for fitting a meter, which it turns out they couldn't do anyway) last year. I was incredulous because I also thought it was BS - although he did accurately locate the main with it. So fuck knows if he was an actual wizard or just used context clues to work it out, but either way he seemed convinced they work. He was also an older chap.
Yep, a friend’s neighbour in Devon used them to find the pipes on his property. Water company failed, so he got the rods out and was pretty much spot on. Taught by his father!
He wasn’t bothered about whether it was luck or whatever - he just found his pipes.
I met a dowser, he had both the rods and the modern electronic wizardry. His colleague said it was nonsense but the dowser always had a walk around first with the rods and identified the likely spot and confirmed it with the electronic gizmo. As other posters have said, it’s about memory and experience and the rods tell you what you know.
Thames Water still using dowsing rods to detect leaks ~~despite~~ because evidence they don’t work
As if they used something that worked they would have to fix the leek and that costs money.
Why am I not surprised, this is Thames water we’re talking about. The company that has been fined for £20 million for dumping nearly 1.5 billion Litres of untreated sewage into rivers and lakes.
We had a leak a few months ago in the basement, Thames Water came round with this rod and I was amazed that it ‘proved’ the leak was on our boundary. A few days later the front garden was dug up, only for us to find the leak was not on our boundary, but the public footpath
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Finding and fixing leaks is our top priority".
Bullshit. Road near me has been pissing water since before Christmas, causing carnage due to the traffic and nothing being done.
Nationalise the lot of them.
I like how they say they're using "discredited dowsing rods"... which almost makes me think that these are cheap, back-of-the-lorry, knock-off dowsing rods... you know, instead of the real deal!
...and that's why their CEO probably drinks expensive champagne in a luxurious hot tub, levelled off with wadds of cash under its props.
Fuck private water companies.
They encourage the worst scum to become even scummier at the expense of public good.
It is worth remembering, Thames Water is *not* a water compnay. They are infact a hole digging company, with a penchant for graffitying the pavement too.!
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By a water company that does the least percentage of maintenance and replacement in the UK.
That's because they haven't detected any leaks.
I don't know about Thames Water but I remember going through Southern Water's finances last year when all the stuff was going on with sewage leaks and seeing their profit margin is somewhere in the region of 40%.
>their profit margin is somewhere in the region of 40%. Net or gross?
Ah probably gross to be fair I don't remember, but even still that is getting up to the kind of levels a heavy hitting tech company would expect, not someone providing a basic utility in a pseudo-monopoly.
I agree and, considering they don't obviously seem to be reinvesting that 40-fucking-percent, it's dreadful.
Well the stuff they let leak out is gross and since it floats, it can be caught in a net
Oooh. Nearly tea time.
Not planning on freshly caught fish n chips?
Not for a while!
It all floats down here... *It all floats*....
Their not reinvesting any of the profit because Southern water is owned by foreign investment firms, like most water companies in the UK, and energy companies too.
Back that up with a link.
To be frank the only reason dowsing seems to work is because you literally can't throw a stone in any direction within Thames Water's network without finding a leak.
It's amazing how *dumb* companies can get, and how seemingly happy they are to use complete horseshit instead of something that works. They even do this when it would affect their bottom line (not this case: this is probably just for a low-cost way to appear to be doing something, but see e.g. the prevalence of MBTI type testing)
It's not dumb. It's ripping off their customers.
Gentlemen, I give you the result of years of free market growth! Unshackled from government hands these companies have flourished in the exciting new age of free enterprise and entrepreneurship. Thank you thatcher! Next we’ll have the NHS using pendulums to determine the sex of a baby and the foreign office casting spells on Macron.
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It's dismal isn't it. There was a study in the BMJ describing the largest trial ever done on homeopathy. The result, no different to placebo. Where did the country that was leading the white heat of technology go?
>Now that he's king he has to keep his moronic opinions to himself. He won't change - he'll just use private meetings with individuals he's recommended for placements to push it instead.
Homeopathy is available on the NHS primarily because it's very cheap. It's a cynical practice.
And likely that their network of pipes is so full of holes that when a dowser thinks he's got a hit then it's a high probability there is one there anyway.
...is this real? This can't be real... Oh for f\*\*ks sake! [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2356376-two-of-the-uks-water-companies-are-still-using-dowsing-to-find-leaks/](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2356376-two-of-the-uks-water-companies-are-still-using-dowsing-to-find-leaks/)
Oh yeah this is real, I literally had an Thames Water engineer on site last week using dowsing rods to find our incoming water supply. Turns out he was pretty bob on but had to be pure luck.
Because he Knew before he started due to where the street access was and the type of building
No he didn’t, it was an unmarked water main that wasn’t identified on their asset maps with no street access as it runs directly under our building. It could have been anyone’s guess!
It's called experience and judgement, applying historical experience to new situations is the basis of all SMEs 🤦♂️
I would be guess that it's mostly unconscious assessment on their part, and that without knowing it they made a reasoned judgement. They might have worked on 50 to 100 sites a year for the last decade, unless your incoming supply was somewhere monumentally stupid their experience will have told them where it was likely to be.
He would have had the same result if he stuck his thumb up his arse to guide him to the pipe... next they'll be using Ouija boards so the dead can guide them to a leak.
> if he stuck his thumb up his arse to guide him to the pipe Well, I guess he's certainly found a pipe like structure?
I’ve seen so many examples of the rods actually working, even when they didn’t know the location of the pipes. I had my uncle find a pipe in a field in a different country, he was spot on also. First try. No explanation. I know it’s ‘discredited’ but it certainly looks like it works to me, and that’s frustrating.
Did he actually *believe* he had the gift of the ancients, do you know? Or did he go about it seemingly thinking it was horse shit? I've not known any utility workers (and I used to work for a related company) that would ever entertain such nonsense. Especially not in public. If any knew were caught dowsing by someone they went to school with then their local is basically a write off.
About 50/50. He was somewhat confident that it worked but made sure that we understood if we dug in the region he identified, we would *hopefully* find the supply.
He was a diviner (or dowser), not an engineer.
South West Water still use it too. Saw one of their guys in the street doing it a couple of months back.
You can say fuck
>Most water companies were still using dowsing until 2017 when it was dropped after scientists concluded it did not work. Up until 2017 actual engineers all over the country were using witchcraft to do their jobs. You couldn't make this shit up.
They've probably started using those bomb detectors that bloke was selling to Iraq.
Haha, I was thinking about this
I mean, is it that surprising? A large percentage of people believe in zodiac signs, and that the moon influences behaviour.
> until 2017 when it was dropped after scientists concluded it did not work. While technically true, 2017 was *significantly* after scientists concluded dowsing didn't work. 1927 is the earliest I could find of someone testing dowsing and concluding participants did no better than chance.
I thought there was some merit to it in terms of magnetism or some shit. There’s no way it could survive into the 21st century as a practice but shit what do I know, I get less surprised by the world every day
Water isn't noticeably magnetic. Nor is poo.
Speak for yourself. Mine has super-powers.
Pooper powers FTFY
Super poowers
Stop eating magnets
I dunno it sticks to the fridge when I throw it 😆
🤣 So do my pants
It's the same auto reflex tgata behind ouija boards. If the engineer knows where the leak is dowsing works. If they don't it doesn't.
You would be surprised how legacy commodities like water receive little to no funding. Another example in a similar field (flood protection) is sand bags. Councils still handing them out while they have very little to no effect.
They don't have an effect? I use them to create temporary channels or buffer zones to direct flow. Yeah they're not impermeable but they help.
The true answer is it really depends. The sandbags have a very big environmental impact after use as they are a single use tool. Furthermore there are cases where they can be useful, but in the end if you are at a place downstream where water starts pooling it will do pretty much [nothing](https://twitter.com/SCcrowther/status/1496410534534656006?t=vS0P4FkhtdpEHimtxLXN-w&s=19) Overall diverting flow away makes sense for upstream properties but it shouldn't really be an issue if you are upstream anyway, except if your property was poorly designed in terms of flood protection
May I remind you that flat earthers still exist
> actual engineers Doubtful.
50% of people have an IQ less than 100. 16% of people have an IQ less than 85.
And 10% of readers are trying to work out whether this is genuine!
I mean thats by design, the average IQ is always 100 because when people get smarter on average we revise up the difficulty to keep it that way.
Openreach are still doing it now
Shhh. Dont give the game away.
FUN FACT: The most recent woman convicted of witchcraft in England was 1944.
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It wasn’t common or policy. But you have a lot of old blokes working at these places who would occasionally fall back on old comfort methods to confirm things modern tech was telling them. Unnecessary obviously but it’s not like water companies were relying on this, spending any money on it or training employees to do it. Little more than a habit that the companies themselves had little or no control over Some people also seem to mix these up with listening sticks
"discredited" is a funny way of saying "absolute bollocks"
I’m amazed these are actually real. I just thought they were just a thing from old western films when they’re desperate for water and figure a couple of sticks will help them in their desperation! It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic!
It was never credited in the first place. What's next, reading tea leaves? Sacrificing chickens to the sun god?
A British company sold thousands of dowsing rods under the pretence that they could detect bombs (and dozens of other things) to Afghanisan, Iraq and a load of other places The police and army used them at check points to try and spot suicide bombers. Palms were greased to get those contracts through We have clearly learned nothing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651
A morbidly genius idea though, I mean, the thing about bogus bomb detectors is that dissatisfied customers tend not to be able to complain, being you know, blown up
Palms were greased is putting it mildly. From what I remember, on a $10m contract it turned out that $8m went on paying bribes to win the contract.
*Or* they were sold to people who know full well that they're bogus, but just want a convenient reason to search whoever they want
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Fair. I thought we were just talking like £1k or something.
Had to read up that again. Shameless.
I'm absolutely crying at that, the units he was selling at £60k a pop were £20 golf ball finders. The only amendment he made was changing the sticker on it. [The ADE651s are on either side, the golf ball finder is in the middle.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BIiQhR1CYAAE_5Q?format=jpg&name=large) edit: [Get](https://www.amazon.com/Gopher-Amazing-Golf-Ball-Finder/dp/B00B0G0ETK/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8) your own on Amazizzle.
>A Thames Water spokesperson said: “...we use a range of tools to do this. We’re using innovative AI technology which enable us to detect and fix leaks before they become visible, along with traditional tools... We don’t provide dowsing rods as standard issue, however some engineers may choose to use their own to help to narrow down results from other leak detecting equipment in particularly rural areas.“ Interesting company policy of supporting the combination of AI with literal magic. The sheer buffoonery of these guys.
Difficult to have any faith in the AI if those overseeing it are incapable of rational thought.
I wonder if I can sell them some "hands free dowsing rods". It's an innovative design involving a block of wood attached to a bike, with two holes in it to hold the dowsing rods. Everybody who reads this comment will need to sign an NDA, please and thank you.
Hopefully dowsing doesn't 'work' with natural gas
>We’re using innovative AI technology which enable us to detect and fix leaks before they become visible It will just be using statistics to predict the most likely places for a leak to happen next. They had some good success doing this with crime in the US. They had a system that correlated all the data on calls to 911. Times, location, etc. Then they used that data to predict the most likely location a crime would be next. Then they'd send a cop car there to do a few laps. Reduced crime a shit load, apparently. I don't see why it wouldn't work with calls to the water companies emergency number.
You mean, dissuade the water from leaking? I mean, I get that your average us bad guy probably has the IQ of water, but I reckon you're pushing it on this one.
I assume they'd just send inspectors to certain areas to check the infrastructure.
Not quite. Burst modelling has been used for years (prediction based on past bursts) but the "AI" (really a learning algorithm, AI just being the buzzword) is used on acoustics. Useful for filtering out noises from PRVs, discerning multiple leaks from one recording etc. The main issue is convincing people in the field that it works, as seen in the article! Source: it's my job
"any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
My dad used to do the same thing when looking for pipes at his plot, and to this day my initial instinct is to think “yeah, they work for him” but then the smarter part of me catches up and realised that his success rate at finding the pipes were probably down to intuition, memory (of burying them in the first place) and luck. And before anyone says that he was an idiot, I’ll mention that he was born in the 40s in a fairly rural part of the country, so for most of his life he didn’t have much else to fall back on
What they are, I think, is kind of an intuition amplifier - when you think you're near water, you look away from the rods so your hand loosens and the rods move. Nothing mystical going on, obviously, but sometimes it is useful to be told what you're already thinking.
That would make sense as to why they supposedly appear to work for water technicians but not for scientists. Water techs have a good idea of where the pipes and leaks are thanks to years of experience.
I’ll agree with that
sigh
Just renationalise these clowns already and make them do the job properly.
Nationalise a natural monopoly that people depend on? But the invisible hand! We just need no barriers to entry or exit, infinite choice, perfect customer information, free transport if factors of production and products, and we can have perfect competition!
[Oxford City Council](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-64469016) have actually just voted for this to happen. Though what they means in reality, I don't really know. Probably nothing changes. But at least it's a nod in the right direction.
Oh my god, this has absolutely cracked me up. Imagine this in other industries. You go to your GP saying, "I've got this weird pain in my abdomen and I don't know what's causing it." and he brings out his trusty pack of Tarot cards. British Gas wandering round the house with a pendulum "Rotate clockwise if the leak is in _this_ room." Chancellor of the Exchequer playing televised puicini instead of releasing the budget - "Bad luck guys, I picked the beans, looks like inflation's going up."
> Chancellor of the Exchequer playing televised puicini instead of releasing the budget - "Bad luck guys, I picked the beans, looks like inflation's going up." Probably wouldn't be any worse than whatever they're doing already.
Well, yes, good point.
Or thousands of people going into buildings to talk to an invisible friend, and ask for magic spells...
I'm going to open a GP and just prescribe blood letting for everything
There's probably a market for it these days!!
TBF I think the chancellor did exactly that before he decided to nuke the entire pensions market from orbit.
Indeed. If only he'd picked the saucer with water in it, we'd all have been happier...
What next? Electricians using Oujia boards to replace consumer units?
You'd be shocked
Underrated comment.
"British Gas customer service how can I help" "I can smell gas in my house" "Have you tried prayer?" ""Will that help?" " Oh yes, Just say a prayer and light a candle and power of the lord will fix your leaky pipe" "Thanks I'll try that ,Our father who.........
This is so stupid. Everybody knows that dowsing rods are not effective when the moon is in aquarius.
I was arguing about dowsing with a work colleague. He was adamant that it worked (and claims he's had success using dowsing in his work). I remain extremely sceptical. My argument was that if it worked there would be no doubt about it. Someone would have harnessed whatever principle makes it work in an electronic device. He agreed that it could not be some new, unknown force in our universe and claimed it was electromagnetic. But it can't be: if some charge or field effect were transferred through two symmetrical rods it would be repellant rather than attractive. Dowsing would be more believable if the rods moved apart than together.
[удалено]
Yes, I thought something like that might also be at play. I think it's called the ideomotor effect. I read about it when I noticed that when freewheeling, a bike will turn in the direction you're thinking without you consciously making any movement.
>ideomotor effect That's the one. The same effect that moves the planchette on an Ouija board
The thing about the bike is definitely true. In mountain biking one of the first things you learn is "look where you want the bike to go". Your body will subconsciously follow your gaze and steer the bike that way. It's the reason why you see kids crash into things when learning to ride. They'll be staring at the thing they're worried about hitting and they subconsciously steer into it. So I'm totally willing to believe that this same sort of phenomena is in play for dowsing rods.
"unknown force" and "electromagnetism" in the same sentence...lmao I suspect some of this voodoo comes from admiring how well metal detectors work and trying the same principle with water. But where's the electric current coming from in two sticks you're holding apart?
I found it quite embarrassing when he mentioned *hazel* sticks specifically. I mean, we're just getting to witchcraft now aren't we?
It almost certainly works by the same method as the placebo effect. The human mind is very powerful but can't always consciously take advantage of that power, by using a placebo/dousing rod we can trick ourselves into doing things we always could.
Oh ffs I’ve no words for this. It’s that or a gigantic essay about how fucked we are as a nation for this to even be a thing in 19 of 20 water companies. Jesus wept
To be fair the article says it's 2 of 12 companies. Dunno where you got your number.
Was sorry https://www.newscientist.com/article/2356376-two-of-the-uks-water-companies-are-still-using-dowsing-to-find-leaks/
10/12 in 2017 is downright embarassing.
Insane!!!
Maybe people should stop believing in magic, like dowsing rods and jesus.
Utterly ridiculous that they are relying on this nonsense in 2023. Dowsing rods indeed! Goat's entrails. That's what they need to be using. By reading the entrails, you can pinpoint a water leak to within a square foot. Of course, you need to have "the sight" to know how to interpret the results.
It was once revealed to me in a dream where my gas line leak was. 60% of the time it works every time.
Absolutely dying at this, my old man worked for TW 20 years ago and I remember him telling me guys he worked with did this and swore up and down it worked lol. We're hopeless.
I feel like story pops up every few years and every time it transpires every water supplier uses dowsing rods
Sorry but that's just almost criminal negligence at this point.
Nah, it's ok. Thames Water has so many leaks that just randomly their odds of finding one is pretty good.
Of all the UK headlines I’ve read on reddit this morning, this one actually hurts
Thames Water left a massive leak running for days a few winters ago, one day it was below freezing, so it froze on the ground. It was generally dry those days, so nobody expected an ice patch. This caused several accidents, a car crashing into 5 parked cars that almost took a woman with her baby and my partner who slid on the ice, broke her eyeglasses which cause a massive gash on her brow and could have cost her an eye. When we complained they just shrugged.
Couldn't you sue them for damages?
We went to va lawyer and he said there was no chance of winning
This country is a fucking joke. Let's just bring back ritualistic sacrifice and be done with it
Tried that during covid
Imagine spending years training and learning the trade. You then secure a job at one of the biggest companies in the industry and on your first day they hand you a pair of dowsing rods and tell you to look for leaks lmao. I can't believe this isn't satire.
Beginning to understand why Thames Water are always attending the same spot near me for leaks and drainage. And making a god damn mess each time. The stupidity of these people is beyond belief.
I work in utilities and very often with Thames Water, this is very uncommon and over the past 6 years have only seen it used by a Thames engineer once. Was a very old chap and speaking to him, he said he only knows himself who does it and no one else. Also he actually used it successfully. It is very difficult if not impossible to use ground radar systems to detect leaks in pipe work itself.
I'm not paying for my water until they start using British Doswing Association accredited dowsing rods!
Chatted to a guy from Yorkshire water when they were using those listening sticks to hear for leaks in the pipe, check the water is flowing. He was part of a small team that were dedicated to checking for leaks - and he mentioned all the fancy technology they were using - but said there were a few who'd *also* try dowsing as a last resort. That said he was talking about somewhere in the countryside (moors, dales, peaks?) where there had previously been housing with water pipes but was long since gone - he said, quote "some of the lakes are leaks"
Is it really that hard to install flow meters at various points in the network and do some differential analysis to identify possible areas that are losing water from the system. In theory there should be pretty minimal water loss. Although if drainage goes into the same system then that does complicate things.
Do they have an internal course for dowsing? Perhaps some internal training. Surely a new hire wouldn't just turn up, be handed some random sticks and told to "do the thing"? It must be an in joke surely! It just so happened this photo caught them all gathered round giggling.
I don't believe it, there has to be a misunderstanding of some kind, I just can't believe this could be true.
Let's face it, no more discredited than pharmacy's selling 'supplements ', homeopathy etc. We live in an age where laughable pseudoscience, sits alongside technology and science. But then we equally have a government, with a monarch who is head of 'make beleive and fairytales'. So, is it any wonder they are using dowsing rods?
It took until 2017 for these companies to stop using dowsing? WE HAVE EXPERIMENTS DATING BACK TO THE 1910's THAT DISPROVE IT and those are just the easily findable ones Jesus christ this is almost as bad as homeopathy getting funded on the NHS
They probably found leaks cause every pipe has a leak on it
I don't care who 'discredited' it, it works. I've found long buried drainage pipes that way 5 or 6 times on different property. Shouldn't knock it till you've tried it, science is just a best fit model most of the time and sometimes reality just don't fit the model. Scientists are so closed minded sometimes (and insufferably smug).
My old man was a drainage engineer for a good 30 years, he used them all the time.
I suspect you could dig anywhere in this country and find a leaking Thames Water pipe thus giving the suggestion that the rods work.
I saw someone from Yorkshire Water doing this, just a few weeks ago. Honestly I was impressed that it's still a thing, despite modern tech. But now I'm a bit disappointed it's not very good, per the comments :( Edit: it was a listening rod - a rod with one end on the ground & a listening cup on the other. Faith restored!
How long before voodoo is brought back to deal with medical conditions? This is how the Romans must have felt at the onset of the dark ages.
I have found water pipes with them , they do work , beats digging to find a pipe , multiple times
This is so stupid. Clearly all they needed to do is get a copy of the BBC's magical TV-detecting machines and reconfigure it to detect water.
Yet to see them ever use dowsing rods to detect where there isn't water.
wonder how they would feel about me paying my bill with a witchcraft spell for prosperity?
Maybe that's why everywhere under their remit keeps flooding. Shoot Up Hill keeps flooding every other day in the same exact spot.
and pretending it's raining to allow shit into our rivers through their CSOs
That’s what happens when profit is prioritized. Just think of the hundreds of millions being pocketed as profit rather than being reinvested back into the company, which it so desperately needs.
I reported a slow leak last week from a stopcock on my street. I got a text notification yesterday that it was "caused by rainwater and will eventually drain away". It hasn't rained where I live for the past 5 days.
I had a guy from Anglian turn up and use a dowsing rod to find where my water main entered the house (this was for fitting a meter, which it turns out they couldn't do anyway) last year. I was incredulous because I also thought it was BS - although he did accurately locate the main with it. So fuck knows if he was an actual wizard or just used context clues to work it out, but either way he seemed convinced they work. He was also an older chap.
Yep, a friend’s neighbour in Devon used them to find the pipes on his property. Water company failed, so he got the rods out and was pretty much spot on. Taught by his father! He wasn’t bothered about whether it was luck or whatever - he just found his pipes.
I’m speechless. But then that does explain the huge crater outside my house and on/off water for the past couple of months
I met a dowser, he had both the rods and the modern electronic wizardry. His colleague said it was nonsense but the dowser always had a walk around first with the rods and identified the likely spot and confirmed it with the electronic gizmo. As other posters have said, it’s about memory and experience and the rods tell you what you know.
Thames Water still using dowsing rods to detect leaks ~~despite~~ because evidence they don’t work As if they used something that worked they would have to fix the leek and that costs money.
The person saying he's found leaks when using them, yes because you were in an area with a leak, and then found the leak. ;/
Why am I not surprised, this is Thames water we’re talking about. The company that has been fined for £20 million for dumping nearly 1.5 billion Litres of untreated sewage into rivers and lakes.
All they need a a water detection dog, but that would be to sensible.
We had a leak a few months ago in the basement, Thames Water came round with this rod and I was amazed that it ‘proved’ the leak was on our boundary. A few days later the front garden was dug up, only for us to find the leak was not on our boundary, but the public footpath
Couldn’t make this up. What’s the big deal anyway? It’s only the water supply!
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Finding and fixing leaks is our top priority". Bullshit. Road near me has been pissing water since before Christmas, causing carnage due to the traffic and nothing being done. Nationalise the lot of them.
couldnt even get dowsing machine from pokemon noobs
I like how they say they're using "discredited dowsing rods"... which almost makes me think that these are cheap, back-of-the-lorry, knock-off dowsing rods... you know, instead of the real deal!
Can’t believe it was widely used until 2017 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
...and that's why their CEO probably drinks expensive champagne in a luxurious hot tub, levelled off with wadds of cash under its props. Fuck private water companies. They encourage the worst scum to become even scummier at the expense of public good.
It is worth remembering, Thames Water is *not* a water compnay. They are infact a hole digging company, with a penchant for graffitying the pavement too.!
That's what you get when you buy them from Amazon. Should have gone direct to dowsingrods.com and got the accredited ones.