modern scientific methods

so the people from the water board were walking up and down our street today to try and sort out a problem....fair enough.they knocked nicely on the door to say they would be turning the wtaer off....

but then i see them using divining roads walking up and down the road.........come on ..there must be more scientific and modern methods to find the water pipes surely....haven't they got a map

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Comments

  • No waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay !
  • BarklesBarkles ✭✭✭

    What a time for them to spring that on us.

  • Ian MIan M ✭✭✭

    Do you know the name of the water company? 

  • RPS. was on the vans.......made me thing of birds for some reason

  • Ian MIan M ✭✭✭

    Thanks seren, it's a bit frightnening that someone's water bill is funding such things.

  • and now the other company is digging up the road.its not an emerge3ncy so why are they digging this time of night.if my kids were small i would be pissed off as they were always getting rady for bed now

  • seren nos wrote (see)

    and now the other company is digging up the road.its not an emerge3ncy so why are they digging this time of night.if my kids were small i would be pissed off as they were always getting rady for bed now.

     

    nice to know you are an expert in these things Seren.  my husband works for dwr cymru and he just loves customers who dont care where their water comes from or where their s**t goes when they flush, just as long as they aren't inconvenienced.

     

  • SuperCazSuperCaz ✭✭✭

    How do you know that its not an emrgency?

  • SuperCaz wrote (see)

    How do you know that its not an emrgency?

    Miffi wrote (see)
    seren nos wrote (see)

    and now the other company is digging up the road.its not an emerge3ncy so why are they digging this time of night.if my kids were small i would be pissed off as they were always getting rady for bed now.

     

    nice to know you are an expert in these things Seren.  my husband works for dwr cymru and he just loves customers who dont care where their water comes from or where their s**t goes when they flush, just as long as they aren't inconvenienced.

     

     

     

    Its not an emergency beacuse the guys have been employed just to dig the holes....we will now wait for the guys to come some time to replace the pipe from the mains across the road to the stopcock of the house opposite.....

    it happens every year or so as one of the houses decides to get rid of the lead pipes supplying the property.......

    if you get rid of your lead pipe the water board replaces the lead pipe to your stopcock..

     

    so I still think that for a routine job to be digging with electric drills etc and a digger at 8:30 at night is not on....and  i was very polite I was quite happy to put up with my water going on and off today as they tried to work out whose water was connected to what...,,and no i did not have a go at the men digging as its probably not their decision to work that late

    and if you work for welsh water........can you find out if they really haven't come up with anything more scientific than divining roads

  • RPS are an environmental consultancy, not a water company

  • right......they must be employed to mark out the places for the diggers to dig........if its like the gas.......

    another company will do the pipes and then another to fill in the hole and then yet another to do the top tarmac......image

     

  • SuperCazSuperCaz ✭✭✭

    RPS are most likely carrying out an environmental assessment to see what actions the water board need to take.  I'm not an expert in the specific contracts that RPS have with the water board but they are probably concerned about the level of heavy metals that have soaked into the ground around the pipes, or there could even be some contaminated ground that is causing something nasty to leach into the drinking water.

    I did used to work for the labs that tested drinking water quality and if we found something unusual and potentially harmful in the water then action was taken immediatly.  It may be that the labs only discovered a problem in the afternoon and it was decided to protect people by resolving the problem immediatly rather than allow people to continue to drink the water for several more hours before investigating at a time that was convenient for sleeping children.

  • no pipes have been touched caz........just the holes dug

     

    many house around here still have the lead pipes....RPS were around early this morning........

    I appreciate in emergencies then all the amenities have to work all through the night to get the supplies back on.

    we will see how long until the next bunch come to actually change the pipes.....I imagine it will have to be a priority as they haven't left enough room for a fire engine to get down the streetimage

  • But dowsing ? Seriously ? This is the 21st century ?

    Do they use crystal balls to calculate your usage ?

    And they should get their alchemist department onto turning all those lead pipes into gold.
  • SuperCazSuperCaz ✭✭✭

    Exactly Seren, they won't have potentially made the problem worse by disturbing the pipes until they have carried out an investigation to determine the scale of the problem, or whether they even have the right cause of the problem.  Even modern technology can't always identify the problem through 2 metres of concrete and soil.

    They probably had to take samples and now those samples are winging their way off to some poor sod on minimum wage who is going to have to work through the night to get the results back as soon as possible before people start complaining about having their road dug up.  Oh yes, I rmember the days...

  • seren nos wrote (see)

    right......they must be employed to mark out the places for the diggers to dig........if its like the gas.......

    another company will do the pipes and then another to fill in the hole and then yet another to do the top tarmac......image

     

     


    Um, well it makes sense to have the holes dug and waiting for the crew who are trained to do the pipe stuff and then the first lot reinstate.  Clean water contractors have very strict controls, as you would hope, about contamination of the water supply so it makes sense to keep the two operations separate.

    as for the time of night they are working.. could be lots of reasons, eg council wont give permission for work on the highway during 'busy' times.  shops and businesses complain to their councillors if roads are dug up and they feel they are losing business.  the water company are being hit by big fines from Ofwat for not getting jobs done within time targets.  they wont be working late just for the fun of it.

    Dowsing, should have no way of working.  any yet oddly its still used by some of these guys.

  • oiyouoiyou ✭✭✭

    I'm curious to know why the dowsing rods thing is seen as a problem. If it works it works. If it ain't broke........

    I don't doubt there's a gadget on sale for £1000 that would do the same job but be useless if the battery runs flat.

  • I'm not doubting that they might work oi you....

    but I have nbot come across any scientific data that saya that it has been prooved.....

    #

    so i was suprised and amused that they were using some.........maybe I nave been tricked bu time time who seem to have so many scientiic gadgets to help them try and work out what is under the surface......that i thought that the water people would have something a bit more up to date.....

    the other person had a stick that she could tap on the ground and kind of listen to through a kind of ear piece.also seemed very victorian......

     

     

  • The stick and ear piece method is very well known. Sound travels much better through solid than through gas. Using the stick in contact with ground and ear is a very good way of hearing running water in the soil - a good method of locating leaks so that the correct section of road is dug up.

  • There is no scientific evidence for dowsing working.

    You might as well guess as its that accurate.



    If it did work - there's a million dollar award to be won for proving these powers.



    Did you hear that a guy got sent to jail for selling dowsing technology to iraq ? They were meant to be able to detect explosives and each "detector" sold for thousands. He was costing peoples lives.
  • Quote function not working for me but re: dowsing rods, there is no evidence that they work, but lots of evidence that they don't work in controlled lab trials. Its just random. Thats what's shocking to me, rather than the road being dug up (but which would probably make me cross too depending on how long it went of for). 

    Then again, we are talking about Wales here. Have they got mobile phones there yet? imageimage

  • oiyouoiyou ✭✭✭

    It would be interesting to know if it's an "official" tool, or just something that particular worker uses. If it is no better than chance a company would soon stop using it.
    Assuming the hole was eventually dug in the right spot you'd have to say that someone got it about right.

  • It's probably not that hard to hit a bit of pipe ? They know where the main one is from their metal grid things. I bet it's no more accurate than guessing.
  •  

    Soup Dragon wrote (see)

    Then again, we are talking about Wales here. Have they got mobile phones there yet? imageimage

     

    https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/72184_557579397615990_1125043187_n.jpg might tell you what Wales has... image

  • we have two massibe holes now and they have come back to make another hole bigger this morning

     

    obviously the men with the digger are just digging the holes where they were marked......

    the one my side of the road was marked exactly where it was dug up for my neighbour last year as you can still see the square tarmarc replacement..and is the same spot that they dug up for us 20 years ago......

    and on the plans of the street its exactly where the main water pipes goes down the street image

     

    i could have saved them a few bob if they had asked meimage

  • as an aside, the road outside our office is being relaid this week - the machine planing the surface off says "Hockley Surfacing - probably the best Surface Contractor in the World" - all written in the Carlsberg beer font....  image

  • Perhaps the person with the divining rod thought that people might be watching what they were doing and decided to wind them up by pretending to use divining rods.

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