Q: Why should I hire GeoH₂O to locate a place to drill?
Drilling a dry well is frustrating and costly. Testing a specific site replaces drilling. Sounding ten sites is like drilling ten holes at a fraction of the cost of drilling a single well. We can identify the best locations to drill to produce the most water on your property.
Q: How do you decide where to test for water?
We begin with a preliminary geological assessment and research of local well data, followed by a site walk on the property. We need to make sure that our survey vehicle or a drilling rig can access the site. If the vehicles can’t make it, there’s no point in surveying there. Clients often have specific locations in mind where a well would be convenient and most helpful. We tend to start there. It can be as simple as eliminating unsuitable land due to steep slope, septic system setbacks, and other factors.
Q: Does your method identify salty groundwater?
At 200 ppm of sodium, the seismoelectric effect begins to be negated. In other words, salty water does not emit a signal. This is advantageous because salty zones do not become targets for drilling.
Q: Do you always find water?
Not always. Sometimes the accessible areas we survey lack an aquifer or saturated zone underground. Sometimes the detected amounts of groundwater are too small to yield anything substantial after the drilling process.
Q: How much water do I need for a household?
The average American uses 80 to 100 gallons per day, according to the United States Geological Survey, so a household of four people will use approximately 320 to 400 gallons per day. A consistent yield of 1 to 4 gallons per minute, along with a storage tank, would allow for peak demand, watering outdoor plants, and other needs.
Q: What about water dowsers?
Water dowsing (also known as divining or witching) remains a widespread traditional practice, but scientific evaluation consistently demonstrates that it lacks empirical validity.
Scientific Consensus & Evidence
Lack of Controlled Success: Numerous controlled double-blind field trials—including the notable 1990 Munich tests—demonstrate that dowsers perform no better than random chance when tasked with locating hidden water under rigorous test conditions.
The Ideomotor Effect: Dowsers are typically genuine in their beliefs; the movement of the dowsing rod or pendulum is caused by the ideomotor effect—unconscious, involuntary muscular movements triggered by subconscious expectations or subtle environmental cues (such as changes in vegetation or terrain).
Geological Realities: Groundwater is often broadly distributed beneath the surface in regional aquifers or permeable rock layers rather than narrow, underground "rivers." In many regions, drilling almost anywhere will hit water at a certain depth, creating the illusion that a dowser’s prediction was successful.
Q: What about VLF?
Very Low Frequency (VLF) electromagnetics has a long, respectable history in near-surface geophysics, but it comes with distinct physical limitations when compared to seismoelectric investigation. VLF can identify underground anomalies such as faults and fractures but cannot detect if they contain groundwater; in contrast, seismoelectric exploration reveals whether there is water, along with the depth and permeability of the aquifer.