Buried bottles, clay pots and other tricks to keep the soil moist for long - Are they effective?

Just tend to think if the gas people had the same attitude to leaks that the water people do, there would be about a hundred explosions every day.

Seen water leaks going on for weeks without any repairs being done, one I know of has stripped the surface off the road before it was finally repaired 6 weeks later.

Maybe we should pay more for water, I dont know?

But when I had a leak on my property the water company dug five holes looking for it, and this bloke wandered around with a couple of bent clothes hangers, waiting for them to cross, in order to find the leak.
Are these people serious?
Or was that just a joke for my benefit.

 

Personally I find the whole idea of rabdomancy, or hydromancy, completely bonkers.
But it is true that I have met people who seemed actually convinced it worked and used it at work??
When it comes to digging a shallow well, I think it could work in the sense that a person doing it often might have developed a good intuition based on say vegetation and morphology of the area. So it might be that they think the wand is 'telling' them something, but in reality the intuition comes subconsciously from practise.
There is also a psychological component, in that if you are asking others to spend hours digging on a hunch, waving a magic stick might feel more comforting than throwing a coin :D

So perhaps the bloke looking for the leak was not having fun at your expenses, but genuinely believed that. Five holes seems quite indicative that it was wishful thinking, though, and the scene you describe sounds right out of Monty Python

There are formulas to estimate which direction liquids might travel underground, or backward so to identify the source. But of course they rely on knowing the porosity of materials underground, so they tipically involve lots of holes for sampling or other expensive solutions, and so they are only suitable for large scale applications.

I think technology is changing things though. It is already possible to buy relatively affordable and reliable devices to find leaks in walls. Perhaps somebody will come up with probes you can stick in the ground to narrow down the source of leaks?

It is possible that paying more for water would allow water utilities to be at least more responsive with smaller leaks. But because, unlike with gas and electricity utilities, customers are tipically stuck with their local provider, they face many constraints when raising prices. Or at least they did in the past.
After all it is an essential service and, because of what they provide, they are a monopoly of sort, so they are not too free to hike prices considerably.

 

Lol.

 

my neighbor puts plastic milk gallon jugs in his garden, buried.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.
I actually saw something like that online, but in the bottom of large planters with a pipe to refill and a basket fit in, so the water can wick to the soil.
Actually, milk jugs have lots of advantages, being quite sturdy, large and food grade.

 

That's quite a collection of funny ones :D
I was thinking specifically of this:

 

Well.. I spent a few hours digging the border in the garden.
It has clay, which probably explains why the grass does not like it at all, but under the first, pretty dry few inches, it is quite moist.
So perphaps I should not worry.
I will add better soil on top and in the pots, and see how it goes.
Anyway I have time. My new tomatoes arrived yesterday from Suttons but a few days late, and did not like the trip a bit I suspect.
So for now ther are recovering in their new pots, in my living room.

A friend who does pottery as a hobby was quite interested in the concept though, so she might even find the time to make me a traditional one, with the long neck. That would be interesting to try.

 

I went on holiday and most things survived, but admittedly the weather got a bit more rainy than in June-July and the temperatures were lower.

Garden unattended for two weeks with no irrigation, tried a few different things..