Call before you dig

[CoyPatton]

That's the conduit you're seeing, not the fiber line...

I was planning to comment that those bright orange pieces he had seen sticking out of the ground were simply the conduit probably installed by a different contractor than the one that installed the fiber cable.

 

[sunandsand]

Florida has 811, call before you dig. (Possibly other states as well.) It is a help but they hire subcontractors who may or may not do a good job. The sub takes photos of the paint marks and flagging to document what they found. If you dig and hit something they didn't find, I would think it isn't your problem, they screwed up.

I did have a similar problem with a cable company a few years ago. I wanted (or more accurately, Dear Bride wanted) cable tv, the company insisted they didn't serve our neighborhood. They were even nasty about it, too. I said that I was going to take a ladder and a pair of cable cutters and cut that d*mn cable and then we'd see who owns it. An hour later they called and said, yes, it is ours. We decided we didn't want to be their customer and went with dish (another circus, just with different monkeys).

Another issue with the same cable company . . . one of their in-line cable amplifiers slid off their truck and landed at my feet - yes, really! I picked it up and phoned them the next day, hey I have one of your devices, do you want it?

Technician STORMED into my office (in a bank building) and DEMANDED the IMMEDIATE RETURN of THEIR PROPERTY!!!! (Some thank you.) I said I'd bring it tomorrow, it isn't in my office.

That evening I opened it up and adjusted every tuned circuit I could find, distorted every wire-wound choke, and generally made sure that while the thing still worked, it would NEVER again work properly, and would drive them nuts troubleshooting it until they threw it away and replaced it.

Next day, I gave it back to them, here you go (and go bleep yourselves), have a nice day.

Best Regards,
Mike/Florida

 

[LowellBen]

Back when I was in charge of taking care of our subdivision roads, we had several projects that required locates. This is in rural Colorado. I knew our excavator well and to save his time and our money, I was the one who called in the locates. First couple of years was no problem. I would spec the locate position and reserve a time. I would meet the tech, he would do the locate in maybe 15 minutes and then be gone.

The last year I was having to do that stuff, things went down hill. The state locate service was making things more difficult to even schedule the locate. Then it was one person comes out to locate the phone and another comes out to do the power. Both lines were always in the same trench which was under our dirt roads. The power guy was always on schedule and got the job done the first time. The gal doing the phone had major problems. She never showed up on time, couldn't read the locate map and was always going to the wrong location. It would take her several trips to do a single 15 minute job. One time I had to call her boss to make her come back out to redo a locate correctly

Our locates were simple, but had to be done to keep things legal.

In the past 5 years, excavators have cut two major fiber trunks in this area. One was near a highway intersection, took out 911, internet and phone service for a several county area for several days. Another was in a town about 30 miles away. That one took out our internet and cell service for a little over 24 hours. And then a week to 10 days ago I had to make a trip into town. Some sections of main street are getting reworked. They cut a gas line.

 

[azbinder]

This happened near me in 2008

I can relate to this, although not as big of a cable.
In the late 80's, the dealer I was working for dealer that was doing a building expansion and decided to put in gas. In Arizona they use "Blue Stake" to mark everything. They came out and put their marks on the ground and I started running the trench 4 feet from the "marks". Someone came running out running out of the building saying the phones were out. Looked in the new trench and saw a shredded a shredded cable. When the repairman came out he just shook his head and went ahead and fixed it.

 

[jsrustad]

Called Digger's Hotline as I needed to do some digging in my backyard. I knew about where the power and telephone ran but wanted the protection of having them mark it. They came out and marked everything (3.5 acres worth). The power and telephone in the backyard were flagged right where I thought they were with nothing else marked. Then I noticed the flagging for the gas line in the front yard was incorrect. They flagged it as running alongside the driveway (right angle to road), while in reality it runs about 50 feet away at a slight angle to save some distance on the main. Glad I wasn't depending on that part.

 

[Topzide]

I know when I sell my place, the next owner will know within inches of where every buried cable is laid! I have them mapped out in scale in a folder in the filing cabinet. Helps me out when I need to do something. Still call just to CYA! Had one tech marking things was way off. I showed him my maps, and he said, "Why bother calling?" I said to protect me just in case. He was marking the phone 6 feet to far south of where it was supposed to be. I said, "Okay then," and cut the phone line doing my dig!

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

In the mid-eighties, I was the right of way inspector for the highway department. Any utility work, or private improvements done in the State's right of way, I inspected. I was watching a contractor install a new sewer line. Bottom of trench was at 8-ft. Phone lines were at 3 to 4-ft.

He called the dig-line and requested locates. As we got close to one of the intersections, the phone marking was there in orange spray paint. Twelve feet away was a depression running across the highway, directly in line with two large phone company pull boxes in the sidewalks of the side street. I had been there with a state crew two years before to put in traffic signals and add turn lanes to the cross street, and we had moved the curb and gutter 12-feet as part of the project. The contractor spent the entire night going slow, and hand digging the five feet both sides of where the phone company markings were. By the time he finished, it was almost quitting time, so the contractor called it a night, and I suggested he call the phone company for a field meet, to discuss the line location.

Next night, the phone company locator shows up drunk, cusses out both me and the contractor, and insists that the line is where he located it, and if there is anything where I think it is, it is abandoned.

Contractor lowers the earth saw and away we go. Right where I thought the line was, colored wire starts coming out in the spoils. The contractor stops and asks me what to do. And, I responded, "He said if there is anything there it is abandoned. Go ahead and get clear of the mess." So, the contractor started back up, and about twenty minutes later the phone company trucks start showing up.

After about half an hour, the foreman for the phone company approaches the contractor and ask if he has any idea how much this is going to cost him. And I interject, "Not a Damned dime. Your locator mis-located the line. He lost a day's production last night going twenty feet, because he hand-dug both sides of where the location marks are. He requested a field meet and relocate tonight. Your locator showed up smelling of alcohol, called us stupid bastards, insisted his marks were in the right location, and informed us stupid bastards, that if there was anything where I thought it was, those lines are abandoned. So, when the confetti started coming up from your "abandoned line", he just kept digging." I then informed the phone company, they needed to get traffic control in place by 0600, and to let the media know there was a major lane closure.

We had cut through all the lines for the south half of Las Vegas, and two fiber optic lines. Took two days to get everything back together.

 

[howardjohn]

In Nj and Ny where I work you call before you dig, different numbers in each state and in NY it goes by county. THey notify 5 or six major utiltes. Gas, electric, sewer water phone and tele- communications. If they miss something then it is on them. But they only mark out what belongs to them. If the property owners has a underground electric line from the pole to the house that is not there responsibility. One thing I will say is the internet cables here are only 4 to 6 inches deep. Even the guy doing the mark out agreed with me they are way too shallow.

 

[ultrarunner]

Sewer Laterals are replaced by statute in older neighborhoods which requires marking… thing is the markings expire and must be redone for liability to be waived.

Sometimes the crew is out 3 times in short order to be compliant.

 

[pmsmechanic]

I'm on the board for a local gas coop. We spend around $60000 to $70000 per year just to locate lines. Pretty well the cost of one service person. That's just for natural gas. Our telephone company doesn't even come out anymore. They just give you a list of approved contractors.

Since farmers with a land based gps tower can get sub inch accuracy with their farm equipment I've suggested several times that we need a good digital map of all utilities. Just give the contractor access to the maps and they can plan their excavation accordingly.

As a gas coop board we have just approved the purchase of line locators that give you a picture of what's underground as a lot of our tracer wires have corroded over the years and no longer carry the location signal. We figured that the extra $3000 for that style of locator was easy to justify as we needed some new ones anyways. They're about $8000 CAD.

We don't get too many line hits anymore. People are pretty good about calling "Call Before You Dig".