Digging near electric..& near dead!

[jdmar]

This is my stupid action to share so others don't do this!
I was burying a 8" drain line under my drive and cut the electric to my house. I new where the line was, thought I was being careful, and had already worked around the gas line on the other side with no problem. But I never expected the main electric (and cable and phone!) to be only 16-18" deep! I was digging and heard a VERY loud POP/CRACK sound. Evidently a breaker of some sort at the street and high on a pole blew.
The electric company came out and fixed the wire (haven't gotten that bill yet!). They were not happy with the shallow line but they had approved it only about 6 months prior. They said it was a 7200 volt line and would likely have killed me if I was using a metal tracked excavator (or my dozer) instead of my rubber tire JD. I don't know if that is true...but I also will not test the theory.
I just want to remind people to be cautious so no-one else does such a bright thing as I did!
Stay safe,
Peter

 

[JDGREEN4ME]

Where we plan to build in NY we were told by the inspector that all utilities must be buried a minimum of 4' deep. I am sure that varies by area...
Glad to hear you were not hurt.

 

[JazzDad]

Most states have a "one call" phone number where they dispatch any utility to mark lines where you might dig. These services are typically free, and if you use them you have no liability if you do damage a line.
Glad you weren't hurt. Hope that repair doesn't hurt your wallet too much. It's amazing at how much it costs to repair some cables.
In Texas we use: TEXAS ONE CALL

 

[Soundguy]

Why a 7200v line to your house??? do you have a xformer right at your meter entrance? Or does the line go underground to a power pole near your electrical service entrance.. IE.. like a RV or mobile home setup.

Glad you didn't get smoked.. luckilly a jack tripped / fuse popped somewhere upline..

Soundguy

 

[6sunset6]

I have a high voltage line like that I am 700 feet off the road and I wanted to go underground. 30 inches deep direct burial with a yellow 6" wide marker tape about a foot up. It's also marked on my survey. The one call numbers do not identify private lines. The depth is called out by the NEC code. The tape was my own doing .

 

[jimmysisson]

I've never been able to get the utility to mark private lines - they say hire a private marking co, which is $2-400. Probably will seem cheap compared to the repair bill you're facing. In Mass they'll mark on public property, not too useful to a builder like me.
Jim

 

[horse7]

I buried my own line, power company wanted 48" deep, 2" steel up the pole and one or two sections out from the pole with a 90* sweep between the vertical and horizontal runs. The cable was direct bury, but I put 300M in 2" sch80 NMT the rest in 4" footing drain (one section was without rocks), with sand where I could manage it. I never want to see the wire again since the only reason I would see it is if it failed!!!

Took forever to get the power company to hook it up back then, seemed like a pack of chucks. They insisted they could plant the pole where the wires came up (I wanted them to plant the pole FIRST then I would run wire to the pole)-- of course, they planted the pole 12" from the now inspected and buried wire, then when the crew came to hook the wire up (different crew) the 2nd crew said, "we can't hook up the wire, it's not at the pole"! Duh.... then they said, they would be back with 2 more crews, dig up 4 poles [one pole was a dead pole just to provide guying], and replant all the poles so the one pole at my place would be at the wire. HELLO??

I said, come back in a few days, went out and bought (2) 45* steel sweeps, which made a 12" offset to the pole, and when they came back they hooked up the wire. The bad part is I had to buy the 45* sweeps, but otherwise I would be waiting who the heck knows how long for 3 crews to show up to move the poles around, then who knows how long to get the wire hooked up, and maybe longer if they managed to break something making a hole next to an existing hole (they had already whined about having to borrow an auger truck from further south to plant the poles to start with).

Just getting the poles planted took numerous phone calls till I found a sufficiently high manager to force the work to be done. Sometime later I noticed they started planting the poles before the wire was run on other properties.... but it took me nearly 6 months to get the electric hooked up after the underground run was completed. (this was almost 20 years ago now).

 

[mjncad]

30 inches deep direct burial with a yellow 6" wide marker tape about a foot up. It's also marked on my survey. The one call numbers do not identify private lines. The depth is called out by the NEC code. The tape was my own doing .

Excellent that you used the marker tape! Did you use the stuff that is metalized Mylar? Any marking tape I've bought for electrical is always red, blue for water, yellow for gas, green for sewer.

 

[mjncad]

Bear with me Horse as it's late; but am I reading your post correctly that you buried steel conduit?

When I was with the renewable energy lab in Golden, Colorado; all underground conduit was a minimum of SCH40 PVC, and SCH80 if it ran under a driveway or other roadway.

I don't care how much galvanizing was put on that steel conduit, it will rust in the ground.

 

[6sunset6]

Utility co gave me the tape yellow said utility. I asked the poer co guys when they hooked up if the under ground direct burial ever whent bad, they said debrie in the trench usually boards with nails.