What you need to know about miss Utility

[SPYDERLK]

Had it been relocated it may have been marked correctly.

Mixing time and randomity can totally derail logic.
lllllarry

 

[arsenix2001]

Make sure YOU are always the one that calls the ticket in when you dig. If your doing a nieghbor a favor, make sure YOU call for his house. If nieghbor Joe calls but you hit a phone line when digging on his property, you will be liable, not Joe. Learned the hard way when I started my excavating co. Dug on a lot that was just marked the day before by the property owner. Hit a gas line, ended up I was liable because I didnt have my own ticket. Cost me 1500 bux. I understand thier reasoning as they want to to be in direct contact with the excavator. Nieghbor Joe could have picked up marking paint at homedepot and went to town. Highly unlikely but they are limiting thier liability and the utility companies will use ANY technicality to get off the hook for $$. Just a heads up.

 

[mjncad]

I find that alot of the local cable and phone wires aren't even buried (house drops). I remember driving my F550 service truck over a cable one day and got a call from the cable company that I owed them for the repairs. I told them that the line on top of the ground with only a few pine needles over it was improperly installed. They threatened but I ignored them, I knew they didn't have a leg to stand on.

Yeah, they bury them just 2" - 4" around here if you're lucky.

Out here locate tickets are good for 30-days or until the paint wears off, whichever occurs first.

 

[CurlyDave]

When I was rebuilding my house in CA, the tickets were only good for 2 weeks.

I had to call many times, and they wasted a lot of time sending their trucks out, but they never groused about the waste of time.

 

[General Lee]

Everyone always seems to think that "the man" is out to get them. In my neck of the woods, calling for utility locates is law. Since it is a legal matter that determines liability of damage, parameters must be clearly defined. A locate ticket cannot last forever and must have a clearly defined length of effectiveness as yours did and as aknowledged by you in your post. The terms of the "contract" were not held up on your end. The entire incident could have easily been avoided with a simple phone call on your part.

All of that being said, I'm glad you were able to reach a voice of reason and settle the issue to your satisfaction, even if, IMO, you were at fault for not renewing the ticket. I've been in the utility construction industry for 17 years and this is just one of the issues that you have to learn to abide by... if you damage a utility, and don't have a valid ticket, you're responsible for the damages. Whenever we have to excavate near a utility mark, we hand dig to expose the utility and visually verify it's location before sinking any type of equipment into the ground.

It turned out well for you in the long run, but I would still chaulk it up as a lesson learned for the next time.

Renewing the ticket is BS, I could understand if several months go by but a cable originally marked is not gonna magically move to another location all by itself. He was 6 days over the expiration date with the original paint still marked. How much you wanna bet if he had it remarked, the old paint would have been marked over with new paint.

When I used miss utility I was surprised by the short expiration time. Like my cables are going to magically move from day 15 to day 20.

 

[wcampbell47]

Another option from the beginning would have been to measure off your holes for fence posts and dug the ones near the underground lines first...

That would have been too easy.

 

[chopped]

My two stories.lol One was on a state highway where the phone conpany got ''lazy''(no blasting) and the cable took a quick up and over some ledge and not much cover.Well the graded the edge of the road and ripped a huge phone cable out.:confused2::confused2:
The other one thats funny , Sister in law borrowed my come along to 'pull some roots' in her garden. Sh had some tough ones thats she would yank out and then use the lopping shears. I think you know where this goes.. LOL but then she didnt even know she had severed the cable coax and the phone line.:confused2:Until the phone was 'dead' the next day.
The phone company came out and they just added a splice to it and dropped it back in the ground and covered it about 6 or 8 inches..Not four years later phone troubles. the phone company tied but it kept having troubles.Then the neighbor mentioned the splice, and it got 'fixed' just another splice and burried shallow again.:confused2::confused2::laughing:

 

[RaydaKub]

My previous house had sod laid all the way around to the foundation. My wife wanted some landscaping. Since I wasn't "digging" I never even called for a permit. I knew where the phone line came into the house and the neighborhood junction box was in the corner of my yard. But they are "buried", right? I had kick sod cutter and hit a number of small rocks. Just kick it again.

My phone line was buried all right. Laid on top of the clay, sod laid down on top of it. I called them, but they didn't dispute that it was improper installation and fixed it. I was never billed. Lucky I guess.

 

[DJ54]

I think I still hold the record number of 11 times, for hitting the same phone cable, within the span of 3 power poles, approx. 600', in our county.

Phone company was called to mark, and did. At the end of that span were two junction boxes for house drops. Locator guy dug down to verify the cable was buried at 36" per their specs. He assured me it was that deep clear through. I told him it had better be.

Sloping a bank with a Huber F-1000 grader, I started cutting the slope. At the top of the slope was a plowed field, and the last furrow, approx. 7' - 8" deep, was plowed inward towards the field. A good gauge to use to start the cut.

At that depth, I cut the line 11 times. The same guy came out to repair it 11 times. On about the 8th one, he asked me, "Do you realize what these splice kits cost apiece"..?? I told him I did not care, he assured me that line was down 36". And that's not even close to 36".

He told me the cable was installed by contractors, and they get paid by the foot. More than likely, it was put in in the summer when the ground was dry and hard. A lot of them back then used those little Davis 4-wd trenchers, with the vibra-shank plow. When 6 to 8 feet from the junction box, they would pull the plow up, so as to pull easier, making time, and profit. Besides, who will ever know..??

The phone company agreed to install a new line, once we were done, to the proper depth, at no charge to us...

 

[s219]

Both cable and phone are buried ridiculously shallow in my yard -- mere inches in some places. It's a major annoyance anytime I do yard work. One of these days, I expect I'll puncture something when aerating the lawn. I only pray power and gas are trenched deeper....

I don't have a lot of faith in the Miss Utility people. Most times I see them, they are yakking on the cell phone with one hand while marking with the other. Based on the number of mistakes I see (including cases where they re-do the paint several times on the first try) I don't think they put a whole lot of effort into it. I'd put a tolerance of 6-12" inches around any markings that really matter. When trenching for irrigation many years ago, I hand dug anywhere I got within a foot of a marking.