call before you dig!!!! needs help lol...

What I can't understand is why the cities and towns don't tell all the electric and communication companies if they want to place a utility in the ground they have to put ONE duct bank in. Not 12, I did a sewer job that had 3 communication duct banks, 1 electrical line, 2 20 inch gas mains in the street. Try and dig around that. If they lined all the electric and fiberoptic in one duct bank, the gas in another, sewer in the middle and water on the other side, you could still work like a gentlemen.

mikef87 said:

What I can't understand is why the cities and towns don't tell all the electric and communication companies if they want to place a utility in the ground they have to put ONE duct bank in.

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I agree that is what needs to happen, it would solve a lot of problems, but it never will because it makes too much sense.

One duct bank, never gonna happen. Top that off with these guys running their directional rigs, they make the shortest route, and easiest route for themselves. Who cares about whos comming in later to run something else right?

I just finished a job where I called locates in & wanted an on-site meeting with locator, he never called & wwhen I went to check job he had marked everything except a gas service that I knew was there. I called the locate hot line & was told it would be 2 working days before he would be back out so I called a buddy at Vectren & told him I was going to dig & if they wanted their gas line safe they better locate it. In less that a half hour the locate guy shows up, which was after my allocated time, and says he got called off for an emergency which was BS because we seen him and 3 other trucks sitting at the local mexican restaraunt. I called the locate company to complain & they said that their guys go to lunch at a certain time nad that they leave a job all the time to go eat & then come back to finish the job.

Around here if the locator has been out and marks incorrectly it's their (the locators) baby, the thinking is that they were paid for a service and since they didn't perform service and it results in damage and all that blah it's all theirs. Nobody will work with the bad ones here. Granted there is a margin for error but they do everything they can to minimize it. One locating crew was doing some probing for water and gas lines on a residential job we did a couple years ago and found some old gas line (service) and put the probe right through it. Didn't know anything about it till they were pulling it out and it jumped up in the air about 3 feet and running around telling everybody to shut down. Flipped me out and i was within 20 feet of the guy.

On major reconstruction or widening jobs we're seeing joint utility trenches going in....yesterday I counted (11) 4-6" conduits all going in the same trench. That should make things easier to locate....of course it doesn't help sort out all the old work out there.

D6c10K said:

On major reconstruction or widening jobs we're seeing joint utility trenches going in....yesterday I counted (11) 4-6" conduits all going in the same trench.

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Curious - do you know what the conduits are going to be used for? Electrical, communication, etc?

CM1995,
I think it's mostly communication cable and electric, but not completely sure. About half of the conduit is heavy wall (3/8") orange extruded plastic and the rest is lighter weight grey pvc that is glued up 20' sections.
Don't think they've put gas pipe in any of the joint utility trenches I've seen...the one we're currently staking runs just behind the water main and in front of the sidewalk/bike path.
They seem to be trying to look ahead a little since they've had us mark out locations of future signal bases and switch gear boxes that aren't part of this phase of development so they can be sure to avoid them with the util. trench.

D6c10K said:

CM1995,
I think it's mostly communication cable and electric, but not completely sure. About half of the conduit is heavy wall (3/8") orange extruded plastic and the rest is lighter weight grey pvc that is glued up 20' sections.
Don't think they've put gas pipe in any of the joint utility trenches I've seen...the one we're currently staking runs just behind the water main and in front of the sidewalk/bike path.
They seem to be trying to look ahead a little since they've had us mark out locations of future signal bases and switch gear boxes that aren't part of this phase of development so they can be sure to avoid them with the util. trench.

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Here's a handy hint before digging. Demand all given information to be verified in writing and offset the pegs/lines using your own surveyors. Inform all concerned that you have taken these measures to cover your own a$$ and avoid lost time in court.
This problem will increase as more and more services are installed underground.........C ya.........Ray

Thanks for the info D6c10K.:thumbsup

I have been a proponent of co-location for a while, although it falls on deaf ears. For a normal residential development in my neck of the woods, there is 4 different utility contractors - 1 - for water and sewer, 1- for power, 1- for gas and 1- for electricity (all underground services). So that gives you 5 different ditch lines and 4 different contractors opening a ditch and some not caring what is in their way. I have went round and round with the power and the telephone subcontractors many times over this issue. I have had them dig up water and sewer laterials only to just cover them up and go on, which creates much havoc later on.:Banghead

CM1995,
Where I'm seeing them use utility trenches is on larger city/county road projects....residential subdivisions are probably pretty similar to what you describe, unfortunately. I used to stake quite a few houses and it drove me nuts when a gas or elec. contractor would trench down along a street and knock out every property corner down the line. Made it interesting trying to figure out where the lot was located.

D6c10K said:

CM1995, I used to stake quite a few houses and it drove me nuts when a gas or elec. contractor would trench down along a street and knock out every property corner down the line. Made it interesting trying to figure out where the lot was located.

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Can't believe I forgot that aggravating part!:Banghead

It's so true though, no respect for anything other than getting pipe in the ground and a check at the end of the week.

Well for one thing I am a directional drilling contractor. That is most of my work. I am not one of the idiots that jumped on the fiber to the home band wagon. Those guys get about 5 or 6 bucks a foot. So they do the least they have to to get in & out. They don't have the luxury of caring about anything. I don't do communications work. I do water & sewer. I have to follow plans just like I was excavating. Also I attach a tracer wire right to the line I drill in. AND I supply the owner of the project with an as built plan done on a CAD program listing all the materials we used, and depths and ties. So please there are some HDD guys that do it right.

Now with that said I cannot stand the locate service here in MA and RI. I have never put my drill in the ground without physically locating other existing utilities. And if the owner, town, state, or utility will not let me locate their stuff my self then I will not drill. Every job I have been on has been marked wrong!!!!! Last week I did a water service into a home. We called digsafe a week before we did the job. They marked the phone & cable. The Gas co marked the gas service. NOBODY LOCATED THE ELECTRIC SERVICE THAT WAS BESIDE THE CABLE AND PHONE!!!!! We called and told digsafe the electric was not marked and asked for a remark. We waited another week. They came by and reamrked the phone and cable and still no electric. SO I asked the guy about the electric. His answer....its overhead!!!!!
There are no poles on the street!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WTF? I asked him. there are transformer pads at every house and the conduit comes up out of the ground to the meter on the wall. I showed it to him and he said to call and lodge a complaint. So I had my guys locate it by hand. So as a driller I don't like them either and not all drillers are idiots.:usa

And I have never had a utility hit and I have been in business for 5 years now because I am a complete pain in the A$$ when it comes to locating other utilities. I pay way too much for insurances to use them

gas line

i hit one at 14 inches deep when it was suppose to be at 21 inches and its 18 inches either side which is 36 inches all together,i got away with it after rippin up a 3/4 inch line because if they charged me for it they would have to come dig it up and rebury it at the code of 21 inches lazy asses

I will ALWAYS call the underground operator directly,not a Promark,Prostake,Want-a-mark type locating service who's only reason for showing up is money and job security.

tuney443 said:

I will ALWAYS call the underground operator directly,not a Promark,Prostake,Want-a-mark type locating service who's only reason for showing up is money and job security.

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I wish we had that option. The ONLY contact phone numbers we are allowed to have are for the joint locating service called JULIE here. They send the the info to the local mickey mouse locators who have the contract. Their people consist of 1/3 good people, 1/3 mediocre and 1/3 who don't give a darn. The exception is Gas which does their own locating. They failed to show on two different jobs after multiple calls where I knew their were gas mains. I finally called the emergency number and they came to one site. Never did on the other one.

Well, now I know what all those little painted lines are for!!! Just kidding.

I've been doing roughin and finish work in subdivisions for a while. The issues we have are more with depth. Ocationally the gas feed to the houses will cross property lines ( they must get payed by the foor by the big loop they do to get on the ajoining property ). Home phone and cable lines use to just be layed down under the sod. So those were a daily hit.

Personally I've clipped everything but gas. The guy I sub to use to get a gas line at least once a week.

On my end it's an easy fix though. I hit a 36" water main in a driveway cutout 6 inches deep ( with a cat 320 ). Granted there was a precut that may have had them within code before, but it should have never passed inspection on install. The city code requires for a sidewalk on both sides of the street that was within 3" of the main.

Seems to me utilities should be shot from street grades as these are known grades upon developement. Just my $0.02.

i am currently doing traffic control (stop/slow)

the crew i am looking after at the moment are doing water mains and we have just started laying a 400m 100mm main along a suburban st, the line is to go down the grass footpath which will cover 20 driveways and that means 20 gas, 20 water, 20 sewer and 20 storm water crossings!!!

The digger driver is an irishman and he is known as the locator, the marks on the rd are always marked with an arrow-----> G or -----WM or so on. he finds them with the digger no worries at all lol, first morning onsite the third bucketfull finds a water service, within and hour he had found 3 water services and one 1" gas main rd crossing.

needless to say the digging stopped and the repairs started. first day wasted,

have been taking some pics so will try and get them uploaded soon

A couple of years back I gave my post hole digger to my neighbour to use to do some fencing along his boundry (also a telecom line). A day or two later I had to go and visit him and I found him down a rather deep hole with a generator and a soldering iron and vast quantites of insulation tape. He had cut a line with about 10 people on it, so he jumped to it and fixed it with a bit of secondhand electrical cable and a few hours of sweat. Funny enough it lasted quite a while before it failed completely and our wonderful Testra had to replace the section. Odly the technician could not locate the bad section and chose to replace a 200 metre section. I guess he was lucky we live in a sparse (phone wise) area and the fact that it usually takes about a week to get someone out here to fix things.