This is not a difficult thing in this age of technology. Unfortunately, the schmuck that came out illustrated his ‘problem’ with the job. He started three lines from one location, crossed one of the out with X’s, another stopped in the middle of nowhere, and then a third followed through to a target location at the house. This was CATV.
The telephone started in two different directions and neither finished. Oh well, what should I have expected? Maybe I will call the phone company and ask them to stop billing me since there ain’t proof its being delivered.
Hey, at least he got the electrical and natural gas marked right. 🙂
Replies
They only mark whatever distance they think reasonable.
When I trenched my electric they'd marked near the phone pedestal. Unfortunately, the guy was only thinking fence, not trench. Found my neighbor's phone line. As he was an obstetrician specializing in difficult births (and no cell reception here at the time), I spliced it. No grief from the phone company when I told them.
New neighbors now. I always make it a point to mention my lines running smack dab through the middle of their meadow, heading for woods. Where nobody would expect to find wire.
Recent excavation I asked the land owner about buried wire, on the side of a mountain. Assurred there wasn't any, I went to work. Oops. Expensive mistake on his part. At least now everybody knows where the phone lines are to the other side of the mountain...
PAHS Designer/Builder- Bury it!
The marker is only as good as the "signals" he's recieving and the prints he was given...provided the lines were placed correctly in the first place. I've seen gas lines, telephone cable, fiber-optic, water, and sanitary sewer lines placed as much as 10' from plan specs. Always photograph the markers and make a sketch with dimensions prior to digging. If you're using a BH, be sure and have someone with a shovel to investigate any suspicious "roots" you uncover. They could be a 2500 pair telephone cable that I saw a operator pull out of the ground....
I know where the telephone cable is, but the person that came out did not, could not detect them, but guessed anyway. Still doesn't explain the half-traced line.
Is there a particular difference with phone cable that these guys have a tuff time with?
I ditchwitched thru a neighbor's undereground phone cable that had been swooped way over on the lot I was working. The burial marker guys never came close to marking it.
I engineered telephone and fiber optic conduit/cable systems for several years and will be going back to it in a couple of weeks. (The phone company is ramping up for a huge program to push bandwidth into every home and business in the state.)
The biggest problem we had with building new facilities was finding locations of existing plant. There was always some level of uncertainty with underground utilities, but phone company systems were the worst. Their records were 10-12 years out of date, there was no system to do "as-built" drawings, and the people doing the locates were severly overworked and underpaid. The paint marks on the ground usually only proved that the locator still had some paint in the can. - lol
The problem got worse on private property. Our designs only included the public right-of-way and were field run from the property line to the buildings.
I discovered another anomaly. While the person correctly traced the electrical across the front of my lawn to my neighbor's house, there is NO trace for my electrical!
The telephone plant is fiber optic when it runs down the street, from pedastal to pedastal. Each of these 'lawn torpedos' serves four homes and the optical changes over to electrical via Cat5e cabling.
Right now I need to get the telephone and electrical for my home identified before the lawn irrigation company can begin work. BTW, who is responsible, typically, for damage resulting from incorrectly marked, or not marked, utilities?
Nuke -
I can't speak for GA, but around here, phone and power in subdivisions are usually in a common trench under the sidewalk. House feeds for both usually "T" off at the property line and will "T" again between two houses. The phone cable terminates at an SNI (System Network Interface) at the corner of each house, and the power terminates at the electric meter. They're usually pretty close together, and typical depth is 18" - 24".
Your lawn irrigation company should be familiar with the drill for working around underground utilities. Around here, someone (the HO or the contractor) calls the locator number and gives them the location of the work. The locator notifies all of the utilities who send someone out to mark their stuff. When everything is marked, you can begin digging. If a mis-marked (or unmarked) cable is damaged, it's the responsibility of the utility to fix it.
FWIW, lawn irrigation systems seldom come close to any buried utilities. They're usually fairly close to the surface and will pass above any utility cables.
who is responsible, typically, for damage resulting from incorrectly marked, or not marked, utilities?
If something was not marked and you dug anyway it's your problem.
Incorrectly marked might be hard to prove. Have you read how close a locate is supposed to be? When we were locating and installing cable our marks only had to be within +-3'. Six feet of fudge factor is huge.
Beer was created so carpenters wouldn't rule the world.
Don, I live in a county and a state that is completely without accountability. Even the local inspectors admit 'the problem' and are happily to coexist within that framework of in which they can blame their employers for not doing their job.
As such, I doubt anyone by the city, county, or state inspected utilities during their original installation. With this in mind, I doubt that even the electrical is buried deep enough (ahem, per code). But like all good cows, I'll guess I will find out soon enough when the contractor starts his installation.
Not sure I totally understood what you just said but here things are fairly closely regulated and inspected. On the other thing dry utilities are not inspected, probably because they remain the property of the utility. When I say dry utilities I mean elect, gas, CATV, phone. They are self inspected - in other words - the utilities monitor their own installs. Gas and power are always buried at the proper depth - 18 - 24", with most mains being closer to 3'. The phone and CATV lines to your house can be different story - maybe they figure if it gets knocked out, for the most part it will only effect the person who was having the work done, and sometimes the neighbor next door. OTOH within the last year the phone and CATV have been being installed in a joint trench with the other utilities so now aday they are rather deep too. Regarding the power, if the line has to go in what the power company considers a hazardous location, they install it in conduit and charge who ever is having the work done.
The thing is, with the often shallow buried phone and CATV lines that are going to your house, even if they are properly marked it can still be difficult to not damage these small lines. A simple hand shovel can "do the deed". I'm sure this varies widely from area to area, but here, if a phone or CATV wire to your house gets cut they just fix it for free. OTOH, if a contractor damages a power or gas main, and multiple customers are effected then the utility is looking for someone to blame - and charge.
Again here, often the CATV is marked by the cable company - if they get around to it.
Wet utilities (water and sewer) are a whole different story, and since (here anyway) the part in a HO's yard are owned by the HO, they are entirely the HO's responsibility. With today's plastic lines they can often be hard or nearly inpossible to locate. Sewer would normally be quite deep, and the modern sewer lines are fairly tough. Water - not so much.
"Not sure I totally understood what you just said but here things are fairly closely regulated and inspected. "I live in a samll city of about 350 homes. The area was orginally developed in 1928 for summer cabins and and is now large, full time homes. Even with some interceptors and lift pump to bypass parts of it the sewer system was overloaded.So about 20 years ago the city replaced the system with a forced main system. Their contactor did not pay any attention to codes when the installed the electric grinder pumps. Many places the conduit is on the surface or the peaking through the surface of the lawn. And across my drive way is it is only about 5" deep.And the city does not subscribe to One Call. .
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
I'ts always been my understanding that FO cabling has a copper wire running a small amount of voltage for location purposes. I know it exists on multi-opening concrete-encased lines, 'cause I've seen it.
Tom -
Some cables and/or conduits will have a wire that can be used to locate the cable or conduit. Those that I've seen aren't continuously energized, but you can put a signal generator on it if you need to.
I wouldn't bet on having that capability in residential drop cables, however. Residential cables are rarely disturbed and when they are, the loss of service is limited to one (or two) houses. The added cost for the locate wires would probably be much more than the cost of the occasional repair job.
Whomever came out the second time seems to know what they were doing, or had equipment that lent itself to better results. This time the telephone and electrical to my property was marked (wasn't before) along with everything else. I called the irrigation company to let them know and hopefully will get the installation done by the end of next week.
Wife has me up early this morning--unintentionally she says--to water the front lawn. Not so much for the grass as the trees and bushes. Water restrictions limit us to Midnight to 10AM Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. This is the first time she's actually taken interest in watering--must have been the news I reported last week on fried tree-tops.
Now's the time to get yer Big Chief tablet and yer #2 pencil and make a sketch of your lot showing all the marked utility lines dimensioned from your property lines or pins, if you can find'em. Put it up where you can find it next time.
Just a surveyor's point of view...
Tom, I actually have a copy of my survey that was done of the lot when I bought the new cookie-cutter home. unfortunately, it didn't include utilities (not really expected). I have this on both a 9"x12" and a much larger 30"x40" I made myself.
It's always easy to say how simple someone's else's job is... I bet your's is easy too.
Other than that, regarding the utility location process, be sure and save your locate ticket #s, and heed the expiration dates. If a line does get cut and there is some question as to liability, the first Q asked is "what is your locate ticket #". Or at least that is the way it works around here.
Matt, I never said someone else's job was easy, but mine is easy to me. If my job was not easy to me I'd find another job. If you are having difficulty with your job, don't let my property be your on the job testing bed, ok? :)
Maybe you have a clear conscious and can sleep at night knowing that any mistakes you make in your learning process on someone else's property is 'ok', but I certainly couldn't live by that shade-tree mentality.
When the irrigation company digs their trenches, take some digital pics and mark up your drawing. One of the most aggravating jobs in the world is trying to modify a sprinkler system without having a clue as to where the lines were buried.
I still have the original, hand drawn, as-built drawing for the sprinkler system I installed in '82. It saved my arse several times over the years when we changed the landscaping and I needed to change the sprinklers.
I just blew out and re-landscaped the whole front yard and have pictures of the sprinkler system (digital, of course) and my design drawing (CAD, these days - lol). I'm even thinking of re-doing the CAD drawings in 3-D just for giggles. (Ok, ok, I could also use the practice. - lol)