locate marks on a 2'' gas line was 5' 8'' off from where gas line actually was !!! good thing we didn't hit it !! i called the locator back to site all he said was oops sorry about that!! i said next time maybe you should be the guy in the trench for me!! maybe he would do a better job with a shovel while i set on my butt in air condition cab listening to the radio ......:drinkup
Don’t they have 6 foot on either side of the mark( give or take)? :beatsme Edit: woops i hit the 6 and not the 3 ....
I thought it was 2':beatsme or is that for power/ phone lines? If they give you 6' free board then they don't know where the hell it is ointhead
it is 2' here in Indiana. Personally I'm sick of the locate services. I ripped out a fiber that was cable tv, on their dollar. after I covered up the trench cause it took 4 hours for him to arrive he had the never to ask me "could you dig it back up for us, it is the least you could do" I said "If you marked your #$#@ lines this #$@# wouldn't happen" Hit a telephone on the same job. Unmarked of course and AT&T still had the never to bill me for it. I had a few choice words for them when I received that bill in the mail. Not sure about the rest of you, but how many people are tired of these directional drillers running phone line 6' deep. I hand dug for 3 hours one day to 5.9' deep and didn't find it .. about 2 buckets later I found it. I was sort of within there 2' limit. (23.9") I was installing watermain here in Northern IN. Luckly didn't tear it into just pulled on it abit. Just my $.02 worth.
Here in PA the: The way I read that is that a 2" line would mean you have a 38 inch wide area where you might find their pipe. Now, if it's a 12" pipe, that area would be 4 feet wide.
woops I hit the 6 button and not the 3, my bad....:Banghead:bash:bash I meant to say don't they have 3ft on eather side of the mark....:beatsme
This leads me to another question. if they give you a 2' don't dig area around the mark does that mean 24" out each way from the mark totaling to a 48" don't dig area. Or is it 12" out on both sides of the mark which would be 24" I've always found everthing within about 6 inches of the marked line so:beatsme
Well here its a 18" either way , I dont have a problem with our locators , mainly because each individual company comes and locates their own , but they always seem to fail to mention the conduit they just put in a week ago 18" from the gas main , I found that one youve never seen so many people run that fast when they here pipe cracking
must have marked that one on a friday at 3:30. the local utility companys are ussually dead on...if you have the on target guys come in the are ok but they have a 6 foot era claus too.
I hit a cable for internet this week(not marked) called the company to report it and they needed me to verify account info. ie: customer's soc. security #. I told them I was a contractor, they didn't care, had to wait for the HO to get home from work and realize he had no internet and then call.
tracing i trace all my own jobs ,i then know its done right when working in london some time back .the contractor had a locate company to do all the tracing ,which was ok but if they were not sure they would paint a line with a ? mark next to it to cover their own arse :beatsme
HA HA I've had that happen before, they forgot to mark a 36 inch water main. Sometimes I think these guys just paint lines randomly.
Saw a CLS line locator Monday downtown. We were stopped at the red light and watched this guy with locator in one hand, yellow paint wand in the other, walking across the intersection randomly painting a yellow dashed line though the interesection. This guy was not even paying attention to the locator in his left hand, just "marking" this gas line with the wand in his right hand. He got to the other side of the intersection, looked back at his own little "Picasso" he just completed, seemed satisfied with his ex-ray vision abilities and proceeded to get back in his truck to go on to his next line locating adventure. CLS stands for Central Locating Service, an Asplundh company. We call them something else - Can't Locate ..........
A locating service had marked all utilities where I was digging a trench for a water line to a new home. As I was making my last pass to clean out the ditch in a corner, I snagged a Verizon phone line with the corner tooth on the bucket. The line was a couple of inches short of 4 feet off the marked line. I called Verizon and the locating service to come out. The locator accused me of moving the flags. I pointed out the large painted arrow in the road that he had made that was perfectly in line with the flags and asked him how I managed to move that also. Bottom line was I was still charged for the repair. Luckily it was only $350. It wasn't worth my time to go to small claims court to get my money back. About 2 months later I went to a job to install a new sewer drain from a house for a plumber I work for. As I pulled up, I see the same locator guy just leaving after his markup. I told the plumber I wouldn't dig unless he took full responsibility for any damages because of previous problems with this locator. He agreed and had a couple of laborers checking ahead of me. We found two utilities significantly mismarked. Lodged another complaint with the locating company about this employee, but still see him working for them. I just don't trust the markings. I once found a 2 inch plastic gas line with a tracer that had no markings of any kind within 20 feet in any direction. I was told before digging that the gas was shut off. After finding the line, I double checked to see if the super had really shut off the gas and found out he lied and didn't do it because he didn't want to have to reset all of the pilots in the many buildings on this school campus. I left the job and had a heck of a time collecting for the days I worked prior to this incident. A few month later he called asking me to dig at another school job. I refused the job. He hired someone else and they had a big incident. The guy hit a gas line and broke it and shut down a 4 square block area in a busy traffic zone in the middle of the day. He lied again about shutting off the gas. Some guys never learn. I now never take anyones word on what has been done without verifying it myself no matter how well I know the person.
Our trouble is with private utilities like propane. The last time I had one of the propane co's come out to mark their service it was off by a good 12' and the line was much more shallow than required. I asked their crew what tools the boss uses to locate the lines with and they admitted that he stands at the tank and walks toward the valve at the house. I guess he uses a T-LAR. :thumbsup Does everybody call for re-marks every 2 weeks while the job is going on?
that's why i take a dig pic of every locate before we stick a shovel in the ground. they've tried that crap here with us...funny how pictures take all the fun away from their mismarks.
Around here you arent allowed within 2' of the marker.
We do. I have the office call the locate in every time and the re-locates if the job takes longer than 2 weeks.
The real fun one is when they show up, look at their prints and start marking the job. While your sitting across the street with your set of prints. You know where your water line is going, and on your print you see your water line is next to their gas line, yet the person marking out the project is on the other side of the street. Your prints show nothing on that side of the street. Then you go over to talk to the locater, to find out that he is on the wrong side of the street. You inform him of that, and he shrugs his shoulders. He finishes marking the wrong side of the street and leaves
I'm in a dispute about remarking the lines at this moment. Acordding to their pics after teh locate the line goes exactly where I installed my water main. After the hit where the phone line crossed the trench (it did not run parallel). On the locaters pics that he took after the he did the locating you can see his orange paint runs directly to a guy line for a pole and stops. And since I had that guy exposed I know it doessn't go there. If they can't locate the *&(^ put it on a pole
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.
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.
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.
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 *** 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.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ***? 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 *** 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.
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.
around here they have 7 feet on both sides of the line (that a lot of space for a little gas line u know)
When you say you do your own tracing, do you mean using a cable and pipe locator such as this http://www.schonstedt.com/index.cfm?page=XTpc Now while they are not a cheap tool, damaging underground services is pretty expensive. Are they easy to use or do they take a lot of experience? There are other options available like pro locators or the dial before you dig service but they take time.
Hahaha!
hi hendrik we use radiodetection equipment http://www.radiodetection.com/ they are simple to use ,but you need to take your time in heavily congested areas we have company's that locate for you but none will gaurantee their work so i prefer to do it myself british telecom will locate their plant and stand by their tracing as i found out after breaking a fibre optic cable ,we had requested a trace from them ,their engineer came out traced all their plant ,but missed a road crossing we found it 10 inch's deep in a 4" plastic duct buried in the road base :Banghead they stood by their work and covered the cost ,but i would think someone got a talking too cheers graham
Hi Guys, we've done a service locating training course this morning, we used the radiodetection gear and C-Scope witch was all of a muchness the same as we've used before, then this guy pulled out a RIDGID SR20, it was the best piece of kit we have ever seen. It looks after its own sensitivity, tells you witch way the cable is running on a screen in relation to you, how far infront of you it is, how much current is running through it and how deep it is, even on power and radio mode unlike all the others that just do depth on genny mode. We were so impressed we splash out the £2000 for one. www.ridgid.com/Tools/SR-20
Thanks for the replies fellas, in my situation it would be for locating sewer pipes, water pipes, gas lines and telecommunication lines in peoples yards. I have put the bucket through all except gas (which is the scariest of them all) already and know what a pain it it is and would like to avoid doing it again if I could. Reading this thread it would appear that pro locators are not all that they should be. What a job, even if you stuff up there is no come back, maybe I should become a locater, turn up, wave the magic wand around, draw a few lines here and there, present the bill with a disclaimer on the back and bugger off. When they ring up to bitch about my sloppiness I tell em to look at the fine print. Question is do I need to do a course such as this in order to operate locating equipment: https://www.jbhunter.edu.au/trainin...d_location/telstra_accredited_cable_location/ and this https://www.jbhunter.edu.au/trainin...nd_location/nulca_underground_asset_location/ The advantage is that I have a piece of paper that allows me to look for stuff for other operators but the disadvantage is that it costs close to a grand for the two. Or is it something that anyone with half a brain can figure out by themselves? I suppose I can always do the courses at a later date if I find having accreditation would be an asset to myself. Plus the way the tax is structured I would be able to claim the course fees as a business expense once I am in the excavation game.
I have dealt with some really dumb and lazy locators as well. But what about the operators that don't pay attention to the stakes and marks. I was checking grade on a street widening project a couple of years ago and there was a Fiber optic running under the area we were cutting down to grade. The locator couldn't get a good read on the depth of it so the "potholed" and uncovered it for us every 100 feet of the jobsite. That was a huge help. So I measured the depth and shot the grade to stakes I installed about 25 feet from the BC. As we cut the street the blade operator decides to clean up the future landscape area for no reason. I wathed in horror as he mowed down all my stakes that took me almost all day to put in in 110 degree heat. I stopped him and asked him what the heck he was doing and he blew me off and said that they were not needed. Thankfully I got sent to another jobsite the next day and was not responsible when they hit the Fiber optic. The line was not deep enough to start with, but as long as he had not used his rippers he would not have hit the line. Then a year later we were doing an expansion in a water treatment plant and a mechanic needed to work on a Cat 245 excavator and he didn't have a ladder. So he dug a hole and to put the bucked down in it so he could reach the top of the boom. Well wouldn't you know it, he hits a 12 inch sewer line in the middle of the night. Needless to say, he lost his job over that.
Hendrik, The locate services rarely turn up for us small guys or even return your calls. Then they want $400 min. Then they wave the magic wand and tell you there is nothing there...and then they shoot through with no care and no responsibility.....leaving you to rip up the telephone, cable tv, gas etc etc. For private property they are about as useful as you know what on a mallee bull. Dial-B4-U-dig gives you a pile of paper that might give you a rough idea where some of the stuff might be but once again, inside the boundary you are at the mercy of last plumber, electrician, gas fitter et al. In the real world we use everything we can, including perhaps the owners memory , to work out where the stuff might be and peg it. Then we do some exploratory excavation (shovel) and we hire a locate detector machine from our irrigation supplier. Its important to remember the limitations of the technology. Some of the older gas pipes do not have the wires running through the PVC that allow you to find it with a detector. Also, all the crap in the ground can mess with the machine. Then we dig a little and check again. Max of about 300mm at a time. The detector we hire costs $170/day and seems to be doing the job. Assume nothing. The last gas pipe we nailed into a house was 200mm below ground level and 4 metres away from where Dial-B4-U-Dig said it should be. Telecom is the worst. In front yards I have found the cables less than 100mm below ground level........but at least only the phone dies...you don't need to evacuate a suburb. I have a mate who works at the water Corporation...he has access to all the sewer drawing on his computer. I call he and he locates the deep sewer bang on everytime. I just wish the other utilities could be so user friendly and accurate. I never hit anything outside a boundary of private property. I did hit a 415 Volt LV cable that was 600mm inside a commercial property boundary when the paperwork said it was supposed to be running parrallel with the boundary and not less than 1 metre outside. Despite me having already got a new survey the power company threw the book at me...Cost me $2500 for my underground excess and the judge threw it out after the insurance company nailed them at every turn......still lost my excess though. In the fine print it says something like "if you are within 6 metres of our installation you must etc etc". The rule is physically locate and trust nothing until you do. It used to frustrate the daylights out of my nephew who is my machine operator...until he nailed the gas pipe mentioned above. Now he is much more circumspect. The way the law is in this country, the utility contractor can put the service in Queensland when the drawing says its supposed to be in Tasmania and its still your fault if you hit it. It doesn't matter the slightest how poorly installed/located the service is. The responsibility rest with you to take appropriate measures not to hit it. Once you hit it...you are presumed guilty and you need all your ducks in a row to convince the judge otherwise. I guess a locate report may be worth something at the end of the day. Better to take your time and work on your PHD (Pine Handle Degree) until you find the sucker.
Pretty much as I figured, best of to do try and locate services myself, dunno about relying on homeowners to know anything. Experience is a plus, knowing how things are usually set up, finding mains, sewer inspection holes and such, all helps I suppose. However being in a hilly area things do get wonky. I have a telstra line that runs from one corner of the block and diagonally across the front yard and ends up next to the sewer pipe, with a varying depth of 10cm to half a meter, they really did a good job. With a small machine such as mine you do have a bit of feel for when something more solid is in your way.
gas this happened to one of my work colleages ,the pipe damaged was only a 63mm supply ,we went to finish the job Gas turned off after explosion 11:29am Tuesday 24th February 2009 MORE than 200 homes are without gas after an explosion rocked a Basingstoke suburb. Emergency services were called to Gershwin Road, Brighton Hill at around 8pm last night after the explosion in a pit dug by engineers who were trying to fix a burst water main. A 44-year-old maintenance worker, who has not been named, sustained burns to his hands and face, and was taken to the burns unit at Salisbury hospital. He was kept in overnight for observation. Jane Gould, spokeswoman for South East Water, said workers for Clancy Docwra damaged a gas main while using a mini-digger during excavation work. An explosion occurred just after a worker had placed a temporary seal on the pipe. Miss Gould added: "The cause of the explosion is still under investigation but South East Water and Clancy Docwra will work with the relevant authorities to assist in any investigation." The burst water main has now been fixed. A total of five firefighters and one water tender from Basingstoke fire station attended the scene, but the gas fire had already been doused by water from the burst main filling the trench. John Clarke, crew manager at Basingstoke fire station, said: "The flooding of the pit had put out the fire. "If the pressure of the main had been more the gas would have bubbled into the atmosphere and we could have started an evacuation." Southern Gas Networks has now turned off the gas supply for more than 200 homes in the Brighton Hill area while engineers use cameras to locate the water that has leaked into the pipe. Morven Smith, spokeswoman for Southern Gas Networks, added: "We would ask people not to try and turn on their gas now we have switched it off." It is not known when the supply will be switched on. Have you been affected by this incident? If so please
My boss has told me not to worry about locates, "it's a prepared lot; don't worry about it." After I took out a 2" gas line, he cared a little more, but it wasn't until we got electric, cable, telephone, and fiber in one pass that we started getting locates with any consistency.
I should mention that no tape was sighted or later found with either of these incidents. We've uncovered several taped utilities without incident. (not totally clueless )
Never count on finding tape. When you're already looking for something, it's good for verifying that you're in the right neighborhood, but not much more than that. Somewhere on here, I've posted pictures of tape that's a good 2"-3" inches above the line you're supposed to be warned of. I've found tape beneath gas lines.
Since not all utility locates are properly marked, it's a safe practice to verify locates before breaking ground. If purchase isn't an option, many equipment rental stores have a variety of utility locating equipment available for daily/weekly rentals. Also, below is a link to the 150R/T locator. It's inexpensive and simple to use and was designed with utility-verification in mind. Most Ditch Witch dealers have them available in their parts department. http://www.ditchwitch.com/electronics/locating-equipment/150R-T
Took 6 hours to convince the electric company to remove wires and meter from a house we were demoing. Said they had unhooked line as I stood and talked to them on cell phone with hand on meter loking at incomeing power line..
here's something i borrowed from a friendly competitor's proposal forms....kind of a cya statement State law requires us to call an 800# whenever we excavate. This service only applies to major utility company main line equipment and will not locate many of the things that may be buried on your property. We are only able to make a surface visual check for things that are commonly found on a typical property without charging for the time and services to do so. The owner assumes responsibility for informing the contractor of all underground pipes, conduits, cables, wires, tanks, drainage systems and structures, and agrees to hold the contractor harmless in advent of loss or liability incurred as a result of incorrect or incomplete information provided to the contractor and agrees to indemnify contractor for loss or expense resulting from such incorrect or incomplete information.
i have workind in 36 states on various pipeline projects and deep sewer projects.. everywere i have been its a 2' rule from thier mark with any locate company. the only time we will call in a relocate is if we lose our marks. but in most cases we keep the laborors on em makin sure we dont lose them.
Here's one from just the other day. You can see the main. A little harder to see, is the mark-out. It's there, a few inches behind the curb. Squint and you can see the yellow paint and two yellow flags. There's a good five feet between the main and the marks. The gas company made the one-call themselves, because they're going to be out to tap the main sometime soon. I dug the service line, and while I was at it, I exposed the main for them. Yeah, I know I should've seen to it that the call was made before I dug there, but this is about the 10th time I've exposed that particular main in that plan, and I know where it is. What they have marked there is where the electric line feeding the street lights is located. The point in posting the picture is this--even if I'd waited til they came out and did the locate, I'd have been on my own, because they couldn't even mark it right when it was exposed and in plain sight!
6 hours that real fast? It takes 2 months in the Bay Area for gas disconnect. They don't care what ever, and if you cause a leak you pay for the gas and any liability. You can also go directly to jail. It's state and federal laws and real tough with fines.