I don't need a good lashing right now. I am already beating my head on the wall hard enough. I am working a 'little' job that has become a nightmare. I am doing a few projects for a guy, mostly rework a tiny pond and bury some old concrete. I hit nasty hard red shale and job is just eating my lunch. Guy wanted the culvert entrance moved. I told him that is usually the township guys and why not get it done free. They would not even visit the site (too busy) and once they found out there would be a machine onsite, they said, "just get it done". I dug up the old pipe and in the course of cleaning the material from the old location to move to the new site, I hit pay dirt! I frigging 48 pipe optic. I know the company that is out doing rural Inet. They are a great company, but I am beyond worried with this deal what they may do to me. Fiber was no more than 24" deep. Possibly because they smacked that red shale that I hit, or the fact that erosion has really eat up that ditch. The fiber was direct buried so I will assume they pulled it in. The stuff by me is being bored and in conduit. The fiber only feeds 2 homes in a rural area. I know they are running 48 strand just because that is what they are getting a smoking deal on. I think they only have 1 pipe terminated to feed the two homes. One pipe can serve an entire neighborhood. At least where I hit it, there is a JB only 75-100ft away. Again, I TOTALLY spaced it! Had I seen the JB, I would not even have moved the culvert! You can't hand dig shale doing the carefuling method. I am looking for some positive feedback (could use it) or what you guys have encountered? I have not hit a utility in years. I try to stick with less stressful work. This one just tapped me out. My only play here is to plead desperation and stupidity. I know some utility guys are super cool but this is just stressing me out.
Worked for my uncle putting in a church parking lot and he hit fiber with an excavator. I don't know if he had to cover the cost of repair, but they had their guy out there to patch it up the next day and we were right back to work.
Assuming you did not have an 811 dig locate? If so then go this route - Seriously we've never hit a fiber line (knocks on wood) but we've hit a few phone and cable lines in addition to a few gas and power too. The lines we hit weren't marked by the locators so we weren't out of pocket anything. Can't stress enough the value of calling in a Line Locate. Best of luck.
In my experience residential fiber is cheaper than commercial if it's only 2 houses then there is no loss of revenue to worry about if you have relationship with the contractor that does it and no one no knows you might skate a beer repair If you didn't butcher it might be patchable
Yeah if it's a end run resi deal and a smaller rural ISP you might avoid really getting bent over. But without the 811....
I've damaged an AT&T fiber line with a concrete steel stake. They sent an army of trucks and were all upset until I pointed out we were six feet from the painted line and the fiber was less than a foot deep. Essentially the same thing I said to the gas company that we punctured with another stake on the same job earlier in the day. Lol; everything was super shallow for some reason. I don't know who paid for the army of ATT workers but it wasn't me. It didn't take them long fwiw, so I guess it all depends how bad you damaged the line. One thing I have seen with when dealing with utilities, although I've never personally been on the business end of one of their bills so to speak, is they really come out of the gate swinging. But eventually people I know have had success wearing them down, where they eventually capitulated and agreed to a drastically lower number. Drastically lower. Now all these instances were fees, crazy crazy high fees, for running service; but I suspect you could wear them down in the same manner for a repair bill. To be fair, I would expect it to be tougher sledding and less discount; but you never know. You have to remember most of these utilities are more akin to government agencies than they are businesses. They don't look at profit and loss the same way we do. At the end of the day if push comes to shove just remember whatever bureaucrat you are dealing with isn't dealing with his own money. Hopefully eventually they'll either tire of dealing with you and agree to something reasonable or realize that if they have to take you to court the only person that will win is the lawyers and will arrive at the same conclusion. If it were me I would 1.) hope I get lucky; 2.) pay the bill if it's reasonable (after all it is my fault); 3.) contact my insurance company and tell them to get their check writing hand warmed up.....in that order. If that didn't work....I would wait them out and plead poverty and just try and grind them down. But yea, the real takeaway is always call for a locate. Always.
Here the utility can go after you civilly as well as it's a State code violation. Hopefully that isn't the issue in your case. If have not yet done so, I would call your insurance company and let them handle it. It sounds like a residential type drop line. Odd that it wasn't in a conduit, here it is typically in a poly water line type conduit, you likely would have went through it anyway, but I have never heard of it direct buried. Most of it here is about 2' deep, about the same as gas line. Your really lucky it wasn't a larger line. Situation could be much worse than it is. Your insurance will likely go up for a while. I do hope your insured.
My sympathies to Fastline. This is a very fortunate thread for me. I was asked to use a tractor auger to do some postholes at the edge of a gas line. It's pro bono work. I knew better but forgot there may be other lines beside the obvious gas line. Luckily for me the weather delayed the work. I just e-mailed the people and stated I won't be doing any digging until Locate marks the lines in the area.
The biggest hurdle is the lack of an 811 ticket that would be the thing that sink you here But in today's day and age you never know what you might get away with
Start by keeping your hoe there so they don't have to bring a mini to dig the repair junction boxes play it nice with the repair guys tell them how foolish you were and help expedite the job When the office sends a bill you can try for a reduction but with no locate you have no grounds to stand on it wont be the end of the world but will cost several thousand The last nonfiber phone line that we hit unlocated was 3000
When I dug the loading dock at the shop last month, I forgot to call locate. It was property they had owned for at least 60 years, but I bit the bullet, put in a ticket and delayed the job a couple of days. It rained like crazy those days so it did not hurt the cause much, but it was my own neglect that was the reason. Best of luck to you fastline.
Same here. We hit an unmarked ATT data line to a bank once. Had a current 811 number and all the utilities were marked except for ATT. At that time ATT wasn't USIC to locate and had a new company that was way behind - yet I didn't know that.. The site was an old gas station next to an operating bank. The gas, water, power and other phone/data lines were all marked and we were past the 48 hour mark so we start demo. A couple of days later we come across an unmarked phone line. We think nothing about it and keep going. Thankfully it was the banks phone/data line - not the "call the police instantly" line. As our crew is taking pictures of the area and lack of marks, ATT shows up with 3 trucks, USIC shows up and then out of the blue another line locating company shows up and starts painting orange on the ground where there were no orange marks before... USIC guy then tells me about ATT's new line locate company hired because they were cheaper than USIC and how far behind they are due to being understaffed.. Fast forward to 6 months later. We get a bill for almost $4K from ATT. Sent them a letter with pictures explaining in detail what happened, how it was their line locating company's problem and we are not paying for their negligence. Get a couple of more nasty letters from ATT over the next couple of months then they start to lower the "bill". ATT threatens to turn it over to their attorney which I said take your best shot as they are going to spend more than $4K in lawyers fees just to file the paperwork in an Alabama court. So we get a letter from their attorney demanding payment of $1200 within 10 days of the letter. Lawyer was from Georgia with an office in a 30 year old strip mall, probably bought the "claim" for pennies on the dollar hoping to collect something. The last letter we received from the attorney was for $600 and change to settle, never paid a dime. That was 2 years ago.
We hit a DOT street light line last week while demolishing a section of sidewalk to access a storm sewer box. We were demolishing the section by hand (and digging the first 6 or 8 feet of storm sewer by hand) as I knew the street light line was near (we had previously tied into this same box earlier in the job, albeit at a different angle...change orders) and there was gas an water under the sidewalk as well. The street light line was laid on the ground bare wire and the sidewalk poured on top of it. We broke one line while fracturing the concrete with a sledge hammer before we noticed the wire. It wasn't critical to the light operation but it must have threw some sort of code and a GADOT repair man was there within a half hour. He came out of the gate saying we were liable for the repair and the area must be inspected before we could pour back the sidewalk etc. We had a brand new 811 ticket for this change order but he says the DOT isn't on 811's call list and if we are digging within 1000 feet of a traffic signal...yes 1000 feet... we have to call the local DOT office for an inspection. First he asked if we had a GADOT permit (which we did) and then he said well it states plainly on the permit that you must call for a locate if working within 1000 feet. Well, I had a copy of the permit and show him that it said no such thing whatsoever. He said well you're still liable. So I got my GC involved and the area DOT supervisor (whom I had met with personally before starting the change order to make sure all our boxes were ticked as we had a lane shift on a state hwy for a portion of the change order). The supervisor came out there and decided somebody had made an unauthorized repair in the section we uncovered. The repair was supposed to be in conduit and buried....so long story short we weren't liable. Oh yea, and on the repair you couldn't just splice the wires together you had to cut a brand new loop in the street all the way back to the signal box. Sounded fairly expensive. At any rate, we weren't liable; but only because we had all our bases covered. We dodged a bullet and learned a valuable lesson re: traffic signal locates.
We hit an unmarked gas main in a small city a couple of months ago. We had current 811 tickets and everything. By unmarked I mean 75 feet up a city street away from the marked gas line along the state highway. Well the small city operated the local utilities....they couldn't clamp the line shut, the normal repair tech was out with COVID and was called in to come on scene in shorts and flip flops trying to tell the fill in tech what to do, etc. And, wait for it....they couldn't find a valve to shut the line down as they didn't know the line was there. Fast forward 5 hours with all hands on deck including police and fire....they still couldn't find a valve. Eventually they had to call in the larger city utility company who supplies the gas....they brought a crew in and remedied the situation...on overtime I'm sure. I was long gone by then as my GC had given me the all clear to leave. No telling how much gas blew out of the line to say nothing of all the personnel involved. If we didn't have a ticket it could have been catastrophic. Somebody paid for all those bodies.
IMO I wouldn't involve insurance unless you get a bill, you might just get lucky. My unlucky time was doing a excavation, there was 2 old abandoned water lines (or I was told they were), last bucket wasn't much room I needed to reposition even though I should have known better and why the CC was still there the edge of the track went over top, get finished back out and there is water flowing into the excavation, pulled off the CC connection. Anyways the utility company has about 10 people there within 20 mins because they have to go down the block to tell everyone water is getting turned off and no idea when it will be back. The neighbor's were already pissed about the development, I don't think it was 30 mins after it happened and I got a call from the owner of the builder asking what's going on because someone had already called them complaining. By the time I got back with my truck to pick up the hoe the utility had locator's, backhoe, site office and tons of pickups there and this was like 7pm on a friday. I checked at like 11pm before I went to bed and water was still listed as out. Long short short utility called me for billing info for bill expecting me to pay, I forwarded them email from general that told me water lines were abandoned, utility ended up eating cost because they said they had to be abandoned anyway, the only difference was that it was an emergency call instead of regular. Which surprised me, paying everyone double time for I bet a 6-8 hour repair wouldn't have been cheap. Other time was excavating around house for foundation replacement, owner didn't want to wait/pay for gas company to cut back line and stupidly I agree to dig around it. Gas line took a really stupid path, long story short nicked it. Gas company comes out and my first call isn't valid, I figure i'm getting a bill for sure. Guy looked it up and said you've never hit anything and this line should have been cut back any way, this one's free but don't let it happen again. It maybe took 2 guys maybe 30 mins and it was cut back and capped anyway not a big deal. They don't operate like private companies, at the end of the day it's not their money and they really don't answer to anyone so they just seem to let a lot go. But I won't dig anything without a valid first call now, even if I know nothings there. The first calls are terrible but at least it covers you and showed you tried to do your best.
Don't want to be the one to say it, but... have they been called? Did anyone see you do it? Did an angry home owner come out and complain because you knocked out their Netflix and they are missin their shows? Cover it up, and say nothing. Unless you junked it, or talked about it on an online forum......
Another waterline story... Factory has been there ten years. The area is growing and a C-store is built on land next to the factory. Since the C-store has cleared the area, public access is now a potential issue. So we build a fence on the property line. We're a major corporation so hiring a surveyor to mark the line is standard procedure. Fence is to be one foot inside the marked line. Don't you know the fence company drilled a posthole right through the C-store's water line. Now this is another problem since the water line is an encroachment on to company property. Add to the fact, the C-store has a propane tank next to the property line... This is contra to NFPA 58 and building code. I transferred out before the dust & lawyers settled so I can't complete this dumpster fire of a story.
I've done that a few times with coaxable cables, patch them up and cover them because the stupid things are only a few inches down. In a case like this, got to admit if no one seen it I might be tempted. But if it comes back on you, it's going to sting a lot worse if you tried to cover it up.
Drilling threw a water line is fun time. I wasn't running machine but drilled through a 6" water line. It was for a oil field company, only drilling 2 holes and 1 managed to hit the water line dead center. Didn't have a single bit of issue getting paid or blamed for it though. The company was huge on safety and making sure locates were done before starting and were assured nothing was anywhere close to work site, last I heard they were going after private locate company for missing it. I bet they lost a few thousand in water alone, and it was in december so the whole area was a skating rink.
That would still be sticky here cause the law states it's on the contractor to verify locate and while they have to respond in three days if they haven't your ticket is not clear till they do and then your fighting the bureaucracy Certain areas in town have way better response times than others and the city's and the utilities that still do there own located respond better That said there is a water company out in the west valley that doesnt respond to 811 and 811 specifically tells you to call them direct last time I had that encounter it took 2 weeks to get w after line marked that we were supposed to tap
3 days is actually the norm there? You're lucky. 2-3 weeks is the norm here, sometimes even longer, rarely quicker. And in most cases they are only valid for 2 weeks which makes scheduling a nightmare.
you had an excavator on site for this I assume. Did you call 811 at all for this job?
No update as of yet. No one has visited the site. I did confirm, at most, 1 home is connected to the fiber. No other homes in the area and likely not in the future either. I have no number to even call the fiber co. So what I did was leave my number on the pedestal JB very near the break. Way I look at it, if they visit, things will go down anyway. I do have one end mostly uncovered but i just scratched a hole and left wire down there. This is an extremely quiet area. Only like 2 homes on this road. Not like there is much traffic and my little hole just looks like some left overs. Fiber guys will understand though. I have not decided yet if I will make the call or wait for them to call me. From all the experiences here, I'd say this is a minor issue compared to a major utility strike. To throw my own, we hit a 36" high pressure main that feeds a large area of a big city. I was not running the machine, I was standing there watching. We were setting new storm sewer and that thing was tested quick. Filled a massive excavation in minutes. We made the news. Fingers were pointing immediately but I was onsite to verify survey offsets and utilities. The offset was wrong. City surveyor screwed up. The stake onsite said it all. We discussed before the dig and per the data we had, we were easily clear. Not really though.
You guys cannot EVEN imagine all the buried **** on a power station yard. We had maps and location personnel even brought in Hydro Excavators to locate the pipes that were never mapped. Leads into a major remediate of steel buried pipe, also has a Asbestos laden Coal Tar exterior coating for corrosion so HAZWHOPPER crap too. Hydro boys work four days surrounding the piping, find 47 conduits NOBODY knew were there or why, 21 of them empty, another 12 with wiring but dead and the rest Live and spent three weeks isolating the supply circuits. First ex send a bucket into earth and !POW! hard arc 480v, then power loss to a SAFETY system transformer, not even 5 inches off the hydro last hole. Entire game changed up AGAIN, and a three week job went into overdrive lasted SIX MONTHS. Circuit was a left over from Construction days and was actually a test line for the transformer that had NEVER been discussed nor identified nor necessary. Needless to say the NRC was less than pleased.
S Sometimes even the obvious doesn't help. As a rule, and this is something I picked up from a a more experienced operator as I was starting out. When I go on site, I look for power lines, poles, LVs, then I ask the questions, and I'm talkin private business, and home owner stuff. Any power to the shed, or garage. We have no natural gas lines, but if I see one of those Genarac generators, I look for the outside propane tank.. Where's your well, septic. If there is no one around, I look for the signs. well heads, tank covers, can I see the fuse box in the garage, sometimes the home owner has no idea. I asked a man, is there power to the garage, yes but I put it down 2 feet. I drop the ripper on my little grader, the shanks might be 10 inches, pull the panel off the wall in the basement of the house. Where is the power for the home. Very few homes here have underground power. Sometimes the water shutoff is in the driveway, I always ask if I can't see it in the lawn. We carry new tops just in case I tear one off, and a wrench just to make sure the pipe is not full of crap, or it isn't bent. We did new drain tile around a huge Catholic church. The guy on the hoe was an I know already, you don't need to tell me guy. He was digging around the foundation, gets right beside that big power LV, you know the ones for a double 200 amp entrance. digs right by, hooks the power, and keeps pulling. Church was full of smoke. the lines were not in conduit under ground, so they had to be exposed to the pole. New code wants each entrance to have its own LV, so 2 runs of conduit, a new LV through a 2 foot basement wall, new triplex, and 2 new panels later.
It's been a couple of days and no one from the fiber company has showed up? Are you sure the line is live?
In summer I sub contracted for the excavator on a conversion from overhead power to underground. It was me who called 811, my name on the ticket. Not me in the operator's seat. The locator marked the fiber line, but was off by a few inches. One spot we had to dig parallel to the fiber & we found it. The phone company came & fixed it, no further action ever happened.
OK, update. I headed over there today to try to figure things out. I found out the 1 neighbor was connected to it so I went ahead and made the call of shame this morning. Guy was there 2hrs. Mostly just waiting for a piece of fiber to be delivered. Actual work took 30min. I did a little digging and backfill work for them. They left the new piece of fiber on the ground and are having someone return later in the week to knife it in, but it is connected and running. Neighbor was probably only affected for about 4hrs. They took my contact info but that was it. I think I did everything I could to make the repair go smooth. I did however notice that one end up the fiber was only 9" deep. Other side was way deep. Is what it is. I guess I will wait to see if I get a bill, and then see how I deal with it.
You aren't in a good place if you failed to call Dig Safe before digging. It is law. There may be no repercussions, or there may.
JMO but if one end was only 9" deep if they come with a bill i'd tell them to pound sand and that if you don't want your lines damaged bury them properly. Sure you should have had a locate, but it doesn't take the reasonability away from them to install the lines properly to begin with.
Funniest one l ever had was a water line replacement...gas was 30' away and marked, power is overhead. Service valve exposed and turned off. Digging away with the Bobcat and backhoe...homeowner supplied beer, his kid running the shovel, life is good. Hooked something good with the bucket, ***? Homeowner is laughing his arse off...another ***? I hit a service valve?? ***? its 15' behind me! Seems at one time there was a leak....at that time village maintained the line all the way to the house. The village idiot decided the easiest fix was to add another service valve and leave the cap 2' deep. Ed
Utility lines are ALWAYS installed by a contractor. I used to do electrical work for the major phone line contractor. In underground work it was always, "Engineer is around, bury it deep. Engineer goes away, bury it shallow." The exception is Green Mountain Power. They have employee personnel on site to supervise. Ditches are flat bottomed, correct depth. Sand is placed, then conduit. Sand is raked by hand to support the conduit, then more sand. It is filled to within a foot of grade & foil tape goes on. After refilling the ditch, the ground is restored to what it was. These lines don't get dug up, and almost NEVER fail with age. Seems simple, Do it right the first time.
Not that it's exactly the same but I used to work on the golf course. One day I was out messing around with the sprinkler system, turning some on or off after maybe sanding greens or something, I don't quite remember. Well, there was one sprinkler head that was misbehaving or something was goofy with it so I took the tool over to I guess pop the top off or clear something from the head or whatever I was doing and when I went to turn it the entire head blew off and suddenly there was a 40 foot high geyser and I'm covered in sand, mud, and water!
I had one like that last year. Pretty much the same playbook. We hit an unmarked Frontier line installing a culvert. I had called a locate, The power utility had marked their lines, USIC had stuck a site clear flag on the lot. Over the course of almost a year the case went to some kind of arbitrator in Oklahoma, who I showed pictures, ect showing that the line was unmarked. Frontier came back with their own internal report noting that the locate was never performed, but still claiming damages from me due to an expired ticket. In Wisconsin at least, the ticket is good for 10 days, or as long as the company is continually on the job, not being off the site for longer than ten days. Our strike was about 25 days after the ticket date, but we had been on and off the job the whole time. (The Frontier line had never been marked anyway) I went through all this with the arbiter, showed them the info off 811's website about the 10 day/on site rules. I didn't hear anything for like 3 months, then I get a letter from some attorney in Oklahoma demanding the damages in 10 days or they would sue me. I ignored them, and haven't heard anything since, that was back in maybe February.
Talk about lower than low. An attorney that will pull those shenanigans. No wonder I was taught not to trust anyone with clean fingernails.
The locate companies are only as good as the guys doing the locating. Had a job putting in a 1000 gallon propane tank at the library in town. 2 electrical services go to the library, one off the main road and one off a side street. One off the main road goes overhead to the weather head on the corner of the building, the one off the side road is where all the action was though, came down a pole in 4" steel pipe then underground to MASSIVE transformer on the side of the building, which of course was where we were digging, and I had seen the transformer and line on the pole. I get emailed "Site clear". Unbelievable. I call USIC send the guy back out, he calls me when he's "there" and says "all clear, line comes off the front pole overhead" I say walk around the side of the building and take a peek....he says he already left the site and I'm good to go. I call USIC again, get a manager/supervisor, says he'll be out first thing in the morning. He shows up first thing and just laughs as he's now marking the buried line, he tells me he goes out everyday several times to relocate stuff, at least for the people that pay attention he says. I asked what about the people that don't pay attention, as he's still laughing a little he replies "USIC must have really good insurance because out employees aren't worth ****!"
Anything here buried less than 4 feet and over 200amp has to be in concrete. I have seen the caution tape laying a couple inches above the line.
Slightly different scenario for me a couple of years ago. Hospital remodel, parking lot rearranged with new drive for the fuel truck for the pair of choppers kept on the pads. GC had busted out the concrete curb on both the to-be connected drives, and graded, laid out their rebar and mesh. I had the job of installing the sensing loops for the gate system. It's a twisted pair of 18g copper. Usually I just drive pieces of rebar at the corners and stretch it around the rectangle required. It's actually pretty fussy to make it work, and I always worry about the monkeys pouring the concrete disturbing it. This pour started about 4 AM. I find out later that their remesh was arcing to one of my rebar stakes. Guys all in the mud and working it. The lead man just kicked it away so it wasn't arcing. Found out later that several of the parking lot lights were not on. Tripped breaker. It seems I had driven my rebar right through a conduit carrying 208V out to a section of lights. I did my bit during the day, so it wasn't hot. Dark came and the lights went hot. Before I did any of the stake work I specifically asked about anything being under what was just a grassed over area beside the parking lot. Nothing on the original drawings, nothing on the GC drawings. Now under the concrete is a pierced 2" conduit in the dirt with a 3/8" rebar through it. There were spare conductors in it, so once they figured out which circuit was shorted, they simply abandoned that pair and went to a backup. I had the hospital head guy over all construction out there, also a friend of mine, as I was doing the job and mentioned to him that I hoped nothing was there. He said if ts wasn't on the drawings, it better not be. Short story, I never heard another word about it. I think the plant services guys were embarrassed and probably got a little chewing out over not knowing or telling the GC there was hot conduit there. At least I didn't do the digout, and it wasn't so deep that it would have got the conduit anyway, but I changed my tactics a little. I used much shorter pieces of rebar now. The ones I used were longer than they needed to be. It was handy, and they had to be below finish grade....so down they went. I think the GC would have had to eat it, and he may have, but I didn't. Just glad none of the guys in the mud got zapped. Could have killed someone.
Pretty common to cut slab with a diamond saw to add support beneath, or add plumbing, electrical or whatever. Countless stories of electrocution when they cut through power lines. It's never included in bid work, so nobody troubles themselves to have a locator service search for it. I admit, I don't always have a locator aside from Dig Safe. Dig Safe is concerned with utility lines, not entity owned underground. I do my research before cutting or digging. What is the likely route they took to run that underground pipe or conduit.
I hit a buried propane line because someone did not take the obvious route. Tank at south edge of yard and 10 yards east of front of house. Propane secondary regulator is about mid point on east side of house. Direct line stayed 5 yards away from SE corner of house. I was asked to dig up a lilac bush that was too big and too close to the SE corner of house. First time I stomp the shovel in and pull back, instant hissing. I could smell the gas right away and ran to the tank to shut it off. Lilac bush was right over top the line and line was only 4" or so underground. Ran from tank directly to SE corner, and the followed foundation until it turned 90° to come up to secondary regulator. My grandpa wasn't very happy, but he didn't know it was ran that way either.
We put it in the quotes and invoices that damages to owner utilities aren't covered. Private locates, GPR, X-ray where requested/required is extra.
Contractor putting fiber thru our property 2 years ago...they were going to put a vault (plastic) next to a field entrance. Asked if it would hold up to a Steiger running over it....they moved it 100ft away, someone elses property with no farm traffic....lmao. Ed
My brother asked me to dig a line to provide power to a little tool shed. I told him to get locate done and he told me he built that house and knew where everything was. He was renting a machine and I told him i'd dig it but the first thing I hit, I was leaving. I didn't get 2 feet and popped a cable line , took out the whole neighborhood. I was eating dinner at my house when they showed up to fix it.......they ended up just chewing him out and moving on. I finished digging it 2 days later after he got a locate....
Them dang cable lines... Luckily, when I hit them it seems to be just me and the neighbor.
Update: I am not going into details being on the web, but I am off the hook. The fiber company straight hooked me up. I assisted with a little digging but I really did catch a break on this one.
Great update!!
Good deal. I've found out over the many years in this business in these types of situations that your attitude and how you treat the people fixing your screw up can have a pivotal role in how much it's going to cost you.
It's a good reminder to always call the 811 number. I severed an AT&T multi conductor traditional style cable roughly a year ago. I knew it was in the vacinity of my work area, but they never showed to mark it. I cut it in so many places I started pulling large lengths of it out of the ground. I wanted to keep it out of my fill dirt. End of the work day, zero worries since I called and it was never marked.... 'not my problem'. Glad you got it fixed without too much hassle!
Glad to hear it worked out well. I've lost count of how many times i've found a cable line pulling up a old driveway, a few times it was attached to the concrete even, most other times it's only a few inches down. Even if you get a first call they never mark them. Not worth fighting them over, I just patch them back together myself.
I tried patching a copper aerial ATT cable once about 50 years ago My road contractor was baling out a muck hole with a drag-line.Tossing it to the side. The pile was getting high and one of his buckets of muck took out 4 wire to 4 houses at the edge of the pile. Clever guy I was, I borrowed a ladder from the contractor and reattached the wires. I didn't guess very well, I didn't get one correct LOL. They could call out ok but the incoming calls went to one of their neighbors.
811 and napkin sketches for as-built plans took a year or two off my life last year; we had a parking lot addition and coffee hut pad to build, install utility run. Had the locate done, and shortly after we started broke a fiber line. Several businesses affected, we were about 12'-15' from the paint line and flags and the fiber was within 6" of the surface . Fiber guy showed up and just shook his head, we were obviously off the hook but his phone was busy with p.o.ed customers. He got his patch crew in (they fixed and then buried it at 6" again..I was dumbfounded), I told him I wanted one of their in-house locate guys out here before I moved another teaspoon of material. Surprisingly, he agreed and someone showed up about two hours later, did a thorough job. But the two locates did not agree except vaguely for two locations on in the area, which was a mixed-breed small biz development done over the past 30 years or so. Fiber and electric was the only two, water was at 8', building heat was external propane tanks near the walls so obvious where the lines were, and we weren't digging there, anyway. My trench line ran right thru where there was a close proximity to the two locates, I borrowed my buddy's employee and told him I'd pay him a little cash on top of his wages if he'd sharpen his eyes and help me scratch in a big pothole to find the line. River run cobble and sand, and that afternoon was the only one it rained almost all summer. We found the first located line 18" below grade and about 2' off the paint line. Exposed it for travel direction, but I couldn't shake the idea that something wasn't right in spite of the two locates running roughly in the same direction. Told my helper that if he was game, we'd put in some backwork and get down aways to see what there was to see. After two hours of roughing the material with the bucket teeth a couple inches and then digging with small hand picks, I saw a piece of caution tape appear, and it wound up being a foot above a conduited fiber line..a big one. I went home that evening after my knees started working again..if I'd have started my trench after finding the smaller line, I'd probably have bit right through the big one. Assessing responsibility would have been difficult as both locates were essentially correct, but no clue there was a big one almost 3' below the first, which wound up being a residential feeder. The big one was a mystery line heading away from the development. And that wasn't the end of the drama on that job, as the owner of an adjacent building came roaring up while we were digging the utility entrance in and said he had a septic system right there. And I'm like, "In the middle of a historic-use parking lot?!!" He had a hand-drawn map which showed a lateral field right there. The county's plan did not appear to show what his map did. After some fiddling, we found the d-box and a mix of jointed lines. Long story short, I bit through a lateral partway down the trench, found the other two by poking around a 7' spacing, his scratch paper was essentially correct but the county's was not. We just flex-tied new line in and rebuilt the gravel field easily enough. Two of the laterals were completely dry, they'd never had enough effluent to even color the surrounding soils. I can't imagine parking lot traffic hadn't driven the frost deep enough to render the field essentially useless at least part of the year, or maybe had cracked the lines and any effluent running beyond the d-box just went thru the crack(s) and headed for China.
I'd think, for as expensive as the fiber is to fix/replace, they'd put in some pipe and way deeper. It's pretty amazing how much crap is running right under our feet and no one has a clue where it is. Seems like an opportunity for some different tech to give a better view.
I'm sure it doesn't apply to all the lines, but at least in new residential areas here the fiber lines are all under the sidewalk. It makes total sense, that way zero chance of anyone hitting them. However in the older areas where they directional drilled them in they are so close to the surface, found them a few times just removing a driveway only a few inches down. With the technology now you'd think they'd make them at least 18" down.
I was involved with laying optic cable years ago and from memory it was laid to an ISO standard, 1.2 metres for cable without conduet, 800mm in conduet with marker tape 150mm above for both. The last 12 months of it I worked on over 2000 km, rural and urban installation. Do those standards still apply?
I think they are talking about service drops here where it just feeds one house at a time. Those are done by "installers" and not cable crew and so will be done the most expeditious (cheap) way possible. I suppose when fiber comes to this neighborhood it will be my own responsibility to bury it deep if I want it deep.
Never seen any that deep. I'm sure the really major one's are but any i've dealt with in residential areas aren't more then 12" down most are less.
LMS Line Construction is out of business. They did build phone lines along the highway, both underground & hung from power poles. They had a SOP; Phone company personnel are there to see, it got buried at specified depth. Phone company people not there, 3" is plenty. Town road crews would damage these newly installed phone lines going inches deep, & the phone company seemed to take it in stride. It was always confusing to me why the phone company hired this company for every install for a 25 year period.
Back when I built houses more than once I saw the sub-contracted telephone and cable installation crew pull the sod back, string the line and lay the sod back.
Sounds like some bureaucracy to keep having work at some point... My wife has a gov't job, I know what's up.
It's more like the cheapest bid isn't always the cheapest cost.
The power company is installing a new high voltage line from one end of our island to the other. In many cases it is on the same side of the road as the newly installed cable and phone fiber optic cable. There is no "Dig Safe" or 811 here on Abaco. Had a chat with the splicing technician working on the fiber down the road from my house having noticed 2 new splice boxes on either side of a newly installed pole on the road to town. He said they have hit the fiber multiple times south of the major population center, and that one I saw was the first on the north feed. No flagging, no painted lines. Just crank up the 36" auger and drill away!
They just installed fiber in our neighborhood it’s all directional bored for the main lines but the line running to our house is maybe 6 inches deep
because the people doing the contracting don’t have any idea of the results they just keep hiring the same idiots.
Or there are no specs on how deep the line needs to be or no one is checking on the work being done.
Sacrificial anodes, to technology changing faster than wire or fiber can be changed up to the Next form!!
They did it again! 277 (?) strand fiber wound up on the auger. North end of the Island lost internet/cable all day. The fiber splicer has a lifetime job with these guys putting in the poles. Yes, I did suggest to him that they should mark the path but it is not up to him. Anyways, it is guaranteed to keep him busy.
I know there were written specs. There were phone company employees assigned to supervise the installation. I never knew if the supervisor was paid a bit to not notice. There was the first fiber optic installed at the time I remember it as 1990? The very small towns were a proving ground for fiber. Each little town average 6 miles apart had a central office where the switch gear was. Early in fiber days, they connected all the little towns. My father & I ran conduit inside the buildings to protect the fiber. At the time they claimed a repair cost $6000, about the price of a car.
Frontier had fiber bored across our property 3 years ago. Found a vault laying close to the field entrance and its location marked... Caught the Frontier crew doing the vaults the next day. I played dumb, sometimes it works better. Told them the location, asked if it would hold up to a Stieger running over it. They moved it to the far side of our rr crossing....lmao. Ed
Suppose to start trenching for electrical tomorrow one call done today of course I don't trust them for **** so I go to check it out. The city put in a new feeder wire for the house but didn't stub it in past the fiber so stub isn't even on the private side, they dug within about 8" of the fiber locate, never exposed it though, grass is still perfect there. Of course because the city did it, all there is to mark their stuff is a frigging stake in the ground. Yet if the private side is put in first if it's not marked with a 2x10 right down to bottom of trench they won't touch it. So tired of the double standard. If you do your side first and it's not absolutely perfect they refuse. When they do their side first it's a mess every single time and they will never fix anything whether it's electrical or sewer and water. Sucks for the customer but i'm not touching it. I have a feeling they will say they will pay whatever extra to get it done, but even then i'm not doing it unless someone else takes liability for the fiber, even hand exposing it you can damage it, never mind that the entire spool needs to be hand exposed probably entire day of hand digging, or decent amount with hydrovac.
The largest water "board" in our area which is basically a corporation with the powers of a government agency provides the majority of the domestic and industrial water to our metro area. This water board is full of corruption, waste and graft that has been allowed to go on for years. On the private side of a water service first of all the install contractor has to be on their "approved" list in addition to the customer is required to buy the materials through the board - see corruption above. The private side has to pour 1/3 kickers behind fire hydrants against solid ground with an inspection. The boards crews install a hydrant, throw a couple of quickcrete bags behind it, crack the hydrant to wet the bags and then backfills. I have personally witnessed this. X2 - so tired of the gov't double standard.
All that's needed is a couple more pages of regs, a few more inspectors, and maybe another agency to be created to fix the problem ...
I had to get detoured yesterday because the fiber optic guys hit a gas line... shoe was on the other foot that day. https://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/a...cle_79656bc3-a450-5b4f-9005-bafb95657353.html
If these guys keep auguring holes, the fiber company isn't charging enough for downtime and repairs. The county road I live off of had a 5 mile road widening project 4 years ago. Between the floods and tornadoes that spring, the power line contractor got way behind. The new fiber line was plowed in with a dozer and they finished on schedule. Power line contractor had a hydro ex truck do almost half the holes.
Customer sent me drawing from utility and asked "what's the problem they said it was stubbed in 1m off the neighboring property line" (NOT the city side). These are the times I hate working for self builds. Absolutely not a clue what they are doing. This picture to anyone with a single ounce of knowledge in underground utilities knows there's a big problem here. Fiber, gas, and neighbors electrical are all within 1m of their stub in and it has to cross the fiber. Either everything has to be hydrovacced or hand exposed, trench is 5' deep so that's a lot of hand digging!
Yea I just don't get it. I've never connected to a new water/sewer that was done properly, i'd rather connect to the 60+ year old stuff honestly because it's way less hassle. They also never leave a water coupler on the line, of all the one's i've done they did once, someone is stealing a bunch of them or something because multiple times they've confirmed to me in writing everyone they do is suppose to have a coupler. I had one where I forgot to join the sanitary and storm at property line, they dug their trench and told the owner they weren't touching it until the 2 lines were connected to one, I had to go there to put a frigging $5 y on it because they wouldn't take the 30 seconds to do it. The worst screw up when I did my side first, they messed up the 3m west of east property line deal, they had the connection dead center of a massive tree in the boulevard, I emailed builder saying I think this is wrong get them to check, says nope do it. Utility tells builder after service in wrong spot can't connect to it. I go to site measure it with builder confirm it's perfect and call utility together utility blames me and says I should have caught THEIR mistake but they will make it work this time. I wish the builder wasn't there because I wanted to lose it so badly on him. Even when it's 100% confirmed they screwed up they still won't admit it.
I'll give my theory: When the Federal government fails to force feed a community its "benevolent prescription", local voters vote NO several cycles, they sweeten the Federal contribution a bit, then they tamper with the bacteria tests. Our system was cited in one hydrologist's book as "among the five most pure in the country". Over the 50 years preceding the Federal attack, we never had a bad bacteria test. Suddenly, monthly tests were ALL contaminated. When the Feds turned up the pressure, my father was system operator. Eventually, he questioned why the elementary school sent tests to the same lab, NONE of theirs came back contaminated? Immediately, the school's tests were also contaminated. At my suggestion, he sent a sample of distilled water. Sure enough, it was contaminated. Mid 1990s the voters here (200 homes) surrendered to threats & fines. The Feds won. The contract went to the contractor chosen by the Federal bureaucrat. It was outright fraud!. They proceeded to dig up a century old village drainage system & ignore it. Materials were consistently sub specifications. They destroyed trees that did not need to be destroyed. When they began in my area, first thing I saw was a 30 ton excavator reaching 30 feet in the air to rip a 12" branch off my prized maple. This branch was so high, no way they could argue it was in the way. Later, I discussed with the engineer, paid handsomely to watch out for the interests of the residents. He wanted a place to stockpile boulders too big for the tailgate of their trucks. I gave permission to place them beside the road until a time they'd take the tailgate of a tandem truck & haul them away. I got home that evening to see they had squeezed a loader bucket between trees & dumped them on my upper lot. Several tandem loads of boulders had been permanently dumped on my land. They knocked bark off 9 Maples in doing so. Residents were enraged! The local self appointed supervisor advocated exclusively for the contractor. The Vermont engineer hired by the local residents to watch out for us advocated exclusively for the contractor. Thousands of trees were destroyed. I'll never agree they had to be. Lawns were dug up & hauled away, soil replaced by sand with a tiny component of manure. Individual drop lines were spliced with cheap Chinese fittings ALL rusted away in 10 years. Main line pressure is high here, 250 LBS at my house. They used Chinese saddles rated at 100 PSI. The specification of 3/8" stainless tie bolts were substituted with 1/4" steel. They continue to rust away causing an expensive longitudinal crack in the plastic main line.
The storm and sanitary sewer are joined together at the property line?
Yes if there is not a separate storm line which is the case in many older areas. It's used for the sump discharge in the winter as they tend to freeze up if discharged outside.
Interesting how our climates dictate different ways of doing things. Here you would be blacklisted and possibly fined by the State Plumbing board for connecting a storm drain to a sanitary sewer line. We get so much rain here that most muni's and private sewer systems biggest issue is stormwater/rain water infiltration in their systems. We don't have to worry about frost..
Trying to have a sump discharge outside in -40 doesn't go too well so they came up with that. There is a valve inside house to switch for summer outside discharge and they threaten fines if it's not switched but it's about impossible to enforce. Yea that would be nice not to deal with, too many times they like to sink utilities stupid deep for some reason. I wouldn't be too broken up if I didn't have to deal with services 12' deep or worse.
Older areas here have combined sewer/storm water. The cities are separating the two systems as the storm water overwhelms the sanitary. New construction on the older combined system combines the storm and sanitary at the curb to facilitate the separation in the future. Cam
I have to think frost for you might go 6 or 7 feet deep in a very cold winter. I'm surprised where I live how different one year is from another. Some snowy winters we see no frost in dirt. We can dig easily year round. A "open" (no snow) winter, it freezes very deep. Deepest I've seen is 7' deep.
Our old system pre 1995 was 2" galvanized pipe buried only 2 feet deep. 100 yards from my house was the end of the system. 100 years, there was a big spray blowing water 100 feet in the air, In winter a massive tower of ice formed probably 50 feet tall, 40 feet diameter. It kept the main line from freezing. Drops for supply to individual houses tap the top of the main. Typically they were as little as 18" deep. Homes had to run a trickle through the winter to prevent freeze. Sometimes they froze anyway. All the drop lines were also galvanized steel, a material that lends itself to being thawed with a welder.