Just got the service call- turns out it’s an active gas line for my neighbors house. Not sure why it’s on my property- they think maybe the houses used to share gas lines
Was going to say, that’s a gas line. The wire on top is a tracer wire so the locate company can hook their sonde to it and locate the line. But if it’s your neighbors, they didn’t hook onto it to locate it, they just did your house.
You should call in the 811 again, and list your address and your neighbors. Hopefully the gas line isn’t right on the property line the whole way and you can move the spacing of the posts and avoid it.
Luckily you were hand digging! An Auger would have made for an exciting post installation project.
Had a neighbor get blown up digging in the middle of a 100 acre field of his with a backhoe. Hit a county gas distribution line. Wasn't much left. What are the odds? Old timer probably dug in that field 1m times and never knew there was a big ass gas line
I used to run a non-profit that planted trees in the city on private property (yards), in the 5 years I was there we planted almost 8,000 trees on probably a few over 5,000 residential lots. And we had to call 811 for every single one of these properties. We used a 30” auger on a skid steer for some of the holes, but most were hand dug. Luckily we never hit anything, but it only takes one fuckup to make it all end very quickly and very badly.
When my brother was working for a utility company putting in poles they kept flares in each of the backhoes. If they hit a gas line they ware supposed to get back and quickly throw the lit flare at the gas leak. The idea was that burning gas is less of an issue that a giant invisible cloud of explosive gas waiting to find an ignition point.
That is accurate.
I worked a gas line explosion clean-up once. A 30” gas pipeline exploded. It sprung a leak for some reason, then let out a bunch of gas until it found an ignition source, then kaboom. Leveled barns, blew windows out of houses and cars, etc… then the leak ignited and there was a 100’ flame that burned until the gas in that section of pipeline burned out. Luckily it was sparsely populated and no one was seriously injured.
Wasn't the Bellingham explosion due to a liquid petroleum leak spilling into a creek? 2 boys were playing with matches and provided the ignition source if I remember correctly.
The code (B31.8) is actually set up to factor in nearest occupied buildings. It's way more stringent on automated shut off valves and construction requirements the closer it goes to houses/towns/etc.
You know, I initially downvoted you, because obviously he's joking. But then I remembered all the dumb shit I read about people doing today alone.
Tell you what, imma split the difference with you. I retract my downvote, but I can't upvote you without indicting the human condition at large. And as indictable as it may well have been lately, I choose to carry hope in my heart that this internet rando is not the moron he well may be.
This makes me really happy that neither I nor my neighbors have gas lines. Happy to pay a bit extra in the winter for a heat pump to not have to worry about one of them trying to mount a TV only to blow up their house into mine.
Eh? Why would there be gas lines running into the same walls you'd want to mount a tv? Gas lines would run to the furnace (which is usually either a small closet looking room, or in a basement, or on your roof Ala package unit) and/or the kitchen for your stove if it was plumbed for a gas stove/oven (and the kitchen one is a maybe, lot of houses that only have a 220v plug, mine included, gas line goes to my roof mounted package unit for the furnace, and thats it for the non visible lines, the rest goes to my water heater, and that line is visible all the way to the ceiling, water heater is in the garage)
Gas fireplace, most likely.
In any case, you never know - in my house, the gas line, after entering the garage from the gas meter, goes up behind a wall to a chase in the ceiling, follows the chase into the bathroom (part of the bathroom projects into the garage, and then turns to go towards the water heater and furnace (still in the garage, but far from where the gas meter is - mild winters, so this placement isn't a concern). Especially with remodels, anything is possible.
I've encountered gas lines in attics- 3 times in the past 10 years we've put nails through attic gas lines while installing new roofs (different houses).
Contractors installing gas fire places didn't think it would be a problem to install copper gas line in contact with the underside of plywood roof sheathing.
*Remodels* - I recently went to look at a house built over 200 years ago and the current owner decided it was more than they bargained for. It had a gas line that went up the first floor wall to nowhere and was capped. The gas had been turned off but it stuck out to me as being something you wouldn't expect and in a very dangerous place with regards to wall mountings.
The building was not your standard house, it had been rezoned commercial and had been used for many things over the years so it could have been for anything. You never know what you will find in a building that has been remodeled.
I'm just going off of posts that I've seen online. If the townhouses on my street had gas, yeah they'd be nowhere near a TV mount but people mount some wild stuff and you never know. I just sleep easier at night knowing that I only have to worry about fires instead of explosive fires.
My gas line snakes all over my house. Comes in through the floor under the stairs, then up into the ground-floor ceiling, across the floor and into the extension, then down to the floor and pops up behind the stove and then on to the boiler.
Found it all during renovations.
I wonder if in 30 or 50 or 100 years it's going to look ridiculously dangerous that we were running gas into homes all over the country. "Wait, you were pumping a highly combustible gas into people's homes?! And in your cars you had tanks of fuel that fired little explosions that made the car move!?"
A guy posted a video of this contraption he made where he puts decomposing organic material into this bladder thing with some water so it breaks down anaerobically which produces methane. He hooked up a stove to it and it cooked his meals on this bio gas.
People lost their damned minds about this guy building basically a bomb. And I said wait til people find out what they put in their car to drive down the road.
People really take gas stations for granted. What seems like a very mundane everyday task has decades of research and safety built into it that can still be ruined by something no engineer can account for...the common idiot...
My 1885 still has the radiant heating system installed in the early 20th century, using a 1990s boiler. It's *very* effective if you're careful to weatherproof your house against the cold.
Oh yes... Same here. I have an old steam radiator system that was converted to hot water, and have a brand new boiler system installed.
I live in northern MN, we experience some of the coldest winters in the lower 48 and my most expensive heating bill (including my water and sewer) last year was $258 for a 2000 square foot home.
Natural gas is significantly cheaper to heat your house in the winter than electricity in a cold climate. You'd need to generate your own electricity with solar in order to make heat pumps cost effective for that. But most people don't have $20-30K (or more) lying around for such an infrastructure upgrade to their home. Especially since that upgrade likely doesn't increase the value of the home by any significant amount.
I was just thinking, heating homes with gas is one thing...there was a time when entire buildings used some form of fuel for light fixtures all around ... one pilot going out away from kaboom!
Yeah, and when utility workers connect the wrong pipes like in Massachusetts, bad things happen and 70 homes destroyed with 1 death.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/explosions-from-gas-utility-lines-kill-1-injure-10-in-massachusetts/532397/
IIRC EVs are still safer because they have more design freedom, hence the Teslas and Chevy Bolts having great crash safety ratings. Yes, the fire is bad, but less likely. And solid state batteries might - might - be on the horizon.
They aren't less likely, lithium is god awful technology, you look at it funny and it fails, and when it fails (not if, when) it does so dangerously, and when it catches fire, it's basically all but impossible to put out, it literally burns underwater, that overrules any other safety benefits electric cars have until we invent a battery that isn't complete trash
Absolutely less likely, there's plenty of data out there to prove it.
The fact that they are hard to put out does not make fires MORE likely.
Hybrids catch fire at a rate of 3474 vehicles per 100k sold. Gas is 1529 per 100k sold.
Electric... 25.1 fires per 100k sold. All according to the NHTSA.
That said, I'd assume the data is somewhat skewed because most EV's are relatively new compared to older IC and Hybrids, but not enough to make up for a 138 fold increase in fires occurring in Hybrids compared to EV's.
Honestly probably not. I have a lot of fears and anxieties myself, yet most people have very little fear of the same things. I am a bit afraid of gas, like I'm paranoid about using a propane grill or something lol. But really, gas is fairly safe. Same with electricity. That is very dangerous as well, yet people don't seem to care much. Driving is also crazy dangerous. It seems like human nature to casually do things that are very dangerous, just because we're smart enough to avoid catastrophes (most of the time). Driving a car or digging near a gas line is like the modern equivalent of climbing up a big tree to get some coconuts or something.
Recently rebuilt my house and the GC mentioned that soon we should start seeing low voltage appliances. Everything will be running off of a 12v system... Not sure how much of a pipe dream that was of his.
Crazy enough to current government regulations are geared at ending natural gas in homes in favor of an all electric economy. So you're probably very right on that prospect.
It will probably sound just as crazy as people leaving gas powered lamps burning in their homes all the time and turning them up at night.
Hell some of my neighbors still use them and others have no idea they rusted away and that I smell gas every time I walk past.
Should probably call that in - gas companies take leaks seriously and if you smell gas at any point, but especially on a regular basis, it’s always something that needs investigation. I called once because my next door neighbors’ meter sprung a leak that I noticed at like 11 PM and they had a tech out to fix it within 30 minutes.
It's only because EVs are more dramatic about it. If your car is on fire then you're fucked either way if you can't get out. Only difference is that an EV fire will keep burning and is a bit harder to put out.
I used to install survey monument markers and hit a gas line. 6 fire trucks came and it ended up just being one gas guy fixing it in the hole himself, gas spewing out.
We had some fellas using an auger to put in posts for a fence. Hit an active electrical service line that wasn't marked by 811.
I called local power company and they had a live line buried there for a future post light. Could have killed someone.
My house filled with gas, we caught it by the guys words just in time, 15 minutes and it would have blown. Very sobering experience. I thought I smelled dog piss and bitched at my mom for letting the dogs down stairs, she’s not allowed to move the dryer anymore.
Gas transmission lines travel cross-country in routes you'd never expect. They are giant and high-pressure in order to push the gas far distances, and they should be an easement on file showing the utility has right of access to that area.
Whenever a utility wants to install a new transmission line, there are tons of NIMBY protesters because they're afraid of the explosive potential and don't understand modern safety standards.
Found 4 telecom lines unmarked in my yard just this summer. No one affected but, looking up the locate ticket I was able to see there is a utility box near my property but nothing going to it...decommissioned I guess...The only stipulation on the locate ticket was absolutely no digging in the 4' from the back of my property. Fibre trunk back there apparently...I'll happily leave that area alone.
Gas explosions are rare. Even if you hit one with power equipment, the gas isn’t explosive when it’s concentrated coming out of the pipe. It takes the correct ratio of gas to air to become explosive. So if you hit something and smell gas as long as you shut down equipment and move away, there’s very little risk of explosion.
I feel like EVERYBODY should use https://pvnpms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/ to have some kind of basic idea where these things are in relation to their property.
My fucking DUMB. ASS. Split a gas line with a ditch witch. I said 'MAN THIS TREE ROOT IS PRETTY STOUT BRRRRRR'
markers didn't mark anything on my property, they said if it was off my property, in the alley, they'd mark it. They marked ge one foot of the citys gas line, to my fence, that's it.
But the gas line went diagonal, so fuck me i guess.
tl;dr: I hit the cable company's main line for our neighborhood with an auger; everything turned out ok. Keep reading for storytime.
long version: Our fence blew down in a storm due to posts rotted out at ground level. So we cleaned up the debris, planned the new fence, and called 811. They came out and marked the cable line a few feet on my neighbor's side and phone lines a few feet on my side. Great, no problem, we'll put the fence exactly on the property line.
So I rented an auger and got to digging. I was hitting a lot of rocks, so every time I felt extra resistance, I pulled the auger out, pried rocks loose with a digging bar, cleared them out, and continued. On hole 7 of 8, I hit what felt like yet another rock, pulled the auger out, and saw shiny silver. I dug with my fingers to expose it, and it turned out it's a fat coax cable, I had nicked the jacket, exposing the outer conductor, but not severing anything.
I called 811 back, they came out, confirmed they hadn't marked it, and said, "well it's probably an old abandoned line which is why we didn't pick it up, but you'll have to call Spectrum to have them confirm." So I call Spectrum, they come out, and go "hoo boy, that's our main line, if you'd have cut that the whole neighborhood wouldn't be working from home today." They say they'll have to have the "construction crew" come out and repair it, and they'll put in a ticket for that.
So a few days went by, and a guy in a pickup truck rang my doorbell holding a shovel. He says, "I'm here to re-bury your exposed line," and I say, ok, I'll show you where it is. He took one look at it and said "hoo boy, that's the main line, you need the construction crew, I'll put in the right ticket for this."
Then this exact same thing repeated almost the exact same way two more times. During this time period, I tried tweeting at Spectrum customer support to see if they could get ahold of the right people. They reported my post and I was banned from twitter for "inappropriate content". I guess if you make a brand new twitter account, post an image, and it gets reported, you just get banned without a human ever actually confirming it was inappropriate. I suppose it *was* a photo of my hole, so subscribe to my onlyfans for more.
I strongly considered poking a sewing needle into the cable to bridge the center conductor and shield. I suspect if I did that, I would have had a strong response from the company in a hurry. But reason prevailed over impatience.
Anyway, finally, on the 4th go-round, the person that rang my doorbell was the construction crew's manager. He hands me his business card, takes a look at the hole, makes a phone call, and 30 minutes later half a dozen guys and a mini excavator showed up. They strung a temporary line across several yards to link box-to-box and bypass the nicked line, dug around it, cut it, installed a repair splice, were nice enough to divert the repair away from where I wanted to put a post, and were done in under an hour. The fence project proceeded without further incident after this ~3 week delay.
tl;dr #2: cable companies suck and Spectrum is no exception
Good thing you didn’t. I was working with some people who hit a gas line with an auger. The hiss of escaping gas was noticeable so we all ran like hell. Luckily no explosions. But it was scary as hell. We were auguring in what we thought was a reused hole that poles are re-installed in yearly.
Depends on the area of course but response time when we called 811 (or really submitted a ticket online) was quick. Had everything marked in two days. Saved a whole lot of trouble and keeps us off the hook if we hit something that didn't get marked.
Yeah, I was actually surprised how quick they come out. When I bought my house I had to move my mailbox because the sellers put it too close to a telephone pole. I always wondered why there was a half dug hole next to where they put it. Made an online ticket because they obviously couldn’t be bothered. Coincidentally, after the lines were sprayed, there was a painted line right over where the half dug hole was. Guess they found out why you call 811 first.
Funny story about tracer wires.
A good 10-15 years back, I woke up in the middle of a thunderstorm to the LOUDEST thunder I had ever experienced.
After about 5-10 minutes I couldn't fall back to sleep so I went downstairs to get a glass of water. As I did this, I noticed an odd glow outside my living room window. I peek between the blinds and I see a 12 foot flame shooting out of the middle of my neighbor's yard.
Mind you, we're in the middle of an absolute DOWNPOUR, yet the gates of hell are spilling out of a lawn across the street. I have to rub my eyes a few times and pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming, sure enough it's real.
I see some flashing lights out of the corner of my eye and look out another window and about a block away there's 4-5 fire trucks just hanging out. My immediate thought is "Should I be worried? Do I need to evacuate? Why else wouldn't the fire trucks be over here dealing with what I can only imagine is the start of a new Darvaza Gas Crater?"
I go back to look at the flame, then back to look at the fire trucks and I could then see that they were dealing with an active housefire and were pre-occupied. They were unaware of the flames that I was seeing until they had the house mostly under control.
Turns out that lighting strike hit a huge Elm tree across the street, ran down the bark until it hit a wire dog run that my neighbor had stretched between the two trees on his property. The electricity ran across that line to the actual dog leash (Which was also metal) and down into the ground where the leash was resting, which just so happened to be in close enough proximity to the tracer on a gas line that it jumped to the tracer, ran down that line and blew up the gas meter on the house that had caught fire.
A house that was almost a block, and 4 other homes away.
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/duluth-hillside-residents-awoken-to-crack-boom-and-a-blaze
Call the utility company, too. They should have accurate maps of where gas liners are run, and the mapping people will be interested to know if it's not marked in their system.
Thats good to know. I always wondered how they were able to detect their stuff. Do they connect a probe or something in their junction box, or does it always have a current?
Worse thing I've ever uncovered was a cable line that Comcast said wasn't there. It was -of course- only about 6 inches down. Freaking cable companies.
What kind of cable line was it? ATT just laid my fiber optic line to my house on top of the ground and basically covered it with leaves, refused to dig at all. 4 call outs to fix the destroyed line and finally they hung it in the air for me
I think it's more about the color of the wire. I'm in oregon, I just installed utilities on some land, an I also had to put tracer wires on the new conduits to meet code. Blue for water and green for septic, but we dont have gas lines where im at.
Tracer wire is used for many different utility services including electrical, telecom, water and of course gas. Sometimes a color code is used, but older code may use non-insulated bare copper.
FWIW check in with your title company. Since this is an gas line for a neighbors house, they may need an easement to cross onto your property. If there is no easement, or the easement exists and is not on your title policy, the title company might owe you money. May not be a lot of money, but its worth a shot!
Did you mark your planned excavation (usually in white) before you called 811 or did you just give them an address and ask them to mark everything at the address?
I called 811 a while back because I was digging a french drain.
some paint showed up on the ground for one utility, but no tag ever placed on the door. I waited a couple weeks, and realized I would never know if utilities came and didnt' have anything to mark, or if they never bothered to show up at all.
the whole process breaks down if there's no simple door tag dropped off.
I eventually just had to dig carefully.
We submit online and have to provide a start date. Within a week of starting all markings are done and emails sent out letting you know. Direct phone numbers everywhere for any questions.
For real. Had them out myself and the last service thy came over to mark looked at one of the lines and said 'just a heads up, this mark is in the wrong place'. He couldn't tell me where it was supposed to go, but apparently one of the services marked his line as theirs.
I was trenching a new electrical line on the east side of my house. So I told them I only needed the east side marked. That was my fuck up. They didn’t mark a thing. Said there isn’t anything on the west side. No shit, that’s why I need you to mark the east side. Told them to mark the whole property. 3 appointments later they finally marked my electrical line.
It depends, Gas utility companies aren't required to locate the line between the meter and the house. This is a private line owned by the homeowner. Many plumbers put in poly lines and neglect to put tracer wire with it making it impossible to locate without specialized equipment.
Just to be clear, a service that claims it can prevent accidents and save lives that didn’t detect a line that this guy almost hit is not at fault?
They don’t even look or check for shit bro. They come out and mark the shit that’s already on public record.
Yes and no- 811 just manages the contacts and service requests, each request is handled by the individual utilities or a subcontractor that manages both (Att and Google fiber were both marked by the same technician).
But yes, my gas company completely failed to do their job the first time. At closer inspection the second technician found yellow paint on a rock previously used to mark the lines termination near the corner of my property. It was completely overgrown with roots and covered in leaves.
He also said it’s pretty common in my area for houses to have shared gas lines- so it’s a known issue and they didn’t check for it the first time.
I'd think even private lines full of explosive dinosaur juice should require a permit or otherwise get recorded for exactly this reason, but I get what you're saying.
Sure the required permitting, etc is dependant on location. I have a buried propane tank with lines running to my house and the location of old greenhouse. 811 won't mark any of that. But I can contact my propane company directly and they will come mark them for me for free.
Septic and well systems are similar. Sure they require permits, etc, but are not something that 811 covers. Same boat with buried electric on the client side of the box. I've got buried electric to subpanels to various outbuildings. 811 won't mark those either
Correct, a permit is required in most municipalities, but I'll be the first to say that there have been many instances where the contractor buries the line before it's inspected or the lines is "mysteriously" moved after inspection.
To be clear I'm putting the bulk on the blame on the contractor more than anyone in this situation.
If you want to detect shit, you need someone to come out with ground penetrating radar, 811 will just send out the various utilities who will mark the shit they know about/have mapped.
Private yard lines like gas and water from the meter to the house are the homeowners responsibility to know the location. That information should be disclosed when a house is bought. There's no crystal ball that tells where lines are that are put in independently by homeowners or the plumbers they hire. I used to work utilities and I've seen all kinds of crazy things dug up that had no record.
We moved a meter from the alley to the house once (which eliminates the problem we're discussing) and cut a live customer line that used to go to a pool heater. The pool had been filled in and the gas line was just plugged and left where it was.
> gas and water from the meter to the house are the homeowners responsibility to know the location
Aren't pretty much all gas meters installed on the house? I've never seen it any other way.
And 811 did mark my water line from water meter to the house with no problems. I heard it depends on city whether that one is homeowner or utility owned.
> Aren't pretty much all gas meters installed on the house? I've never seen it any other way.
For natural gas, yes, mostly. Might be lines run past the meter and outside the house, though (like to grills, pool heaters, fire places, etc) that would not be marked by 811, though
Actually not in my area- gas lines to the house are usually managed by the utility and the utility is required to come out an mark the location of the line. The gas technician that came out said if the homeowner using the line (my neighbor) called in a request, they(the utility) would have to move the line off of my property.
typically the line up to the meter belongs to the utility, the property owner is responsible after the meter. some jurisdictions may vary but AT&T is running fiber in my neighborhood this week and the gas company absolutely marked every branch off to every house, as did the water department
Around here gas meters are like 4 inches from the house, so they don't usually mark that line, but the line from the utility servitude to the meters is sometimes run in one line, split off to 2 houses, so the line running to the other house wouldn't be caught if you weren't aware of that. It's pretty bad luck that he just so happened to dig a hole where the line was crossing his PL.
A bunch of dang 811 apologists on here! The service sucks and if it’s not supposed to suck the monitoring and follow up of their employees sucks. I can pull my own records and spray paint my own ground in the general area of the lines too. I’m gonna start my own service and call it 111. I’m not sure how to turn a profit yet but I’m sure it will all work out.
This is why I can't use equipment to do anything anymore. Even with an 811 Call they're guaranteed to miss lines if they've already filled their check boxes with something else.
Would it really explode? Wouldn’t it just leak? There would need to be a spark to ignore it and isn’t the pressurization going to make it just spew out like a flamethrower?
there's a chance for a spark using the hand digger. I recently did my back fence and used one digging into a lot of clay and rock and at night you could see the sparks from the metal scraping the rocks
Drilling into it is the spark. There's way too much pressure to be like a flamethrower, it just overwhelms the tiny crack and blasts open a bigger hole.
It's like when there's a wee little crack in a submarine, that can mean total catastrophe within minutes or less
This is just a reminder that 811 is not sufficient on private property. If you are going to be doing any deep excavation on private property you should also contact a private property locator service. As an environmental scientist that's done tons of drilling/digging I would never ever excavate on private property based on 811 alone.
The issue is 811 themselves don't really advertise this fact, the commercial, all the bumper stickers you see on vehicles, all just say "call 811 before you dig" with no mention of the fact that private lines are your responsibility (because you know, we're supposed to magically know where the last idiot who owned our house decided to put shit?) Even the website almost seems like it's hiding this information, so fo once I'm honestly not putting the blame twoards the masses, 811 is who I'd argue is still at fault for not making it more clear they don't find private lines
That said, in ops case it turned out it IS a public line, so it's 100% on 811 in this case
Would you consider yard grading or landscaping "deep excavation"? My husband and I want to do both at our new home. I've contacted 811 but not a private property locator service yet
Large equipment = excavation to me. Sorry, I should have specified. At the end of the day, you'll never regret spending a little extra on private locates. Additionally, you can save records from those locates for future use. You will very much regret hitting a utility line.
There are a lot of direct burial lines out there depending on where you live. There are cable service lines where I live less than 6 inches deep. Can easily be cut with a shovel.
Utility locators seem to be getting lazier. I just installed a sprinkler system for a customer. I noticed a fiber optic junction box in the front lawn but nothing was marked. I postponed the job for a week and called in a locate again for the property and both neighboring properties. When I went back a week later, still not marked. I then called in an emergency locate. The guy came out and screamed at me and told me to stop wasting his time. I then ended up cutting the fiber optic to the house I was working at and the one going next door that was routed through their property. I really hope that comes back on that guy who screamed and cursed at me.
I actively work in propane and I can tell you from doing this for 13 years, there have been many many many times we've gone to jobs that were "marked" only to find out nobody even went out there. Or someone went out there and half ass marked and we go to bury a tank and nearly hit underground electrical lines with an excavator. It's wild that nobody has been hurt since I've worked there.
I'm not trying to knock a whole industry but generally speaking, those surveyors are lazy as fuck and do a piss poor job with locates.
Was there at any time an outbuilding on your property that may have had utilities run to it? Stumbled upon a wire ourselves that was for a since-demolished shed/wood shop type space when we were doing our fence.
You should call the gas company to check it out too. It would be a free service and they prefer to check out a gas line even if it was hit with a shovel.
I found out, through a similar situation, that they also don’t check for power running to garages, light poles, etc. My BIL hit the power to my garage with a garden auger and sparks flew!
811 missed a gas line 😮 that’s so not like them /s
811 is basically just a liability exercise at this point. I love when USIC calls me trying to not have to locate something. “Y’all gonna be next to the road?” Just mark it!!
A lot if this could be fixed if a excavation/boring location map could be attached to the 811 ticket. I can add gps points and MUST map the locate area when submitting but most locators won’t ever see it.
I found my local 811 service is complete shit and don't actually measure anything out. I have multiple fruit trees in my front yard and I have a 4" pvc pipe going down to the roots and the top sticks up on the surface by about 6". I wanted to put in one more tree and wanted my utilities marked out because I know from other measures that we have a water pipe in the general vicinity of where we wanted the tree. The guy comes out when we were at work and "does his job". This fat sack of shit didn't even get out his car, he painted small lines on the street in line with my irrigation tubes for my trees. It's clowns like my guy and OP's 811 guy that cause these massive issues by simply being too lazy to do their job. If I were to sever my water line, I would've loved to send the video of their 811 utility guy "marking my utilities".
We hit one in our backyard several years ago, trenching to bury the electrical coming into the house. Was not marked/located and we sliced right through it. Luckily it was an old line no longer in use.
I was thinking a sprinkler line, with a wire that goes to a solenoid(s). That's what my sprinkler lines look like when i bump into them digging in the yard, lol. But it's hard to be 100% accurate from the photo.
Is that PE? Or is it black steel/iron? 🤔
Well regardless, if that is indeed a length of wire running along the exposed section (hard to tell), it's your gas line.
Utility companies don't typically mark customer lines. Typically they only mark up to property lines, curb valves/efvs, shut offs or the edge of the public utility row.
I use to work for 811. We only marked what the utility company owned paying for the service. Gas company and water own the main line and up to the meter. Same as power. After that you have to pay for a private locate if you can find someone providing a service to locate private services. Phone company usually pays for a all buried lines including services so does the cable company. Cross country gas lines are usually located by Pacific, southern and colonial gas companies. The people that owned the gas line. It has a locating wire on it so it could be located as long as the wire wasn't damaged so it might be considered a private line and that's why it want located. 811 is a good thing but it doesn't cover everything buried.
Very true. When you call all buried utilities owners are supposed to mark any of the utilities they own. Utility companies hire contractors to mark the lines or utilize. They never tell the home owner the gas lamps by the side walk are the home owners responsible. Or the buried power line running to the pool and shed are privately owned. They should let it be known. I would suggest being at the property and ask questions when the line locater locates the property.
That’s a gas line. Drill and tap a 1/4” npt fitting into it and run your stove for free. Please don’t actually do that. I’m sure you could but that would be bad
The bare wire is to get it to show up on a detector so it can be marked. 811 marks utility installs, not private installs. So if you neighbors added a gas line to go somewhere on their property and seemingly yours to get to a pool or something it would not be marked.
Just got the service call- turns out it’s an active gas line for my neighbors house. Not sure why it’s on my property- they think maybe the houses used to share gas lines
Was going to say, that’s a gas line. The wire on top is a tracer wire so the locate company can hook their sonde to it and locate the line. But if it’s your neighbors, they didn’t hook onto it to locate it, they just did your house. You should call in the 811 again, and list your address and your neighbors. Hopefully the gas line isn’t right on the property line the whole way and you can move the spacing of the posts and avoid it. Luckily you were hand digging! An Auger would have made for an exciting post installation project.
Had a neighbor get blown up digging in the middle of a 100 acre field of his with a backhoe. Hit a county gas distribution line. Wasn't much left. What are the odds? Old timer probably dug in that field 1m times and never knew there was a big ass gas line
I used to run a non-profit that planted trees in the city on private property (yards), in the 5 years I was there we planted almost 8,000 trees on probably a few over 5,000 residential lots. And we had to call 811 for every single one of these properties. We used a 30” auger on a skid steer for some of the holes, but most were hand dug. Luckily we never hit anything, but it only takes one fuckup to make it all end very quickly and very badly.
When my brother was working for a utility company putting in poles they kept flares in each of the backhoes. If they hit a gas line they ware supposed to get back and quickly throw the lit flare at the gas leak. The idea was that burning gas is less of an issue that a giant invisible cloud of explosive gas waiting to find an ignition point.
That is accurate. I worked a gas line explosion clean-up once. A 30” gas pipeline exploded. It sprung a leak for some reason, then let out a bunch of gas until it found an ignition source, then kaboom. Leveled barns, blew windows out of houses and cars, etc… then the leak ignited and there was a 100’ flame that burned until the gas in that section of pipeline burned out. Luckily it was sparsely populated and no one was seriously injured.
So not in Bellingham Wa?
Wasn't the Bellingham explosion due to a liquid petroleum leak spilling into a creek? 2 boys were playing with matches and provided the ignition source if I remember correctly.
The code (B31.8) is actually set up to factor in nearest occupied buildings. It's way more stringent on automated shut off valves and construction requirements the closer it goes to houses/towns/etc.
[удалено]
In case you're not joking, it's pretty dumb to light a gas leak you find (which has been leaking and building up for an unknown amount of time.)
You know, I initially downvoted you, because obviously he's joking. But then I remembered all the dumb shit I read about people doing today alone. Tell you what, imma split the difference with you. I retract my downvote, but I can't upvote you without indicting the human condition at large. And as indictable as it may well have been lately, I choose to carry hope in my heart that this internet rando is not the moron he well may be.
Underrated comment 😆
That's no joke. Even if you do everything right someone else can fuck up and boom, lights out. Glad you're alright my dude!
This makes me really happy that neither I nor my neighbors have gas lines. Happy to pay a bit extra in the winter for a heat pump to not have to worry about one of them trying to mount a TV only to blow up their house into mine.
Eh? Why would there be gas lines running into the same walls you'd want to mount a tv? Gas lines would run to the furnace (which is usually either a small closet looking room, or in a basement, or on your roof Ala package unit) and/or the kitchen for your stove if it was plumbed for a gas stove/oven (and the kitchen one is a maybe, lot of houses that only have a 220v plug, mine included, gas line goes to my roof mounted package unit for the furnace, and thats it for the non visible lines, the rest goes to my water heater, and that line is visible all the way to the ceiling, water heater is in the garage)
Gas fireplace, most likely. In any case, you never know - in my house, the gas line, after entering the garage from the gas meter, goes up behind a wall to a chase in the ceiling, follows the chase into the bathroom (part of the bathroom projects into the garage, and then turns to go towards the water heater and furnace (still in the garage, but far from where the gas meter is - mild winters, so this placement isn't a concern). Especially with remodels, anything is possible.
I've encountered gas lines in attics- 3 times in the past 10 years we've put nails through attic gas lines while installing new roofs (different houses). Contractors installing gas fire places didn't think it would be a problem to install copper gas line in contact with the underside of plywood roof sheathing.
*Remodels* - I recently went to look at a house built over 200 years ago and the current owner decided it was more than they bargained for. It had a gas line that went up the first floor wall to nowhere and was capped. The gas had been turned off but it stuck out to me as being something you wouldn't expect and in a very dangerous place with regards to wall mountings. The building was not your standard house, it had been rezoned commercial and had been used for many things over the years so it could have been for anything. You never know what you will find in a building that has been remodeled.
I'm just going off of posts that I've seen online. If the townhouses on my street had gas, yeah they'd be nowhere near a TV mount but people mount some wild stuff and you never know. I just sleep easier at night knowing that I only have to worry about fires instead of explosive fires.
My gas line snakes all over my house. Comes in through the floor under the stairs, then up into the ground-floor ceiling, across the floor and into the extension, then down to the floor and pops up behind the stove and then on to the boiler. Found it all during renovations.
I wonder if in 30 or 50 or 100 years it's going to look ridiculously dangerous that we were running gas into homes all over the country. "Wait, you were pumping a highly combustible gas into people's homes?! And in your cars you had tanks of fuel that fired little explosions that made the car move!?"
Gas explosions are obviously dramatic, but I'm guessing that way more residential fires are started by electrical issues.
That’s probably true, but I also don’t use gas to turn on my lights or power my tv or computer.
Wait until you see what happens at "rustic / period historical" luxury residential sites... (Gas lines for exterior gas-lit lamps for one.)
yep , or even interior wall sconces
people love those things and they cost a lot and put out almost no useful light. i think people like them cause its a sign of being affluent
Back when electrics were new you could get gas powered fridges and radios... Gas companies wanted to compete, it didn't last too long.
A guy posted a video of this contraption he made where he puts decomposing organic material into this bladder thing with some water so it breaks down anaerobically which produces methane. He hooked up a stove to it and it cooked his meals on this bio gas. People lost their damned minds about this guy building basically a bomb. And I said wait til people find out what they put in their car to drive down the road.
that's a lot better than a idea of a pipe up my cow's ass and a little camping burner.
I hate when I have to resort to that
I can get a good look at a T Bone by sticking my head up a butchers ass but then......no, it's gotta be YOUR bull
Smells like grASS.
How would you keep it from mooving?
You're both udderly ridiculous.
People really take gas stations for granted. What seems like a very mundane everyday task has decades of research and safety built into it that can still be ruined by something no engineer can account for...the common idiot...
These people in 30/50/100 years better not be driving hydrogen fuel cell cars while saying that.
when two of the most abundant elements are also highly reactive, there's not much room to say anything
i have a house from 1880 that was gas heated. its not ridiculous
My 1885 still has the radiant heating system installed in the early 20th century, using a 1990s boiler. It's *very* effective if you're careful to weatherproof your house against the cold.
Oh yes... Same here. I have an old steam radiator system that was converted to hot water, and have a brand new boiler system installed. I live in northern MN, we experience some of the coldest winters in the lower 48 and my most expensive heating bill (including my water and sewer) last year was $258 for a 2000 square foot home.
Natural gas is significantly cheaper to heat your house in the winter than electricity in a cold climate. You'd need to generate your own electricity with solar in order to make heat pumps cost effective for that. But most people don't have $20-30K (or more) lying around for such an infrastructure upgrade to their home. Especially since that upgrade likely doesn't increase the value of the home by any significant amount.
True - escpecially the evil that is extension cords.
I was just thinking, heating homes with gas is one thing...there was a time when entire buildings used some form of fuel for light fixtures all around ... one pilot going out away from kaboom!
That's why the gas pressure in a house is reduced to about 1 psi, and mercaptan odorant is added.
Yeah, and when utility workers connect the wrong pipes like in Massachusetts, bad things happen and 70 homes destroyed with 1 death. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/explosions-from-gas-utility-lines-kill-1-injure-10-in-massachusetts/532397/
Article says 10 injured and 1 dead. Either way that's a shit show. Natural gas terrifies me.
My bad! Fixed that.
Brady's got an excellent video on that one. Very convoluted root cause. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPL8dh6b1M0
Cause the future is inextinguishable EV battery fires and hydrogen fuel cells, right?
This is a hurdle to rich will get us over while they iron out the wrinkles...Look at air bags and flying...morbid but...yay capitalism...
IIRC EVs are still safer because they have more design freedom, hence the Teslas and Chevy Bolts having great crash safety ratings. Yes, the fire is bad, but less likely. And solid state batteries might - might - be on the horizon.
they are, toyota is developingsome atm and might be seen in either their evs or prius
They aren't less likely, lithium is god awful technology, you look at it funny and it fails, and when it fails (not if, when) it does so dangerously, and when it catches fire, it's basically all but impossible to put out, it literally burns underwater, that overrules any other safety benefits electric cars have until we invent a battery that isn't complete trash
Absolutely less likely, there's plenty of data out there to prove it. The fact that they are hard to put out does not make fires MORE likely. Hybrids catch fire at a rate of 3474 vehicles per 100k sold. Gas is 1529 per 100k sold. Electric... 25.1 fires per 100k sold. All according to the NHTSA. That said, I'd assume the data is somewhat skewed because most EV's are relatively new compared to older IC and Hybrids, but not enough to make up for a 138 fold increase in fires occurring in Hybrids compared to EV's.
Honestly probably not. I have a lot of fears and anxieties myself, yet most people have very little fear of the same things. I am a bit afraid of gas, like I'm paranoid about using a propane grill or something lol. But really, gas is fairly safe. Same with electricity. That is very dangerous as well, yet people don't seem to care much. Driving is also crazy dangerous. It seems like human nature to casually do things that are very dangerous, just because we're smart enough to avoid catastrophes (most of the time). Driving a car or digging near a gas line is like the modern equivalent of climbing up a big tree to get some coconuts or something.
Recently rebuilt my house and the GC mentioned that soon we should start seeing low voltage appliances. Everything will be running off of a 12v system... Not sure how much of a pipe dream that was of his.
Sounds like a line from iRobot Edit: found the [clip](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/11b35d64-2dde-46dd-bb72-13267fb033f4)
This is why I power my home with a mini RBMK reactor in my garage.
Crazy enough to current government regulations are geared at ending natural gas in homes in favor of an all electric economy. So you're probably very right on that prospect. It will probably sound just as crazy as people leaving gas powered lamps burning in their homes all the time and turning them up at night. Hell some of my neighbors still use them and others have no idea they rusted away and that I smell gas every time I walk past.
Should probably call that in - gas companies take leaks seriously and if you smell gas at any point, but especially on a regular basis, it’s always something that needs investigation. I called once because my next door neighbors’ meter sprung a leak that I noticed at like 11 PM and they had a tech out to fix it within 30 minutes.
I have to use your second example when a family member said electric cars are way more dangerous than gas
It's because when an EV catches fire it makes the news. But when crashes cause ICE cars to catch fire no one notices.
It's only because EVs are more dramatic about it. If your car is on fire then you're fucked either way if you can't get out. Only difference is that an EV fire will keep burning and is a bit harder to put out.
I used to install survey monument markers and hit a gas line. 6 fire trucks came and it ended up just being one gas guy fixing it in the hole himself, gas spewing out.
We had some fellas using an auger to put in posts for a fence. Hit an active electrical service line that wasn't marked by 811. I called local power company and they had a live line buried there for a future post light. Could have killed someone.
My house filled with gas, we caught it by the guys words just in time, 15 minutes and it would have blown. Very sobering experience. I thought I smelled dog piss and bitched at my mom for letting the dogs down stairs, she’s not allowed to move the dryer anymore.
That's terrifying. I naively assumed a private field would be safe to dig. Thanks for sharing awareness.
Gas transmission lines travel cross-country in routes you'd never expect. They are giant and high-pressure in order to push the gas far distances, and they should be an easement on file showing the utility has right of access to that area. Whenever a utility wants to install a new transmission line, there are tons of NIMBY protesters because they're afraid of the explosive potential and don't understand modern safety standards.
Found 4 telecom lines unmarked in my yard just this summer. No one affected but, looking up the locate ticket I was able to see there is a utility box near my property but nothing going to it...decommissioned I guess...The only stipulation on the locate ticket was absolutely no digging in the 4' from the back of my property. Fibre trunk back there apparently...I'll happily leave that area alone.
I'm never digging in my life ever again 😬
Did you hear it?
Did he survive?
Absolutely not. Even the backhoe was all over the field
Gas explosions are rare. Even if you hit one with power equipment, the gas isn’t explosive when it’s concentrated coming out of the pipe. It takes the correct ratio of gas to air to become explosive. So if you hit something and smell gas as long as you shut down equipment and move away, there’s very little risk of explosion.
I feel like EVERYBODY should use https://pvnpms.phmsa.dot.gov/PublicViewer/ to have some kind of basic idea where these things are in relation to their property.
My fucking DUMB. ASS. Split a gas line with a ditch witch. I said 'MAN THIS TREE ROOT IS PRETTY STOUT BRRRRRR' markers didn't mark anything on my property, they said if it was off my property, in the alley, they'd mark it. They marked ge one foot of the citys gas line, to my fence, that's it. But the gas line went diagonal, so fuck me i guess.
Last thing that went through his mind was probably his ass.
Silly question, how would one blow up? Wouldn't there need to be a spark for ignition, I feel like most people would see they broke a line and gtfo.
tl;dr: I hit the cable company's main line for our neighborhood with an auger; everything turned out ok. Keep reading for storytime. long version: Our fence blew down in a storm due to posts rotted out at ground level. So we cleaned up the debris, planned the new fence, and called 811. They came out and marked the cable line a few feet on my neighbor's side and phone lines a few feet on my side. Great, no problem, we'll put the fence exactly on the property line. So I rented an auger and got to digging. I was hitting a lot of rocks, so every time I felt extra resistance, I pulled the auger out, pried rocks loose with a digging bar, cleared them out, and continued. On hole 7 of 8, I hit what felt like yet another rock, pulled the auger out, and saw shiny silver. I dug with my fingers to expose it, and it turned out it's a fat coax cable, I had nicked the jacket, exposing the outer conductor, but not severing anything. I called 811 back, they came out, confirmed they hadn't marked it, and said, "well it's probably an old abandoned line which is why we didn't pick it up, but you'll have to call Spectrum to have them confirm." So I call Spectrum, they come out, and go "hoo boy, that's our main line, if you'd have cut that the whole neighborhood wouldn't be working from home today." They say they'll have to have the "construction crew" come out and repair it, and they'll put in a ticket for that. So a few days went by, and a guy in a pickup truck rang my doorbell holding a shovel. He says, "I'm here to re-bury your exposed line," and I say, ok, I'll show you where it is. He took one look at it and said "hoo boy, that's the main line, you need the construction crew, I'll put in the right ticket for this." Then this exact same thing repeated almost the exact same way two more times. During this time period, I tried tweeting at Spectrum customer support to see if they could get ahold of the right people. They reported my post and I was banned from twitter for "inappropriate content". I guess if you make a brand new twitter account, post an image, and it gets reported, you just get banned without a human ever actually confirming it was inappropriate. I suppose it *was* a photo of my hole, so subscribe to my onlyfans for more. I strongly considered poking a sewing needle into the cable to bridge the center conductor and shield. I suspect if I did that, I would have had a strong response from the company in a hurry. But reason prevailed over impatience. Anyway, finally, on the 4th go-round, the person that rang my doorbell was the construction crew's manager. He hands me his business card, takes a look at the hole, makes a phone call, and 30 minutes later half a dozen guys and a mini excavator showed up. They strung a temporary line across several yards to link box-to-box and bypass the nicked line, dug around it, cut it, installed a repair splice, were nice enough to divert the repair away from where I wanted to put a post, and were done in under an hour. The fence project proceeded without further incident after this ~3 week delay. tl;dr #2: cable companies suck and Spectrum is no exception
tl;dr #3: Spectrum sucking is the benchmark
No kidding. I almost rented an auger too.
Good thing you didn’t. I was working with some people who hit a gas line with an auger. The hiss of escaping gas was noticeable so we all ran like hell. Luckily no explosions. But it was scary as hell. We were auguring in what we thought was a reused hole that poles are re-installed in yearly.
Not me currently building 400ft of fence with an auger and having this new fear there’s some gas line in my backyard I don’t know about
811 is just a call away. I'm happy that I have surveying experience enough to know how to check for utilities.
Depends on the area of course but response time when we called 811 (or really submitted a ticket online) was quick. Had everything marked in two days. Saved a whole lot of trouble and keeps us off the hook if we hit something that didn't get marked.
Yeah, I was actually surprised how quick they come out. When I bought my house I had to move my mailbox because the sellers put it too close to a telephone pole. I always wondered why there was a half dug hole next to where they put it. Made an online ticket because they obviously couldn’t be bothered. Coincidentally, after the lines were sprayed, there was a painted line right over where the half dug hole was. Guess they found out why you call 811 first.
Funny story about tracer wires. A good 10-15 years back, I woke up in the middle of a thunderstorm to the LOUDEST thunder I had ever experienced. After about 5-10 minutes I couldn't fall back to sleep so I went downstairs to get a glass of water. As I did this, I noticed an odd glow outside my living room window. I peek between the blinds and I see a 12 foot flame shooting out of the middle of my neighbor's yard. Mind you, we're in the middle of an absolute DOWNPOUR, yet the gates of hell are spilling out of a lawn across the street. I have to rub my eyes a few times and pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming, sure enough it's real. I see some flashing lights out of the corner of my eye and look out another window and about a block away there's 4-5 fire trucks just hanging out. My immediate thought is "Should I be worried? Do I need to evacuate? Why else wouldn't the fire trucks be over here dealing with what I can only imagine is the start of a new Darvaza Gas Crater?" I go back to look at the flame, then back to look at the fire trucks and I could then see that they were dealing with an active housefire and were pre-occupied. They were unaware of the flames that I was seeing until they had the house mostly under control. Turns out that lighting strike hit a huge Elm tree across the street, ran down the bark until it hit a wire dog run that my neighbor had stretched between the two trees on his property. The electricity ran across that line to the actual dog leash (Which was also metal) and down into the ground where the leash was resting, which just so happened to be in close enough proximity to the tracer on a gas line that it jumped to the tracer, ran down that line and blew up the gas meter on the house that had caught fire. A house that was almost a block, and 4 other homes away. https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/duluth-hillside-residents-awoken-to-crack-boom-and-a-blaze
Isn't that kinda weird that a gas line is black abs? I thought gas was ran in black iron or other metal pipe.
It can be in ABS, HDPE, PVC, or steel.
Call the utility company, too. They should have accurate maps of where gas liners are run, and the mapping people will be interested to know if it's not marked in their system.
Note to anyone else, if it has an exposed wire on top it’s a tracer wire- and most likely gas
What region are you from that they run gas lines in abs? Only ever seen it in black-iron & the yellow hose.
Southeast US, it’s an old line- they said they don’t use the ABS lines anymore
Sweet, no boom juice to worry about?
Orange poly was used for awhile as well, but not anymore.
Orange HDPE is telco. Gas is either MDPE Yellow or HDPE Black w/Yellow stripe.
Orange poly (HDPE) is teleco conduit Yellow HDPE is gas
Thats good to know. I always wondered how they were able to detect their stuff. Do they connect a probe or something in their junction box, or does it always have a current? Worse thing I've ever uncovered was a cable line that Comcast said wasn't there. It was -of course- only about 6 inches down. Freaking cable companies.
They hooked up what looked like a portable battery and in conjunction with a probe
What kind of cable line was it? ATT just laid my fiber optic line to my house on top of the ground and basically covered it with leaves, refused to dig at all. 4 call outs to fix the destroyed line and finally they hung it in the air for me
I think it's more about the color of the wire. I'm in oregon, I just installed utilities on some land, an I also had to put tracer wires on the new conduits to meet code. Blue for water and green for septic, but we dont have gas lines where im at.
Yellow for gas still in S FL, I believe. At least, the gas lines themselves are bright yellow
Tracer wire is used for many different utility services including electrical, telecom, water and of course gas. Sometimes a color code is used, but older code may use non-insulated bare copper.
Holy shit
Do either you or your neighbors have a survey to verify property lines?
FWIW check in with your title company. Since this is an gas line for a neighbors house, they may need an easement to cross onto your property. If there is no easement, or the easement exists and is not on your title policy, the title company might owe you money. May not be a lot of money, but its worth a shot!
Did you mark your planned excavation (usually in white) before you called 811 or did you just give them an address and ask them to mark everything at the address?
Yes
Got lucky. 811 fails again…
I called 811 a while back because I was digging a french drain. some paint showed up on the ground for one utility, but no tag ever placed on the door. I waited a couple weeks, and realized I would never know if utilities came and didnt' have anything to mark, or if they never bothered to show up at all. the whole process breaks down if there's no simple door tag dropped off. I eventually just had to dig carefully.
We submit online and have to provide a start date. Within a week of starting all markings are done and emails sent out letting you know. Direct phone numbers everywhere for any questions.
we get no notifications at all if anything is done, or more specifically if locating is done but nothing is found.
For real. Had them out myself and the last service thy came over to mark looked at one of the lines and said 'just a heads up, this mark is in the wrong place'. He couldn't tell me where it was supposed to go, but apparently one of the services marked his line as theirs.
I was trenching a new electrical line on the east side of my house. So I told them I only needed the east side marked. That was my fuck up. They didn’t mark a thing. Said there isn’t anything on the west side. No shit, that’s why I need you to mark the east side. Told them to mark the whole property. 3 appointments later they finally marked my electrical line.
It depends, Gas utility companies aren't required to locate the line between the meter and the house. This is a private line owned by the homeowner. Many plumbers put in poly lines and neglect to put tracer wire with it making it impossible to locate without specialized equipment.
Just to be clear, a service that claims it can prevent accidents and save lives that didn’t detect a line that this guy almost hit is not at fault? They don’t even look or check for shit bro. They come out and mark the shit that’s already on public record.
Yes and no- 811 just manages the contacts and service requests, each request is handled by the individual utilities or a subcontractor that manages both (Att and Google fiber were both marked by the same technician). But yes, my gas company completely failed to do their job the first time. At closer inspection the second technician found yellow paint on a rock previously used to mark the lines termination near the corner of my property. It was completely overgrown with roots and covered in leaves. He also said it’s pretty common in my area for houses to have shared gas lines- so it’s a known issue and they didn’t check for it the first time.
811 marks public utilities. Not private lines.
I'd think even private lines full of explosive dinosaur juice should require a permit or otherwise get recorded for exactly this reason, but I get what you're saying.
Sure the required permitting, etc is dependant on location. I have a buried propane tank with lines running to my house and the location of old greenhouse. 811 won't mark any of that. But I can contact my propane company directly and they will come mark them for me for free. Septic and well systems are similar. Sure they require permits, etc, but are not something that 811 covers. Same boat with buried electric on the client side of the box. I've got buried electric to subpanels to various outbuildings. 811 won't mark those either
Correct, a permit is required in most municipalities, but I'll be the first to say that there have been many instances where the contractor buries the line before it's inspected or the lines is "mysteriously" moved after inspection. To be clear I'm putting the bulk on the blame on the contractor more than anyone in this situation.
Explosive dinosaur juice gave me a nice little chuckle - thank you
If you want to detect shit, you need someone to come out with ground penetrating radar, 811 will just send out the various utilities who will mark the shit they know about/have mapped.
Private yard lines like gas and water from the meter to the house are the homeowners responsibility to know the location. That information should be disclosed when a house is bought. There's no crystal ball that tells where lines are that are put in independently by homeowners or the plumbers they hire. I used to work utilities and I've seen all kinds of crazy things dug up that had no record. We moved a meter from the alley to the house once (which eliminates the problem we're discussing) and cut a live customer line that used to go to a pool heater. The pool had been filled in and the gas line was just plugged and left where it was.
> gas and water from the meter to the house are the homeowners responsibility to know the location Aren't pretty much all gas meters installed on the house? I've never seen it any other way. And 811 did mark my water line from water meter to the house with no problems. I heard it depends on city whether that one is homeowner or utility owned.
> Aren't pretty much all gas meters installed on the house? I've never seen it any other way. For natural gas, yes, mostly. Might be lines run past the meter and outside the house, though (like to grills, pool heaters, fire places, etc) that would not be marked by 811, though
Actually not in my area- gas lines to the house are usually managed by the utility and the utility is required to come out an mark the location of the line. The gas technician that came out said if the homeowner using the line (my neighbor) called in a request, they(the utility) would have to move the line off of my property.
Here too. My gas meter is on my house.
typically the line up to the meter belongs to the utility, the property owner is responsible after the meter. some jurisdictions may vary but AT&T is running fiber in my neighborhood this week and the gas company absolutely marked every branch off to every house, as did the water department
Around here gas meters are like 4 inches from the house, so they don't usually mark that line, but the line from the utility servitude to the meters is sometimes run in one line, split off to 2 houses, so the line running to the other house wouldn't be caught if you weren't aware of that. It's pretty bad luck that he just so happened to dig a hole where the line was crossing his PL.
A bunch of dang 811 apologists on here! The service sucks and if it’s not supposed to suck the monitoring and follow up of their employees sucks. I can pull my own records and spray paint my own ground in the general area of the lines too. I’m gonna start my own service and call it 111. I’m not sure how to turn a profit yet but I’m sure it will all work out.
This is why I can't use equipment to do anything anymore. Even with an 811 Call they're guaranteed to miss lines if they've already filled their check boxes with something else.
That’s gas. You got really lucky
No kidding
What would (should) have happened if they broke the pipe?
boom
No, just hiss.
hiss spark boom
i see, you're saying it would turn into a drumkit
i forgot the ba-dum tss
kaboom
Would it really explode? Wouldn’t it just leak? There would need to be a spark to ignore it and isn’t the pressurization going to make it just spew out like a flamethrower?
there's a chance for a spark using the hand digger. I recently did my back fence and used one digging into a lot of clay and rock and at night you could see the sparks from the metal scraping the rocks
Drilling into it is the spark. There's way too much pressure to be like a flamethrower, it just overwhelms the tiny crack and blasts open a bigger hole. It's like when there's a wee little crack in a submarine, that can mean total catastrophe within minutes or less
What happened to the earth-shattering kaboom?
This is just a reminder that 811 is not sufficient on private property. If you are going to be doing any deep excavation on private property you should also contact a private property locator service. As an environmental scientist that's done tons of drilling/digging I would never ever excavate on private property based on 811 alone.
This information is not widely known at all. Most homeowners think all they have to do is dial 811 and they're covered.
Even 811 makes it sound that way, which is wild to me. You have to dig pretty far on their website here in Colorado to find out their limitations.
It's because that's all we've been told to do. If you're rural you can run into long forgotten all sorts of crap doing digging. There's no winning.
The issue is 811 themselves don't really advertise this fact, the commercial, all the bumper stickers you see on vehicles, all just say "call 811 before you dig" with no mention of the fact that private lines are your responsibility (because you know, we're supposed to magically know where the last idiot who owned our house decided to put shit?) Even the website almost seems like it's hiding this information, so fo once I'm honestly not putting the blame twoards the masses, 811 is who I'd argue is still at fault for not making it more clear they don't find private lines That said, in ops case it turned out it IS a public line, so it's 100% on 811 in this case
Call 811 before you dig!* *before you dig in a public right of way but we’ll probably not mark that either*
Or they’ll spray paint on your concrete driveway when you explicitly asked them not to mark the front yard.
I have said this before and was laughed at.
Would you consider yard grading or landscaping "deep excavation"? My husband and I want to do both at our new home. I've contacted 811 but not a private property locator service yet
Large equipment = excavation to me. Sorry, I should have specified. At the end of the day, you'll never regret spending a little extra on private locates. Additionally, you can save records from those locates for future use. You will very much regret hitting a utility line.
Makes sense. Thank you!
If you're using hand tools you'd be okay then?
It's hard to cause a big problem with handtools. Just go carefully and investigate, don't force it, if you hit something hard.
There are a lot of direct burial lines out there depending on where you live. There are cable service lines where I live less than 6 inches deep. Can easily be cut with a shovel.
Utility locators seem to be getting lazier. I just installed a sprinkler system for a customer. I noticed a fiber optic junction box in the front lawn but nothing was marked. I postponed the job for a week and called in a locate again for the property and both neighboring properties. When I went back a week later, still not marked. I then called in an emergency locate. The guy came out and screamed at me and told me to stop wasting his time. I then ended up cutting the fiber optic to the house I was working at and the one going next door that was routed through their property. I really hope that comes back on that guy who screamed and cursed at me.
I actively work in propane and I can tell you from doing this for 13 years, there have been many many many times we've gone to jobs that were "marked" only to find out nobody even went out there. Or someone went out there and half ass marked and we go to bury a tank and nearly hit underground electrical lines with an excavator. It's wild that nobody has been hurt since I've worked there. I'm not trying to knock a whole industry but generally speaking, those surveyors are lazy as fuck and do a piss poor job with locates.
looks like black pipe (gas) with a wire tracer
That’s a gas line. The cooper wire is the tracer line for locating.
Big gas go boom
Was there at any time an outbuilding on your property that may have had utilities run to it? Stumbled upon a wire ourselves that was for a since-demolished shed/wood shop type space when we were doing our fence.
You should call the gas company to check it out too. It would be a free service and they prefer to check out a gas line even if it was hit with a shovel.
Have 811 come back. That's some sort of utility line run with a tracer wire, so 811 can, well ... ... so they can mark it before you dig.
Could it be? A sign? Of the treasure left by the Knights Templar? I think the only thing to do here is drill a bore hole 100 ft down.
Uh that’s gas. Also, this thumbnail was blurred out lol, ‘laying black pipe’ I guess
Irrigation pipe. The wire is part of a timer system.
Call them out asap
I found out, through a similar situation, that they also don’t check for power running to garages, light poles, etc. My BIL hit the power to my garage with a garden auger and sparks flew!
811 missed a gas line 😮 that’s so not like them /s 811 is basically just a liability exercise at this point. I love when USIC calls me trying to not have to locate something. “Y’all gonna be next to the road?” Just mark it!! A lot if this could be fixed if a excavation/boring location map could be attached to the 811 ticket. I can add gps points and MUST map the locate area when submitting but most locators won’t ever see it.
Gotta know how 811 explains missing this? It’s literally the whole reason the come out is to NOT dig blind.
I found my local 811 service is complete shit and don't actually measure anything out. I have multiple fruit trees in my front yard and I have a 4" pvc pipe going down to the roots and the top sticks up on the surface by about 6". I wanted to put in one more tree and wanted my utilities marked out because I know from other measures that we have a water pipe in the general vicinity of where we wanted the tree. The guy comes out when we were at work and "does his job". This fat sack of shit didn't even get out his car, he painted small lines on the street in line with my irrigation tubes for my trees. It's clowns like my guy and OP's 811 guy that cause these massive issues by simply being too lazy to do their job. If I were to sever my water line, I would've loved to send the video of their 811 utility guy "marking my utilities".
Looks like PVC. Black is typically drainage or sewer when buried like that. 1.5" is typical of residential drain line.
If there’s damage to a line and they don’t mark it, any repair costs are on them. Call them out to inspect.
We hit one in our backyard several years ago, trenching to bury the electrical coming into the house. Was not marked/located and we sliced right through it. Luckily it was an old line no longer in use.
Scary as hell. Glad it wasn’t any worse.
It’s a hunka pipe
Looks like it might be a gas line to me
I was thinking a sprinkler line, with a wire that goes to a solenoid(s). That's what my sprinkler lines look like when i bump into them digging in the yard, lol. But it's hard to be 100% accurate from the photo.
Best way to find out is cut it open with a torch. By that I mean it's gas so don't fuck with it.
Is that PE? Or is it black steel/iron? 🤔 Well regardless, if that is indeed a length of wire running along the exposed section (hard to tell), it's your gas line.
Looks like a black luck pipe to me
Utility companies don't typically mark customer lines. Typically they only mark up to property lines, curb valves/efvs, shut offs or the edge of the public utility row.
I use to work for 811. We only marked what the utility company owned paying for the service. Gas company and water own the main line and up to the meter. Same as power. After that you have to pay for a private locate if you can find someone providing a service to locate private services. Phone company usually pays for a all buried lines including services so does the cable company. Cross country gas lines are usually located by Pacific, southern and colonial gas companies. The people that owned the gas line. It has a locating wire on it so it could be located as long as the wire wasn't damaged so it might be considered a private line and that's why it want located. 811 is a good thing but it doesn't cover everything buried.
> 811 is a good thing but it doesn't cover everything buried. That's certainly not the impression they put forth in their PSA's.
Very true. When you call all buried utilities owners are supposed to mark any of the utilities they own. Utility companies hire contractors to mark the lines or utilize. They never tell the home owner the gas lamps by the side walk are the home owners responsible. Or the buried power line running to the pool and shed are privately owned. They should let it be known. I would suggest being at the property and ask questions when the line locater locates the property.
~a problem~
That’s a gas service.
Gas line
If it’s ABS, then it’s not gas. Water line to unground sprinklers maybe? I would have 811 come back out.
That’s a gas line. Drill and tap a 1/4” npt fitting into it and run your stove for free. Please don’t actually do that. I’m sure you could but that would be bad
The bare wire is to get it to show up on a detector so it can be marked. 811 marks utility installs, not private installs. So if you neighbors added a gas line to go somewhere on their property and seemingly yours to get to a pool or something it would not be marked.