Calling "811" prior to driving ground rods

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Calling "811" prior to driving ground rods


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sgunsel

Senior Member
And you could be paying a LOT. I was never completely sure that calling 811 and staying outside of the marked areas necessarily absolves you from all liability, but it sure helps.
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
And you could be paying a LOT. I was never completely sure that calling 811 and staying outside of the marked areas necessarily absolves you from all liability, but it sure helps.

Even Joe Schmoe is supposed to call them for things like planting trees. Driving down a ground rod is basically like putting a nail into something.

I think some farmer messed up a major fiber optic line doing something. I'm not sure what came out of it, but I know that there was a major disruption.

If you're out in middle of nowhere, homes sometimes get natural gas using "farm tap" system. Which is tapping from natural gas line at 100s or 1000s of psi, unlike lower pressure line in cities. If you break that, you're in some deep brown pudding.

Why would you NOT call? It's not like it costs you, other than some time. If you break a 2500 psi gas line, you'd be losing out a whole lot more.
 

wtucker

Senior Member
Location
Connecticut
In Connecticut, where I am, Call Before You Dig (that's what it's called here) will only come onto private property to locate public utilities (for example, a fiber optic telecommunications line crossing the property on a right-of-way, or an underground service drop to the meter, but not a branch circuit going to an outbuilding). For non-public utilities, we call a private locator.

Money isn't the issue, loss of life is. Suppose you nick a high-pressure gas line. You probably know that natural gas has no odor--they have to add methyl mercaptan to it as an odorant. But you may not know that the methyl mercaptan can be absorbed by soil, so there could be a high concentration of flammable gas that doesn't smell. KA-BOOM!
 

MAK

Senior Member
dig safe

dig safe

I called dig safe to locate some utilities for a job that required us to run some communication conduits about 400 feet to a detached structure. Turns out the town we were in is "not a member" of dig safe (so dig safe says). We called the town to do the locating and they refused.:confused: We ended up calling a private locating company. I could see how people may choose to ignore calling.
 

hurk27

Senior Member
This was a ground rod add to an existing service to comply with the HI request.
If you look in the second photo you can see the brite orange gas line just below the rocks, locates were not needed on this one;)





Sometimes calling in locates don't always prevent Murphy's law, the helper in the photo below was pounding a ground rod in and it kept bouncing back up, well he just hit it harder, it went right through a 2" HP gas main, the problem was the locates didn't get close enough to the transformer pad to show that the gas pipe turned and went in front of the transformer then back to the normal trench line, when we set this pedestal we set it right over this gas line, the inexperience of the helper showed for not stopping when the ground rod bounced back up a couple times (which is what it will do on most heavy walled plastic gas pipe) which it should have triggered a all stop right on the spot. (this another pedestal that was installed at the same site for street lighting, not the one where he hit the gas line)
The company I worked for didn't even try to fight the bill the utility gave us, which was about $1600.00
 
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renosteinke

Senior Member
Location
NE Arkansas
It says "Call before you dig." Banging in a rod isn't digging.

Just as important is to know just what the 811 service represents. Their marking is only 'guaranteed' within three feet either side of the line they mark out. So, if you want to bang in that ground rod, that marking means little. There's almost sure to be something within six feet; they're not telling you anything you don't already know.

The one thing you're most likely to damage is the one thing they don't even try to mark: the sewer line. That ground rod would go right through the glorified cardboard that is used for the sewers. Nor do they identify anything the wasn't laid by the utilities. Just try to get them to trace the feeder you know exists between two buildings!

"Call" was nice when it first started. Call them up, give the address, they were there in a day. Now, however, the only thing they're clear about is "We're the boss and we'll punish you, you serf." Now it's TWO days, and they want all manner of information ... cross streets, endless questions, etc. Are you digging by hand? Are you boring? Etc.

At least three times I've called, had them give me the 'all clear' ... when I KNEW they were wrong. Once it was a buried oil pipeline they failed to discover; another was the main power and communicatin feed to the local airport (their marks were off by half a block); the third was an electric utility high voltage trunk. Let me tell you from experience: it's loads of fun calling them back and telling them that they goofed - now would they kindly come back out and try again? Might as well hire a hillbilly with a forked stick.

Another thing that calls into question all this witchcraft is the fact that you simply cannot call them up and say "I just bought this property, can you come out and mark all the lines, so I know what I have?" Funny, the utilities had no trouble doing just this in the 60's!
 
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