Warning: that underground locator line can lie to you in the worst way

Had a job last Tuesday in a cul-de-sac outside Arlington where the utility paint showed a clean 12 inch trench clear of everything. Dug in with the shovel and hit a buried coax line that wasn't on any of my prints, took me 4 hours to splice around it and re-run the drop. The locator guy swore it was fine but that old line was laid in the 90s and nobody marked it. I get that locators can't catch everything, but when the paint says go and you hit something anyway, it makes you second guess everything. Should I start using a ground penetrating radar for residential jobs or is that overkill for the cost? Has anyone else had a locator miss something that bad?

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simons2818d ago

Take that experience and multiply it by a thousand. It’s the same thing with GPS in my personal life. The map says turn left, I trust it, and suddenly I’m staring at a dead end or a dirt path that hasn’t been used in ten years. Locators and GPS are just tools made by people who miss stuff all the time. Honestly, the paint and the prints give you a false sense of safety, and that’s the real trap. You start digging faster, you swing the shovel harder, because you think the ground is clear. Then bam, you’re paying for someone else’s lazy afternoon from 1994. Ngl, I’d rather slow down and poke around with a hand probe on any old neighborhood job, cost be damned. Ground penetrating radar sounds cool but it’s another machine that needs power and calibration and a guy who’s in a hurry. Trust the shovel and your own patience more than any colored line on the asphalt.