Call Before You Dig. It’s That Important.

Locating buried utility services isn’t as straightforward as you might think. That’s why utility locating services are vital in a home construction or home renovation project. 

At one time, water, sewer, and natural gas were the most common buried utilities. Today, our underground landscape is a maze of unseen pipelines, conduits, wells, storage tanks, vaults, ventilation shafts, drainage facilities, and sewers. Above-ground utilities – typically electrical and telecommunications services – are especially vulnerable to storm damage and premature aging caused by exposure to weather and sunlight. Costly repairs and maintenance of aerial utility installations have driven most new utility services underground.

Locating buried utility services isn’t as straightforward as you might think. Utility services are always supposed to know where their facilities are. For the most part, they do. However, their records don’t always reflect the precise location or depth of their buried infrastructure. Further, their records may not contain information about abandoned, modified or very old infrastructure. Newer buried utilities – including electrical and telecommunications facilities – may exist nearby.

The move toward buried utility services increases the importance of utility locating. The primary goal of precise utility locating is damage prevention, and it ensures your home construction or renovation project remains on schedule and budget.

Why It Matters
While the utility companies will mark the location of their infrastructure on the surface, it is often helpful to have precise location information. Precision location involves identifying the utility’s horizontal location, its depth, the material of construction, and its relationship to other buried services. Architects and engineers find this information especially useful during the design phase of the project. This data prevents costly change orders during the construction phase. Ultimately, precise location information of buried utilities saves the project significant funds.

Another important benefit of utility location is damage prevention. Damage happens when homeowners do not request utility location services prior to breaking ground or the excavation team makes a mistake. Either they don’t know precisely where the utilities are located, or they misinterpret location data. Precision utility locating services can help avoid damages from improper drilling, blasting or excavating because they identify the exact location and depth of buried facilities. They also identify tolerance zones around these services where excavators must hand-dig or exercise other exceptional care.

Long Hill Contracting, LLC offers precision utility location services. Our experienced team can conduct above-ground and underground examinations to locate all underground facilities in a proposed excavation area. In addition to identifying the presence of buried facilities, our team can also precisely locate the scope and depth of buried infrastructure. If you would like more information about our utility locating services, please give Long Hill Contracting a call at (908) 533-4319.

We come from three generations in the construction industry with over 30 years of experience in civil construction; honesty and trustworthiness is a virtue instilled in our family. This is the model of how we do business.