In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 06 Jun 2020 12:56:14 -0400,
wrote:

On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 09:19:27 -0400, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 06 Jun 2020 07:50:49 -0400,
wrote:

On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 04:03:42 -0400, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 5 Jun 2020 16:59:27 -0500, dpb
wrote:

On 6/5/2020 1:15 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 02:05:33 -0400, micky
wrote:

The 811 people only go from the power pole to your power meter. Once
the wiring is owned by the homeowner or business, the 811 service stops.

I generally disapprove of bribery but I called Miss Utility when I
wasn't ready to dig on the theory that they roam around the area and
they can stop buy and it will take one guy what, 10 minutes to do it.

So in this case, if you're already entitled to call 811 to plan for
future digging and if there's a good chance 811 will find it if he
looks, you could make sure you're there and pay him extra to look for
you. After you're desperate.

Since these locate people are usually contractors working for the
municipality or the utilities, you paying them to do things outside
the scope of their contract isn't a bribe. It is simply paying a
contractor for extra work. Perhaps the proper way is to call the
company directly, not 811 (or whatever the number is where you are)
and dealing with their management/sales people. That is completely
above board.

On their contractor's hours, it's probably in the contract that they're
not supposed to do that I'd reckon. If they are indeed as most I've
seen here, actually local utility employees, then they're definitely on
the clock and doing unauthorized work would be cause for action against
them.

The other thing w/ 811 is you don't just wake up the electric folks or
the gas folks or whomever -- you stir up every utility service that has
anything in the area -- the phone folks, cable TV, water, gas, electric,
... By law they have no recourse but to respond within two days from
the call. But, I bet they also have recourse against false calls
against the instigator...and probably not reluctant to use it.

You two give two possibilities and I have a feelilng it varies by
region.

I wasn't home when Miss Utility came so I don't know what kind of truck
he drove, private contractor or Miss Utility.

OTOH, I see https://www.missutility.net/ that it's one number for
Maryland, Delaware, DC and part of Virginia. At first that told me
local contractor, but I don't think that follows.

I don't think more than one person turned out. All the lines appeared
the same day, It would be so wasteful to send more than one guy**, and
it's not brain surgery: If he can mark the electric he can mark the
phone, etc. if they have to do it in 2 days, they couldn't use local
contractors who do other work -- they couldnt' always fit it in their
schedules or it would be travel wasteful to do so. If one guy does it
full time for, say, 1/5 of the county, he or a computer can plan his day
to do the least driving. That seems most likely here in Baltimore.


**To compare, the electric company has one guy per area to do all the
electric disconnects. Once back when I was sloppy and my electric was
disconnected (for non-payment it must have been), I didn't see the guy
who did it. I called up on the pohone and paid the bill, and then I
wanted the power back on but no one was doing it. So I did it myself
(by unplugging the meter, removing the plastic caps on the big metal
tabs,and plugging it back in.) When the guy came by 90 minutes later, I
told him someone else had come by and done it (and that was true if you
count me) later I realized that he must have been the same guy who
disconnected it, the only guy in my area and he knew I'd done it. But
he didn't say anything. He did put a new lead (lehd) tie on meter. I'm
sure I wasn't the first to do this.


BTW, in my case I figured I would be digging eventually for something,
and I knew I would not forget where the lines were. it turns out they
were all right next to each other, making that simple.


Here are the color codes for what they find:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilit...#United_States
Australia's list is quite different!!


One of the contractors in Baltimore is USIC. Call them and see if they
do private locates.
317.575.7800

I'm sure they're closed over the weekend, and tehy probably do do
private searches, but if they make a special trip, they're going to want
to charge for an hour .

My theory was that every one is entitled to call Miss Utility once
unless he's never going to dig or have anyone else dig.

You can call for a free locate any time you want them to look for
buried utilities. The question was whether you can call them to find a
privately owned wire on your property and I said they will most likely
want to charge you since there are no utilities to charge but it might
not be that expensive compared to repairing a wire or pipe you own
when you cut it.

I just noticed that Todesco, the OP, hasn't posted again in the 3 days
this thrad has been running. LOL