My luck....

[Marlowe]

I needed to run a sewage drain pipe through a concrete block wall this past weekend to add a bathroom in the garage. This project required a hole cut to allow for the three inch pipe. I did some careful measuring for height and distance then started drilling with my SDS drill and masonry bit. My plan was to cut a circle with the drill then knock out the center with a big hammer. My first hole was flowing along nicely until I was about through then the drill bit locked up on something in the hole. No way was it going through and the drill was jerking out of my hand. I didn't have any straps at that point but it could have been rebar, so I moved to the next spot and drilled through without incident as I did for the rest of the circle. Then I knocked out the plug with a hammer, but I still had a problem with that first hole. Looking in the hole I found the issue. One of the bolts I used to attach the sill plate was imbedded in the concrete which I poured to fill in the cavities in the block wall. That's when I remembered my oldest daughter telling me a couple of years ago when I filled that wall with concrete, "Dad, I dropped one of the bolts. Do you want me to try and get it out?" I answered, "No. Don't worry about it. I'll never see that bolt again." Two hours later I'd worked around that bolt I thought I'd never see again. So, what's the chances of the first hole I drilled hitting dead center on the one bolt she dropped out of over one hundred?

 

[Tul01]

Thats funny, one of the guys we ice fish with had the opposite luck. His 5 year old drop a brand new $50 rod down the hole first time out. They actually "caught" it back 2 1/2 months later, good as new! I told him to buy a lottery ticket. Seriously I feel your pain, sometimes it feels like I'm the only one to have that lousy Murphy's Law luck.

Brent

 

[jimmyj]

I have a saying after something like your bold story happens.

"What are the odds of that?"

"About 100%"

It's amazing isn't it!

 

[jinman]

Marlowe, that's a good story.

Back in 1997, I inherited a mobile home park. One septic system needed replacing, so I rented a backhoe. I had measured everything from known buildings so that I was sure I knew where every pipe and drain were located. I marked the ground with paint and jumped on the backhoe. Wouldn't you know? The first bucket of dirt I dug was in the middle of the water line. I still remember the geyser shooting out of the ground. I had just cut off water to 6 mobile homes.

Later, one of my tenants told me that the water line had been replaced by my father a few years earlier. My map was for the old water line and it was perfectly marked.

BTW: We should consider ourselves lucky that we only have to bury water lines 12 to 18" deep here. My repair would have been much harder if I had been down at the 4' level.

 

[EddieWalker]

About 3 weeks ago I was trenching a line at a clients home. I had marked the utilities and even dug down to check the depth of the phone line since that's the one that I was going to be crossing. I dug the ditch without any problems, but since I had the trencher, I used it to tear off the grass in an area that will become a cactus garden. I just had it deep enough to do this without digging into the dirt. Maybe two inches. Since I had already dug down for the conduit and new how deep the phone line was, I didn't have any concerns about it while tearing out the grass.

I was just about done when the home owner told me that the phone wasn't working. I still didn't think I could have done it on the grass area, so I dug out around the trench that I had dug to see what had happened. I found the phone line and it was perfect. I was really confused as to what happened to the phone line, but knew I had to have cut it, I just didn't know where. Eventually I just dug it all up from the trench back to where I was taking out the grass.

Sure enough, the phone line angled up to the surface and was about two inches deep about a foot out from the driveway before going back down under the concrete. At that one point, I nicked the phone line. I opened up the outer cable and found ten pairs of wires. This is a high end home, but I was still surprised to see ten pair going into it. I've never seen that many lines going into a residential home. Anyway, of those 20 wires, I had cut one. They have one phone number, use one phone line and only one pair out of the ten pair in the cable.

In one regard, I found it unbelievable that I would cut the only wire that they were using. Then I thought it was lucky that I cut that wire since I had damaged the protective cable, it was good to know and get it fixed. If it had been one of the dead lines, I would never have dug it up and fixed it.

Eddie

 

[scgargoyle]

I was putting fence posts in my back yard when I hit a stubborn root. I was just about to take an axe to it, when I saw a glimmer of silver. The 'root' was an underground power cable! 1) In was in the wrong place 2) It was only about a foot down. Minimum here is 36". Could have been a hair-raising experience for sure.

 

[DIRTROAD]

I was stumping a small lot in a subdivision. Around here the new subdivisions have a utility right of way from the edge of the road about 10'. Well lets just say that I was well away from that right of way (at least another 10') and what did I hit??? It was the main phone trunk line for the whole neighborhood. Instantly 300+ households were without phone. Just my luck, but not my fault!!!

 

[tommu56]

At work we were switching to air driers vs towels in our bathrooms and one of the other electrician coulden't fish a core in the block wall.
I was helping him we cut out a block above it and tried rotary hammering down through and we just couldn't get through it ran out of bit 24" and cutting the block wall down to the drop ceeling tile to let the drill try and drill down still didn't get through.

We went to plan b which isn't well accepted in our plant of putting wire mold down the wall to the driers in that bathroom.

tom

 

[lopezian]

Eddie, Can you share how you fixed that cable to make it weathertight again? Did you cut it, splice all ten pairs, and then put some shrinkwrap around the whole thing? Or maybe fix just the one wire and shrinkwrap it?

I'm curious because I will surely run into the same situation one day.

 

[LBrown59]

I was stumping a small lot in a subdivision. Around here the new subdivisions have a utility right of way from the edge of the road about 10'. Well lets just say that I was well away from that right of way (at least another 10') and what did I hit??? It was the main phone trunk line for the whole neighborhood. Instantly 300+ households were without phone. Just my luck,
*but not my fault!!!

*It was if you didn't call before you dig isn't it.?

I was putting fence posts in my back yard when I hit a stubborn root. I was just about to take an axe to it, when I saw a glimmer of silver. The 'root' was an underground power cable! 1) In was in the wrong place 2) It was only about a foot down. Minimum here is 36". Could have been a hair-raising experience for sure.

Had you called before digging and if not why not?

 

[DIRTROAD]

The way these subdivisions work is the right of way is ten feet. It runs from the edge of the road towards the lot 10' wide. The property lines do not go all the way to the road. That way if you are clearing a lot you don't have to get on top of the utility right of way because it was cleared when the neighborhood was built. Therefore you do not have to call before digging because everything, by law, has to be burried within that right of way.

If you hit anything outside of that 10' it is not your problem.(Thankfully)

 

[EddieWalker]

Eddie, Can you share how you fixed that cable to make it weathertight again? Did you cut it, splice all ten pairs, and then put some shrinkwrap around the whole thing? Or maybe fix just the one wire and shrinkwrap it?

I'm curious because I will surely run into the same situation one day.

The cable was pretty tight, so there wasn't any slack to work the cut wire. I bought a splice that you put the wire into each end and then crimp the ends. That gave me a good connection. Then sealed it with silicone, and then all of the exposed wires. I just pump half a tube of silicone over the wires and smooth it out. While it's still kind of sticky, I wrap it with some plumbers tape. It's a kind of stretchy, sticky, extra thick type of tape that they sell at the supply store. Over that I covered it all in foil tape.

That one broken wire took me two hours to fix. And that's after I found the break.

Eddie

 

[chh]

I really did have a stroke of luck today. I cut into a underground electric cable that had not been buried with my disc hay mower. I called the gas production company whose well that the cable ran to and they sent somebody out in a hurry, but I realized by then that the end of the wire on the mower could not have power since it was on the well end and not the meter end. After we got me all untangled we fiquired out that the well end still had full power that I had "only" cut the ground wire not either of the 2 220 volt main wires. It seems somebody did a "quicky" repair job since I hayed last year and "forgot" to come back and bury it. I have been assured that they will be back "first thing" in the morning to fix it again.
No damage to the mower and I didn't get fried, so it has to be a lucky day.

 

[DIRTROAD]

I really did have a stroke of luck today. I cut into a underground electric cable that had not been buried:
No damage to the mower and I didn't get fried, so it has to be a lucky day.

Sounds more like divine intervention to me!!!!

 

[chh]

Sounds more like divine intervention to me!!!!

There is NO way that I am going to disagree with that statement!


It does seem that there may be a bit of difference between what I call first thing in the morning and the company's defintition. Noon now, and they haven't showed yet.

 

[orezok]

About 30 year ago I was building a sub division in North San Diego County. We had to improve a road that was just a dirt path and install all the utilities. We has Underground Service Alert out to locate all the utilities in the roadway. They located a direct burial telephone cable but the records did not indicate how deep. We hand excavated the location where a proposed sewer line was to cross. Down about 12" was a 900 pair direct burial line.

As the contractor was trenching down the road approaching the location of the line, I brought their foreman over to show him the exposed line. It was about 11:00 in the morning.

About an hour later I get a call that they had hit the line. The foreman went to lunch and didn't tell the operator.

Well it turns out that the line was a main trunk between San Diego and LA. It took PacTel about 6 hours to splice in up a pair of microwave stations on either side of the break.

They then had to install a 10x15' vault in the street to make the new splice.

The contractor was not only responsible for all the physical costs to repair the line, but had to pay for every minute on all 900 lines while they were out of service.

His final cost was right at $500,000 and he was self insured.

OUCH!

 

[Marlowe]

It looks like I'm not the only one with incredibly bad luck. Years ago when I first moved into my first home I decided to put up a fence on the back line. When they ran utilities I went around and noticed where things were buried so I thought I was good to go on the fence line. I stepped back a foot or so from my line and proceeded to dig. About ten posts later none of the neighborhood had phone service. That 'root' was pretty tough to cut through too. Not the only time I put a hole in the wrong place.

 

[Lloyd_E]

Here's one...

A while back I installed a new stereo system with 10 speakers throughout the downstairs of our 180+ year old house. I drilled and pulled wire prepping for the install. This was one week before Christmas with a new baby boy at home. The last hole was drilled by the fireplace. I went to the basement looked up where I thought the hole was and saw some saw dust... everything fine. So I thought I would pass the drill back up through the hole just to make sure. Wrong! I drilled up through a different hole and into the hot water baseboard piping! With water and glycol coming down on top of me I ran to the furnace and turned the first valve I could reach - not knowing anything about furnaces AND it worked. I called the service company and explained my mishap and stupidity and they showed up the next day. The tech was impressed with the lack of lost fluid and my ability to turn the correct valve... I explained it was all luck(good) after having the bad.

System works great BTW. And we use a wood stove mostly throughout the winter.

lloyd

PS: no mishaps with the tractor so far!

 

[mjarrels]

Years ago, I was cutting up a maple tree that blew down during a storm... Chainsaw was like a hot knife thur butter until one of the last cuts which took for ever. Found out I had cut thru a 1960's pop bottle. I was probably the one who placed it in the tree years before as a BB gun target and the tree just grew around it.

mark

 

[ultrarunner]

*It was if you didn't call before you dig isn't it.?


Had you called before digging and if not why not?

My property has several acres of brush and poison oak with a city 8" Sewer Line running through it. I wanted to clear the Brush and know exactly where the line was buried and how deep.

I called the Call Before You Dig Number and they came out. I was very disappointed to learn that City Owned utilities are Not part of the program.

I called the City and asked for the line to be marked and was told to hand dig because there was too much Poison Oak. The City said it would send someone out to Mark It once I cleared their easement???

Maybe the program works better elsewhere?