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A cat or cat and jenny will only pick electric and metal pipes up and you need to know what you are doing.
Drawings from the local authority's are not always accurate.
If you dig in the public highway/foot-way you need all your current street work tickets plus closure notices opened with the relevant council.
You are as well opening a slip trench all the way across the entrance then digging down till all supplies are located.
Not all supplies run down path ways some cross gardens cable TV you will find within 20mm of any surface.
In the 70's electricity company's sometimes linked electricity from one meter to the next door property.
we always hand dig across the house front in the area where the services enter the house and across the width of the driveway at the pavement to check for any services before we continue to remove the main area of the driveway to the finished depth of 250mm
No experience with the dial a dig service, but i would imagine they are geared up towards developers and would cost a pretty penny ? I would do what Mick suggested, find where the gas, elec and water enter the house and hand dig a trench till you find them or until total required excavation depth, to be on the safe side hire or borrow a calibrated cat to check everywhere else to ensure the neighbours services are not running across the property as lawn lover suggested !
I was doing a drive, and we found all the services for the property we were working on, cracked on with the machine only to rip out the neighbours electricity that was running diagonally across the property ! Cost £2000 to repair.
Curious - in that situation above once you have done sufficient due diligence (ie dial b4 dig or identified THAT properties services) do you then rely on your T&Cs to mitigate your responsibilities, or do you negotiate costs or just accept the costs of repair if you hit 'unexpected services'?
With that said we dont go in all guns blazing. We do try and check first.
I normally only hit water pipes.
I don't think i could get away with putting it in my T & C, I know if i employed someone to work round my house and they ripped the eleci cable out, i certainly would not be getting my credit card out.
I tried arguing the toss with the electricity company telling them i had done all the trace work and the cable was from next door + it was only 6 inches under the surface ! Even the guy that came out to repair it, put that all on the paperwork but to no avail ! The electricity company's claim that from the pavement up not there responsibly ! I put it through the insurance in the end and instructed them to argue it, they didn't just paid up.
Im not so sure, i think that T & C is fine when you are talking about a cable to a summer house or lighting in the back garden ! But the services are always going to be there to the house so why would they say no ?? + How does the client know where they are ? some dont even have a clue what you mean when you say the word services, let alone where's the gas main gov ??
I would say the onus is on the contractor as a professional to ascertain where the services may or may not be, But what i will agree on in my case is i should have had a T & C that states any 3rd party or services over and above what was traced is not my responsibility. There you go lesson learnt.
Im of now to rewrite my T & Cs
My public liability states that I will only be covered for damages to underground services if I have made provisions to locate them prior to excavations. Would a hand dig be a sufficient provision for locating them? I suppose this would be a question for the insurance company!?
The more i think about it, M jones does have a point with the T & Cs but it has to be fair to all parties so something like: (All care will be taken to trace and source clients services but responsibility will only cover the clients own and they must be installed & buried to the required depth) These are the only times i have come a cropper when the services are from next door or have not been installed deep enough (usually by the house builder)
There are times when the cat just will not help you, we catted an old concrete drive out, found the position of a pipe, ripped the 4inchs of concrete up with the digger to investigate and the old metal gas main was installed in the concrete ! Quick call to Transco who installed a new line at their expense !
We have installed 100s of drives and 9/10 you should be ok, the Elec is usually the deepest (Thank god) because that's the one you do not want to hit and usually found 500 - 750mm down then the gas about 500mm ish and then water 300mm ish, but there really is no rule of thumb and i think it depends on if they were installed on a Friday afternoon or Monday morning if you know what i mean ! The other one to look out for is the cable tv this will usually be in a green duct and covered by 50mm of soil if that !
I would hand dig some trenches like Mick G said, get a Cat and throw in some modified T & Gs like M Jones suggested ! I think im going to implement all 3 of these my self in the future and that's what i love about this site, you always learn something new to help you improve
All the best
Torin
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