Yep, I forgot that certain depths (aside from 3 feet) are accetpable given the soil conditions. Loose/sandy soild being the one absolutely requiring the deepest depth. Yep, I love when the digger-bit is working well. Break the bit, and you have to break out the pick-axes.

Swinging that pick-axe to make buried road crossings will seperate the men from the boys right there. We got to do a little bit of everything in the Army. I was in Cable construction- and we'd run a 20-mile shot in 12 hours, which included aerial, surface, and subsurface deployment.

I guess they still use that, but I for one was happy to get to a unit that relied on LOS for long haul switch to switch transmission, rather than coaxial cable. Nothing like stringing al that crap together, troubleshooting it, getting it to work, then hear the word, "Jump".

There shouldn't be any colors to match (unless he he a 25 - 50 pair cable).

If you hit the drop cable, that should only be one copper pair. Two maximum.

[QUOTE=Gipraw;3482703]
the contractor had marked down on the invoice, and I assume charged the phone company, for a little over 700' of line .. LOL. for a distance of 148' between pole and shack.

QUOTE]

or coil the line around a pedestal a few times to gain another 20 feet.

They will probably just use a splice kit to fix it. Telephone cable can easily be sliced back together. Atleast you hit one of the easier ones to repair. Besides it is probably only a 4 pair so even if they run a new line it should be much. We sell 4 pair outdoor for $ .45p/ft.

Thanks for the replies. I cut the line yesterday (sunday) around noon, and verizon still hasnt come out or called or anything. My neighbor who i hit said he called them, so they know about it.

The line that was marked (that i didnt hit, that actually looks like a different kind of wire) was only about 4inches from the other two i did hit (one was going a completely different direction then the other, one was about 2in the other like 4 or 5 below the surface. In all I hit three cables (that i can see), I just hope i can plead my case to the repair man.

One of my buddies hit a power line when he was putting his fence in, and the repair guy put it down as a malfunction or something and he didnt pay anything. I hope im as lucky.

I work for a major telephone provider (not Verizon) and have several years experience in locating...it's contracted out to private companies now. In Michigan there is an 18 inch rule which means that there is leeway built into where the marking is..due to variances in equipment, ground conditions etc....any small nick in the cable/drop wire outside coating may ground it out thereby throwing off the signal sent down the line while locating it. As far as fixing a drop wire goes...really easy and not sure on the billing deal since it's a different company. When I went out on repairs like that, I'd just fix it and that'd be it...more important to get the service back up and running. It might be different if it was a high profile service..such as someone who had a T-1 or other high speed data line...the company assures interuption free service and has to reimburse those customers when the service is down. I'm assuming in this case it's just the neighbor's plain old phone line or maybe DSL at the most...I wouldn't sweat it....as long as the markings weren't too close to where you cut it, they should just fix it and forget it. If I lived in the area I'd take care of it for you. :beers:

EDIT....just read your post about how there were other lines near the one you found....Don't know how it is in your state...but here we were required to mark if there were multiple lines in an area...logic is..if you see one line marked...you're thinking there's only one and once you exposed it you're free to dig. Sounds like you definately have a case to plead with the repairman.

Not sure what the rules are there, but over here you are not allowed to dig within 1 meter (3 feet) on either side of a marked telecommunications line.

Hopefully it all works out for you.

Early this year I wanted to sink a post in the front yard. My gas meter is out front so I figured I would call and get the line marked. All they did for me was email a diagram. -->Diagram<--

A couple months later we called and asked about where our water line was out back. They just told us to find where it came in the house and it should be a straight line to the back of our property. I've just been digging where I want and so far haven't hit anything. :thumbsup:

i have numerous breakage stories because we have a family road construction business and we do a lot of underground work. one day we were working and we had 2 main phone lines exposed. these lines serviced thousands from what we were told. one was old and dead and one was the new one. we made the guy from the phone company actually paint the line that was good so we could rip the other one out. if you havent figured out where this one is going it was the wrong one he painted and we ripped out the line and cut out phone to thousands. needless to say that guy lost his job.

FYI, if you break a Fiber optic Cable, $500,000/hour (At least in NC)
If you cause a emergency response for petroleum pipelines (like dig on top of it with out a company rep) You get the bill. I respong for the latter, our rates triple on emergency response.

If it is really expensive file a claim with your homeowner's insurance. It would be covered under the liability coverage section of the policy.

we hit a wire digging an electrical trench after calling 1-call to mark it.... never marked the 2 big phone company wires that went right through a giant field, across another field and to another road a little less then a mile away. i think it was a 25 or 50 pair wire, verizon came out and spliced it up... nice guy, told a bunch of stories, and that was it, he left and we never got charged... the ran it stupid and never marked it , not our fault

try breaking a blow off valve(or whatever the dumb gas company called it) to an 8" gas main following the main drag in town on the back side of a curb that was not marked at all. we had found the gas main but didnt expose all the way across the road and the dozer track cracked off the top. took a few years for the insurance companies to settle this one in court.

oh and by the way the blow off pipe was 2.5 feet long sticking straight up off the 8" main.

I was replacing the water main into the house I just bought and the excavator snagged some copper tubing at about 18 inches. Well it turned out to be the gas line for the house they had run 3/8 soft copper tubing from the street to the meter on the house. And to top it all off we had been running a truck loaded to about 50k over it twice a week when they were gutting the house.