I cut an underground phone wire? $$$
 

I was putting in some posts for a privacy fence i am putting up in my backyard. I already called "miss utilities" (the place your suppose to call before you dig.) I have a phone/cable box in the corner of my property. And there was an orange marking going to the neighbor behind me. I uncovered that wire and made sure i wouldnt hit it...and ***** i hit two others that were near it, but there were no markings saying they were there.

Phone company should be coming out soon, just wondering what kind of bill i may have to pay, if any? Im pretty PO'ed theres no markings there when i called ahead.

O yea and my neghbor did lose his phone service...

What do you guys think

Not likely a big deal...

If I had a dollar for every phone line, water line, sewer line and other underground buried utility that I've hit in my days as an geologist, I'd have just about enough for an Andrew Jackson. :) A 2" water line under pressure puts out an IMPRESSIVE amount of water in 10 minutes -- trust me. LOL!

As long as it wasn't fiber optics -- which it wasn't if you hit it putting in a fence post -- you're probably fine.

When you called the 'one call' center (also known as "BUD" (Before U Dig)), you were given a 'ticket' number. This ticket number is your get out of jail free card (pending you gave them time to come out (typically 48-hours in most states). Either way though, you're probably fine...

No worrires... Fiber, however, can be *VERY* costly (thousands of dollars per minute of downtime). I've never hit one (and pray I never do)...

I really hope not. I do have a ticket number, that says Verizon (phone company) marked their lines, but like i said earlier, there was no paint there.

My neighbor called the phone company, mainly because even he didnt know what phone company he had, and he hasnt told me anything since. I just wonder who else's line i hit.

Any chance that one of the lines is live and one is dead? I ask only because I did some work within a trailer court (lead cleanup stuff). We must have hit 50 different telephone lines in a 100x100' area. Turns out that only one of the lines was live; the others had been previously placed and left in-situ (dead) when the owners pulled the trailer out where the service was active...

Really... if it's a standard phone line, I wouldn't worry about it.

If you are digging near a marked line within usually 20" of the paint and hit the line, you are still responsible. If you hit an unmarked line and you gave the proper time limit for the marking companies to do it, usually 36 hours, you are good. The line going to your neighbors should only be two small wires.
I hit the main one going up the street and I was digging by hand with a small shovel near the markings. it was about 10 inches off the paint and the shovel scraped the insulation off a few wires and broke one. They are obviously very fragile. Anyways, got some black electrical tape, taped up the scuffed ones and twisted the others back together and taped. Got a few jolts doing it as I guess people were getting calls. Buried it and 20 years later, no one has ever come to replace the phone lines up the street or complained....

It coudl be costly, even if they make you pay only for time & materials.

But, if mis-dig didn't mark it properly, you may (emphasis on the word "may") get by with a warning.

I did the same thing years ago putting up a mailbox. My neighbor came out with a tape measure and measure how deep it was to the cut line. He mumbled something about not deep enough. I didn't pay much attention. About a month later I got a bill for somewhere around 200 dollars for "repair to damaged line". I mentioned it to my neighbor. He called down there with the measurement he'd taken and told them if they were going to charge me he would ask for the line on the entire street to be reburied because they were not deep enough for code. Evidently it worked, I never paid the bill, and I never heard another thing about it.:D

Phone cable is cheap and for that matter so is fiber. Fiber for the most part should be in conduit or armered meaning there should be greenfield (bx armer) around it. If you bend fiber to much you risk the chance of breaking it.

Yep, I used to be a lineman, and it's 36" deep when buried next to an improved road, or railroad track.

At least, that was the standard in 1987. :lol: I doubt it's changed much.

3' is still the standard but, as we all know, you'll find them in the range of 2' to 6' -- depending upon how the subsurface is when the guys are trying to install (ie: rocky subsurface = shallow).

I know it'll be different everywhere and for each individual utility provider but, around here, if you call in a 'private' ticket (ie: one for a residential house), the telephone company rarely (if ever) responds with a locate. They'll typically close the ticket and 'wait and see' if you hit something...

I'm not saying that's what happened here but, if they didn't come out to locate it at all, it's either that they didn't make it out in time, closed the ticket because they didn't view that asset as a 'priority' or, a combination of both of the above.

I had a new fence put in recently. The "BUD" company flagged the phone line as going from the alley, under the fence, then diagonally through the backyard.

Well, the fence crew came knocking on the backdoor and said, "Sir, we cut your phone line." I chuckled and went out back to check it out. Yup, they cut it all right. Every post hole they dug, they cut through the line :) The line wasn't diagonal through the yard at all, it was run down the fence line.

Wasn't on my dime, and we never use our land lines anyway. No harm, no foul.

We were pulling an underground storage tank and hit a 3 inch high pressure plastic gas line. I've never seen a fat guy bail out of an excavator so fast. The whistle was ear splitting. The National Fuel guy mismarked the line by 7 feet. I got a oops out of them. Nice!

alot of times they run lines together. ie: phone & cable, multiple electric lines....

some places make marks indicating how many there are, but not required to (in illinois atleast). if they were close like you said, they will probably try to hit you with a bill. if its just a service drop my guess would be a couple 100-200. good luck!

when we had our sprinkler system installed, the electric and gas company showed up to mark, the phone company and cable company didn't .. they said it was cheaper for them to just repair the ones that got hit in the residential areas.


I was on a job site once where the phone company came out to mark their lines prior to us digging.. The guy comes into the job shack after being there 30 minutes or so, laughing his butt off .. He said ya'll have to come out and look at this .. He was flagging the line from the pole to the job shack, which was about 150' or so .. the paint on the ground looked like a set of switchbacks down a 13,000 foot mountain .. We then back and looked up the contractor's receipt for laying the line prior to initially hook up the job shack about 18 months prior .. 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.

the line marking guy said they see it all the time ..

that is sometimes the reason you hit multiple lines in the same place .. it is actually the same line, just not exactly buried in a straight line.

You should be alright as long as there were no markings within 18'' of the break...phone lines are really easy to fix too...just match colors...but since they mismarked you might as well have verizon come and fix it.

As for my utility breaking experiences...I was about 500' from my dad(who was digging to find a lateral) when he hit a 30000V Power main that was mismarked by about 25' and it sounded like a 500lb cannonball hitting the ground right next to me...If it wasnt mismarked it would have been a $4200 bill. And I have heard for fiber optics its about 500 per minute of downtime...thats why they concrete encase any really important ones...and I've heard if you are digging around them sometiems the government will pay you a little visit with their surveillance helicopters.