Help finding underground wire/box

[bruce2bowser]

The peanut gallery has caught on, have they?

[trader_4]

What imbalance? The only imbalance the GFCI is looking for is a difference between that flowing in the hot lead and neutral. Light off, should be no flow in either if it's wired correctly and not compromised.

I'm

Sounds like the X10 energizes the 150 ft line and that line has a fault. I would disconnect the X10 from the outside line and see if the GFCI holds with the X10 on and off. If so, the problem is in the outside line. Which is common, could be some water has gotten into the box that you can't find, etc.

[gfretwell]

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.

[gfretwell]

A agree with Trader, Cut this problem in half. Make sure it isn't the pool light that is causing this. You can also find, both legs work OK alone and it only fails when both are connected which would mean you have leakage in both but not enough for either to trip it alone. Also be aware a grounded neutral will trip a GFCI because some of the neutral current is still leaking to ground. That may actually be the most common GF failure that is not tripping the breaker from an overcurrent.

[dpb]

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.

[Clare Snyder]

Or bolt the box to something like a plough colter or a cultivator disk - find it from 3 feet away with a metal detector even 50 years down the road.

[micky]

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

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:

's list is quite different!!

[micky]

You're right!

Well it probably would work better when it's wet and you should try that. That's what I'd do. Of course it might not work as well. I don't know abou these things, but that's what I would do.

[micky]

That's a good idea. Disconnect the wire from its breaker and run a jumper wire to the earphone jack of a radio. Probably not loud enough.

Get some sort of transmitter, CB, SW. walkie talkie? I don't think a cell phone will ow

[gfretwell]

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

317.575.7800

[micky]

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.

[trader_4]

If this box is located near where utilities run, you could call the location services people and tell them you're putting in sprinklers or similar work and they will likely wind up marking it out anyway, no? IDK exactly what tools they use, but wouldn't they also see and mark any premise lines that show up?

[Ralph Mowery]

Probably not. The one that marked some utility lines out for me Friday had a transmitter box he hooked to the ground wire at the house going to the power pole after disconnecting it from the meter box. Then took a hand held unti similar looking to a metal detector and ran over the ground.

As he did not have to mark very much compaired to what I told the 811 people, I have a well house located about 100 feet from the house. I asked him if there was any way he could run the detector over that well line and he said he could not do that with the equipment he had. Not sure if he was blowing me off or not, but that was his response.

I did see a Youtube video later about sprinkler systems and you can detect the wires going to the sprinkler heads , but you have to disconnect the low voltage wires going to the system. He could probably have used his equipment, but would have to go to the breaker box and disconnect the 240 volt like to the well pump.

[dpb]

...

Large metro areas are undoubtedly different than rural but the 811 program (I'd never heard of "Miss Utility" before; that moniker is never used around here) is the FCC-assigned national number for CGA Common Ground Alliance that is a member-supported 501(c)(3) organization that does the regional coordination.

In at least rural W KS, they all show up; at least for a rural location where there are large high-pressure gas transmission lines in the quarter section of the dig location...Black Hills will be on the phone within 10 minutes to confirm am not doing anything or even thinking of doing anything within 100 miles (so to speak :) ) of their lines. The tap from down in the pasture to the house is mine; they do their quarterly leak checks but as far as the 811 location service, "not their job" so they don't and have never staked it.

Ditto above for CMS, the electric co-op; they have nothing underground so they don't bother; as noted above I hired a local to trace exactly how Dad had routed the service to the house from the pole since he redid all that while we were in VA/TN...

If were doing something near where I know roughly the gas lines run, I'd have to get them located precisely myself as well. The tap off the high pressure line/meter are out in the pasture along the fence row; it's about a quarter-mile run back up to the house. (The tap for neighbor's house located half-mile west on N side of road/section line is on same one on his side of the road and runs along S side of his property over

3/4 mile to get to the homestead--since the pipeline runs SW-NE by the time it gets from our tap N to him it's almost another 1/4 mi further east away from him).

Just looked on KS CGA call center site; in KS the markers are only valid for 15 days after they are marked -- after that if something goes wrong and you didn't call again it's on you.

Not that they're going to move, but in the rare instance if they happened to have goofed or missed something, that you had the information from some years ago and relied on that wouldn't be good enough for digging now...

[gfretwell]

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.

[gfretwell]

I have had the locate people out here a few times and they only marked things in the right of way. They didn't mark my buried phone line to the house. It did get hit.

[dpb]

On 6/6/2020 11:59 AM, [e-mail] wrote: ...

Where's the terminal box? It's the phone company's up to there; shoulda' found it. ATT did the trace here just last spring -- even came out this time and actually retraced the route even though had been just a couple years since did the new septic and had done then...

The junction box is on the house, though, so up to there is still theirs. Mice got in the connections box at the pole last spring and chewed insulation so buzzed every time it rained...fortunately, can take phoneset to the outside and verify it's bad there so again that's on them. Turned out second time besides the packrats, the County grader had managed to just scrape off the outer insulation at another location several miles away without actually breaking the wire...

[trader_4]

Here they mark right up to the house for all utilities. But IDK if there was buried property wiring if they would register it or mark it. I would tend to think they might, just because how would they know for sure what is there's and what is not? This must be a common issue that contractors would know about. It's not just service from the street, but any other buried wiring, gas, water, etc that could be where they are going to do work.

[Ralph Mowery]

Here is a wweb page that explains it.

Basically anything that is past the meter to the house for electricity or gas the home owner is responsiable for. That could be a propane tank you have for heating or cooking that has a line under ground, sprinklers,Wires to lammp posts or other buildings.

Same for phone and cable lines. They go to the junction box and any user installed items past that are your problem.

Someone asked about Miss Utility. That is one of the names for the 811 service.

[micky]

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