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Dig Safe Indiana

Preparing to do a project that requires digging? Here are some important things you should know:

  • A damage to underground utilities happens once every 5-6 minutes in the United States.
  • It doesn’t matter how shallow you’re planning to dig! Always contact 811 at least 2 working days prior to starting your project.
  • 811 doesn’t do any locating or digging! 811 is a nationwide dispatch service that notifies the utility companies that have lines in the area of a dig request. Just like how you call 911 when you have an emergency, yet no one from 911 comes out to take care of your emergency? 811 is kind of the same concept: They contact and dispatch those who have buried utilities in your area so those utility companies can make sure a locate technician comes out and marks them.
  • When you contact 811, you need to have some basic info handy. A few of those items are: address where you’re doing the digging, the township, a good contact number and where on the property you’re looking to do the work.
  • A ‘ticket’ is what you get when you submit a dig request to 811. That number is specific to you and your project. No two numbers are the same. That way, if any discrepancies or questions come up later on, you can simply refer to that ticket number and it will have all the information on who showed up to mark, what lines were in play (CenterPoint, Duke, AT&T, etc.) and when the markings were completed.
  • If you’re putting in a mailbox or a planting a tree on the south side of your property, just say ‘locate south side of property’ instead of ‘entire property.’ That way the locate technician can show up, get you marked safely and then move on to keeping everyone else marked in time for their projects. (A locate technician can often have over 100 tickets to complete in a 48hr window…and in the summer months, that number only seems to go up!)
  • If you get your property marked and then a giant storm comes through and wipes away the marks, just call in for a ‘remark’… that way you can have everything re-marked and not have to worry about creating a new locate request.
  • Your ticket is good for 20 days! As long as the markings are visible and haven’t been compromised, you’re good to complete your project in that window of time! If after the 20 day period you still aren’t finished with your project, simply call in a new locate request and everyone will come back out and freshen everything up for you!
  • Hand digging is required inside what’s known as the ’Tolerance Zone’… which in Indiana and Kentucky is 24” on either side of the outside of the facility. (A ‘facility’ is just a fancy name for the line that needs marked…whether it’s a cast iron water pipe, a thick bunch of wires in a conduit for internet or a plastic gas line- they’re all called ‘facilities.’) There is WAY less chance of damaging one of these facilities when someone is carefully using a shovel within that tolerance zone as opposed to a mechanized piece of equipment.
  • After you have completed your project, you are free to take up the flags at your leisure! (Most every kind of paint that locating services use is water based and washes away with a couple of good rains.)