You must contact 811 at least two full working days prior to excavation to give the member utilities enough time to mark the approximate location of their underground utilities on your property. “Working day” means every day except Saturday, Sunday, and state and national legal holidays.
If you do not contact Indiana 811 (i.e. “dig blind”), you run the risk of hitting a utility line, which could result in any number of undesirable consequences, including: disruption of utility service, property damage, fines, prosecution, lawsuits, injury or death.
Indiana 811 is a free service for locating utility lines before a dig.
Before you contact Indiana 811, you will need to know specific details about where you plan to dig, including the county, township, street address, nearest intersecting street and location on the property. You will also need the name and phone number of the person who will be doing the digging. We recommend you mark the designated area with white paint or flags, so the member utility operators know where you plan to excavate.
You can request underground facility markings online via Exactix Home or by phone at 811. After contacting Indiana 811, you will be given a ticket number and a list of all the member utilities that will be notified. You will need to contact any non-member utilities yourself.
You must contact 811 at least two full working days prior to excavation to give the member utilities enough time to mark the approximate location of their underground utilities on your property. “Working day” means every day except Saturday, Sunday, and state and national legal holidays.
Once the two full working days have passed, confirm that all utility operators have visited the property by comparing the various colors of the marks to the list of utilities provided by Indiana 811. If the utility operator’s facilities are not in conflict within the designated area, a notification shall be made to the person who submitted the locate request that the utility operator has no facilities in the proposed excavation area. The method of notification is up to the utility operator or contractor locator. For example, if gas is not in conflict, then the utility operator may write “OK” with yellow paint in the designated area.
Now that the utility lines are marked, or you’ve been notified that they aren’t in conflict, you can begin digging with care. Indiana state law mandates a two-foot tolerance zone on either side of the marks. In the tolerance zone, only certain types of excavation are allowed, such as only being permitted to dig with hand tools. The size of the tolerance zone will depend on the size of the underground facility, which is sometimes noted by the utility locating technicians.