hit a gas line when staking lot corner, has this ever happened to anyone else

Here in Houston, and this was decades back, we had to bury a gas service line at a minimum 18" below grade. You got lucky! Go buy a lottery ticket! :p

Hit a waterline once. It was between the meter and a vacant house. I turned the water off, fixed the line, turned it back on.

In Mississippi there were laws passed. We're to file a request to One Call to locate any utilities because the law states 18 inches is drilling. If we don't and hit something the damages are on us. If One Call doesn't locate in 5 days, we're to file a complaint, then proceed to work. If we hit something after filing a complaint it's on One Call. I've been in the field for 40 years, and can count on one hand water lines I've busted. Never a gas line. Around here they use orange thick wall flexible PVC gas lines. I'm pretty sure I've hit them before. My rod would just bounce off of them. Can't see busting one with a rod and a 2 lb. hammer. Good luck.

I know a guy who it a residential gas line doing the same on a Saturday morning. Half the fire department and all of the neighborhood showed up. I hammered a 60D nail into what I assumed to be a saltwater disposal line once, fortunately this was a rural area

In Texas, for several years, we have been told to call 811 to be safe before penetrating more than 18in to 24in in depth.
Most lines to residential homes are low pressure and could be slowed down or closed with duct tape.
Locally, expect to receive a bill for the repairs and fine for not calling 811.
I keep an angle grinder for when the rod stalls out before being flush and cutoff enough and will round off that end and have placed a plastic cap on the bottom end too.

Punctured a water service line setting a lot corner in a brand new subdivision 27 years ago. Construction Super turned the main valve off and fixed it. No one was living there yet. Service line aren't supposed to be right on the lot line but I guess their construction tolerance was a few feet.

I drove a rebar through a gas line once. In a new development that was not graded out yet, therefore not ready for property corners to be set.... yet there we were. There wound up being a big finger pointing party of the big boys of the involved companies. I do not know what the outcome was, whether the utility company didn't bury the pipe deep enough, if it was just the lot hadn't been graded, or what.

Pegged boundaries around a cul-de-sac once. Owner wanting to add protection to the pegs drove a star fencing dropper (5'6" long) down beside them. Used excavator bucket to push in. Hit the high voltage power supply to the subdivision.
No one hurt fortunately, just a lot of sparks. Plus the damage bill.
Power supply company hopefully treated the bloke kindly as they'd augered down to put put up the main feeder pole on the main road.
Just grazed the coating on the major telecommunications line. So much for dial before you dig!

I've had my run in with a water pipe. Grabbed an upstand at the warf once hoping to push sideways about 5mm. Whoosh. Whole thing snapped off.
They had to shut down the water supply to the entire warf area.
Surprisingly no big deal. "these things happen".
,
I was obviously very relieved.

"Most lines to residential homes are low pressure and could be slowed down or closed with duct tape."

Not so around here. Up to the meter, which is usually by the house, the line pressure is very high. From the meter and throughout the house it's normally around 1/4 PSI.

Tried to drive a bar into what turned out to be the electric service line going to the new house. That small town had made a requirement that buried electric lines had to have a layer of concrete poured over top. I was hitting the concrete and the bar was doing that little bounce back thingy like hitting a really big rock.

Have torn up a few telephone lines while digging for stones with a backhoe despite the lines having been supposedly located by DigSafe.

[USER=8282]@neggs[/USER]

"now what?"

I think the worst thing that could happen to you is a letter from an attorney. It's the gas company's, building department, and builders fault the line wasn't deep enough. At least that is the position I would take.
Just my 0.2 😎

A couple of years ago on Christmas Eve and we had one survey to do in the morning before our holiday started. The only point missing was one along a curve towards the middle of the lot, and all of the corners here like most areas are right at the back of the walk. Well, I pounded our rod in and it didn't seem to meet any resistance, I guess it did though because we had a very angry voicemail on our office phone when we all returned about how our stake was driven right through a sprinkler line and it made a huge mess. I'm sure I got cussed on that Christmas morning with the family.....

In the few states I have worked in, you are liable because you were 12 inches below grade. I've cut ctv services 4in deep and they pay for it.

Side note in my state surveyors can get stuck doing a planning ticket, which gives utilities 5 days instead of 2, furthermore they don't have to mark they can just hand you a map. To circumvent the planning ticket we would submit tickets whose work type said "driving rebar". Thus they must mark for me.

Just left engineering work for cadastral-only surveying, life shall improve substantially.

I'm sure I've come close to hitting something, but luckily, to my knowledge, haven't. But we use 30" rebar, and the utilities here are supposed to be deeper than that, because of the frost line.

in the early 70's we were staking a subdivision. some brilliant designer had decided to group all the services into a 5 foot easement at every other front lot corner. we were setting 1/2" x 30" galv. iron pipe for the front corners. one spit sand in my face, yep it was gas. the PG&E crew doing their underground was up the block. we gave them a shout, went back and reset that one later.
there were no repercussions that I recall.

We set 3/4"x30" pipe, mostly. My old party chief was monumenting the rear corners in a newly abandoned alley and met refusal. Well, that stubborn old guy kept hammering away until it started traveling down again. It turned out he had gone through one of the very few (at the time) fiber optic lines. If any of you know about fiber repairs, you know this was a VERY expensive property corner.

Richard, post: 434697, member: 833 wrote: Used excavator bucket to push in. Hit the high voltage power supply to the subdivision.
No one hurt fortunately, just a lot of sparks. Plus the damage bill.

Tried to tell a backhoe operator once that the electrical drop was five feet to the other side of a gas line, and the plans were wrong (using the probing rod to show him it was hitting refusal). I was told to get the @#$% out of the way so he could dig. That was the loudest sound and the coolest blue/green light show ever.

Back as a young survey tech I hit and irrigation line while resetting new plat irons that an irrigation crew had "reset" on their own after removing them to place said line. It made a hell of a fountain. My old PC's reaction was great, he just said box it up and we left with the fountain in full operation. This was a new construction job. I don't think we had to pay for the repairs and in fact the irrigation contractor had to pay us to reset the corners they disturbed.

We hit one setting corners in a brand new subdivision, curb was in and the utility people got a little careless going around the cul de sac, I had to find a phone, call the office, they called the gas company, crew showed up quickly, I gave them a hard time for putting the line in, on or outside the R/W. never heard a word from anyone about it. I'm talking 35 +- years ago.