I found a water line today.....

Good one. I'll print your story out for my Boundary Surveying class Tuesday evening.

Wanna come talk to my class at LSU?

Consider yourself invited. Theory is nice, but real life stories are important for students. Contact me off line if you can make it before May final exams.

[email protected]

The fact that waterlines are buried 4'+ to stay below the frost has probably saved us many times.

:good: exactly, Perry. However, we have found buried irrigation lines w/ 60d's 😐

btw hitting a 3/4" line buried in a 20' wide boulevarde with a 3/16" diameter projectile is just something that was meant to be....

Great story! Now imagine finding a gas line in a similar fashion, which I did. Yes, drove the pin through the gas line thinking it was something else, or "there simply could not be anything important like a utility this near to the surface".

Thankfully, neither of us who were in the immediate vicinity were smoking at the time.

Now try to imagine the finger pointing that took place......

Yes, Virginia, water lines do exist

And they may be anywhere. Another goodie is a natural gas line piped by the landowner from the well to the house.

My local rural water district installed quite a few short cuts like that back in the early 60's. One line was found a couple of years ago about two miles from my house by a fellow rebuilding terraces. His brother was the maintenance guy for the water district that had to get it fixed.

Years ago I had a county road grader excavating a hole at a section corner in search of a stone set in the 1860's. Suddenly, we have two pieces of two-inch plastic pipe exposed that had been only one piece a few seconds earlier. No water. No gush of natural gas. Nothing. Upon inspection it was evident the pipe had carried crude oil. The operator then points to the southeast towards some little abandoned oil wells, then north towards a rusty old abandoned oil storage tank. He then told how he would bet good money that those wells used to feed that tank as they were on land owned by the same guy who was a smalltime oilfield developer. Lucky for us the wells had become economically deficient and the developer was now dead. DigSafe had been called, but, had no knowledge of this private line. BTW, we did not find our stone until we looked in one of the nearby ditches, where it had been tossed by the pipeline installer.

In another survey we did the landowner had his own natural gas line running from a well on one side of a former State highway to a rental house he owned on the other side. His well had been drained by a telephone line installer cutting through his line and doing nothing about it and telling no one. The installer had wandered off the road right-of-way a bit onto the landowner's property when this happened. The installer learned an expensive lesson and attorneys made lots of money.

Utilities around here are typically installed over 30 inches deep to keep farm implements away from them. Erosion sometimes changes that. Our "permafrost", if we ever have any, may last only a few days, and go only an inch or so deep. Water meters are in plastic boxes at ground level with the lines only a short distance below the surface at both ends.

I taught surveying courses at a community college for 18 years and used real-time experiences to supplement classroom lectures. There is a vast difference between what is in a textbook and "out there in the real world". Experience IS the best teacher!:-D

Was there any locating wire on the pipe? Many drops on private property around here can be difficult to locate and when you call they express this caveat.

However, the sun just came up and it's -5deg.F. This insures most water lines are out of reach of my 5/8"x24" pin.

Steve

In Illinois, two groups of people don't have to call the Locate, farmers doing normal tilling operations, and surveyors using hand tools. In 28 years of doing this, we have hit one gas line and one phone line.

In my opinion, they don't want to do a locate everytime we survey, they have enough stuff to keep them busy.

Well, thanks Mississippi Harold!

I have hit water lines... once too!

It was Near Lake Hamilton School, in Hot Springs AR. I drove it into the pipe, and it leaked all weekend, and then they fixed it Monday. It lost $200 worth of water, from the water meter.
I told them that it was TOO SHALLOW, and we finally agreed, and I paid $100, and they paid the other 1/2.

I liked your writing style, and story.

You done good.

Nate

> In Illinois, two groups of people don't have to call the Locate, farmers doing normal tilling operations, and surveyors using hand tools. In 28 years of doing this, we have hit one gas line and one phone line.
>
> In my opinion, they don't want to do a locate everytime we survey, they have enough stuff to keep them busy.

Same in Iowa, but we are liable if we do hit something. From time to time surveyors will hire an excavator/back hoe to dig a corner, and I pray they call that in. Things like that could cost us our exemption.

I feel for you.

When I was a rodman, about 1995, I did the same thing except it was 20°. :-O and the work crew was not quite as happy when they left.:-(

Miguel A. Escobar, LSLS, RPLS

Good story Harold! I have struck water services and a gas service once, but never punctured anything. We have a 30" frost depth, but service lines aren't always that deep, especially around meters. Had a new occurance several years ago. A front property corner fell significantly inside a very large (30' x 100') concrete driveway. My crew chief decided that the best way to mark it was with a MAG nail and a brass tag. He then of course dressed it up with a bit of orange paint... The next morning I got a call from the owner of the driveway. He was not in the least concerned that his driveway encroached ±12' onto the neighbor's lot. He was extraordinarily concerned with the paint, which he called "glaringly ugly" and "quite offensive". I informed him that paint was standard practice so that my client could easily spot the corner location. This made him irate, so I told him I would be happy to remove it with a wire brush. He calmed down a bit and asked about the monument itself. When he realized that the MAG nail was 2" long he started screaming. I finally was able to understand that the entire driveway contained an electric heating mat to melt snow. He knew nothing at all about how deep it was, or whether it was actually in the area of the MAG nail. He didn't have the faintest concept of electricity, and kept telling me that we were going to have to pay him for the electricity that might be "leaking out" of a "punctured" wire. He told me to hire an electrician to come out and measure how much electricity was "leaking" out! I was so flabbergasted I didn't really know what to say, so I told him I would make arrangements and get back in touch. I have a friend who is an electrician, and I called him and told him the story and we had a really good laugh - until he told me that heating mats were normally 12' x 20', and were unrepairable. If we had broken a wire in the mat the entire section of driveway would have to be replaced, but the owner would have to provide the location of each mat. I told him that the owner had no idea of the location. We both realized that it might not be possible to locate "joints" between mats, and the entire driveway might need to be replaced. This was not looking good!

I went to the site to remove the paint, and found a small (±3" diam.) circle of paint. While I was removing it with a wire brush, Mr. neighbor came out to reinforce the "offensiveness" of the paint. He asked me when the electrician was arriving. I explained that I had discussed the matter with an electrician, and that we were going to need to wait until it snowed, and if a section of the driveway remained snow-covered we would take care of it. He was not at all satisfied, and told me he was going to contact an electrician and "find out the truth".

Thankfully, I never heard from him again. When I told my client the story he laughed and said "Yeah, he's a real piece of work. You're lucky you don't have him for a neighbor."!

We now scribe shallow "+" marks in ALL concrete surfaces...

Would never have thought of that

That's downright scary.

Thanks to our new laws, which were apparently implemented with zero communication with us surveyors, your little escapade would potentially cost you over $10,000 here in WA state.

Is there ever a successful defense in showing that the waterline or whatever is improperly installed, and not in the correct easement? How often do we get a boatload of money when "they" knock out our corners?

I stuck a control point into a plastic water pipe a while back. To this day I can't see how it happened. The control point was just a nail that I was pounding along the inside of a curb. You would think the pipe wouldn't rupture just because the nail slid between the curb and the plastic pipe but it sure did. The system was on a timer and didn't go off except at night. It took the homeowner a week or so to figure it out. They had just moved into the place and were former neighbors of mine. At least they knew who to call and complain to.

> At least they knew who to call and complain to.

:whistle: :rain:

> Is there ever a successful defense in showing that the waterline or whatever is improperly installed, and not in the correct easement? How often do we get a boatload of money when "they" knock out our corners?

Early in my career I hit a waterline. The only time I’ve done it. The city sent me the bill for repair. I called the city manager and asked him to show me the easement crossing my client’s corner and I would pay. I never heard another word.

Had a builder that had placed a house corner about a foot across the front setback line, it was an innocent mistake and the city inspector said nothing until an occupation permit was requested. I was called to determine how much of the house needed to be removed to get into compliance, I did and provided the info to the City and indicated that a variance should be allowed, no way, they were mad at the contractor and would not consider such a thing. Knowing that the city sewer line was outside of the easement on this lot, I went back out, located it and provided the city with it's actual location. yep, a variance was allowed.
jud