Underground utility locators in California can help you avoid lots of useless work having to modify your construction blueprints and they are very useful in preventing potentially dangerous situations such as accidentally digging into buried tanks or into pipes that are not properly marked.
When Hire Underground Utility Locators in California
When you start a construction project, whether it is the construction of a residential building or buildings that will later on serve commercial or industrial purposes, you need to know exactly where underground utility lines are located and you also need to know about unused lines if you want to get a new sprinkler system installed or you want to make your pool larger. Locating the lines prior to starting construction is important for many reasons:
- It allows you to avoid injuries or other kinds of accidents,
- It can prevent conflicts between unused underground utility lines and the utility lines that you want to plant,
- It can help you avoid getting sued for breaking into or damaging lines used by properties around yours.
Finding the exact location of underground utility lines is useful not only if you are involved in the construction of a new building – these services are handy if you are faced with a leaking pipe or some other fault of your own utilities or if you want to assess the condition and the composition of the foundation under an already existing building.
The California underground wire locator company can identify the exact location of unused lines, allowing you to decide whether you want to go around them with your lines or you want to remove them.
How Underground Utility Locators Work
Utility locators use special technology to locate underground lines. Their special devices allow them to locate a wide range of utilities, including electricity cables, telecommunication cables, water pipes, sewage lines and septic pipes.
There are various methods used by utility locators to find underground lines – here are two of the most advanced techniques:
- Electromagnetic locators – used for cables and metal pipes and able to identify utilities to distances ranging up to 200 feet from the device, these devices use transmitters that emit radio signals and receivers that detect the secondary fields created in the utility line. Different types of lines respond with different frequencies, allowing the technician to identify not only the exact location of the line, but also its type,
- Ground penetrating radar – the state-of-the-art devices using GPR work in a way similar to electromagnetic locators, but they are even more precise and they can be used for detecting lines and pipes made from concrete as well. The unit has an antenna composed of a control unit and a transmitter and has the role of emitting radio signals that are reflected back from the utility lines they reach, then are analyzed by the processor of the device.
Utility locators use advanced technology, but their services are still affordable and if you think about what can happen without knowing where the underground lines are located, you will see that hiring a location service is worth it.