THIS- boys and girls

Is why, when you're trying to protect your buried pipes and cables-

You DON'T put your warning tape right on top of the pipe you're trying to save.



Especially when you KNOW that 'someone' will be digging through rock and expecting to feel things breaking.


This is how you protect your cr@p when you care about it not getting broken.



When putting down your "caution ... buried (utility type here) line below" tape, you want to try giving a good food of notice to the future operator. That way, given the assumption that he's being even reasonably attentive he'll pull up the tape and red sand before hitting your stuff.

That sand has several purposes.
First is pipe padding- it protects from damage from sharp hard stuff that doesn't need to be crushing your pipes.
Second, that different colored sand (different from the surrounding dirt) tells you that there "IS" a trench there- even if there isn't tape, and a good operator will actually check to see what's there.
Third that sand makes hand digging a lot easier than the compacted fill dirt.