Many years ago while working for a municipal water district, I was operating a backhoe. We were digging to install a new service tap for water. This was back before there was a toll free number to call to have utility lines located and marked. We had a map showing the other utility lines. Unfortunately it was incorrect. I found a gad line the hard way because it was on the opposite side of the alley from where the map showed.
You've never seen a fat boy kill the engine, dismount, and run about 20 yards upwind as fast as I did that day. Thankfully it didn't ignite since it was a plastic line, not metal.. I would have had to change into my volunteer fireman hat had that occurred.
I've done the civil design for miles of water, storm, gas, sanitary, steam, chilled water, power & communication ductbanks, and hundreds of below grade structures. During that process there were at least a thousand soil borings, ledge probes, monitoring wells and test pits. All in areas that already had decades of existing UG utilities crisscrossing all over the place. Over 27 years I never hit a thing, because I thoroughly checked the existing conditions beforehand. And got lucky.
This rigger obviously left out that step or took someone else's word for it. Both are potential "jackpots" as they're called.
But there is one other possibility. It looks like this operator started another bore prior to this one off to the right and got his cutting head stuck, so he moved over and started a new one. I'm guessing the first one was mapped out for him by the engineer or surveyor, but since he blew that one, this location was him going rogue trying to get the job done. Now he's ended up bankrupting his boss and quite probably the engineer that hired him. Especially if that stuff coiled around his auger is fiber optic and some small city is now without phone or internet for the next week or so.
I never left a rigger alone on a site, no matter how good they were.
In Texas, there are abandoned thousand pair phone cables that aren't marked. They just leave them, and when they're found, you have to shut down until someone comes along to verify the condition. The phone companies charged the crap out of those that hit their cables, but never stepped up to the plate to pay the thousands of dollars in down time from their abandoned cables.
Many years ago while working for a municipal water district, I was operating a backhoe. We were digging to install a new service tap for water. This was back before there was a toll free number to call to have utility lines located and marked. We had a map showing the other utility lines. Unfortunately it was incorrect. I found a gad line the hard way because it was on the opposite side of the alley from where the map showed.
ReplyDeleteYou've never seen a fat boy kill the engine, dismount, and run about 20 yards upwind as fast as I did that day. Thankfully it didn't ignite since it was a plastic line, not metal.. I would have had to change into my volunteer fireman hat had that occurred.
Found the utilities that Julie said wasn't there.
ReplyDeleteI've done the civil design for miles of water, storm, gas, sanitary, steam, chilled water, power & communication ductbanks, and hundreds of below grade structures. During that process there were at least a thousand soil borings, ledge probes, monitoring wells and test pits. All in areas that already had decades of existing UG utilities crisscrossing all over the place. Over 27 years I never hit a thing, because I thoroughly checked the existing conditions beforehand. And got lucky.
ReplyDeleteThis rigger obviously left out that step or took someone else's word for it. Both are potential "jackpots" as they're called.
But there is one other possibility. It looks like this operator started another bore prior to this one off to the right and got his cutting head stuck, so he moved over and started a new one. I'm guessing the first one was mapped out for him by the engineer or surveyor, but since he blew that one, this location was him going rogue trying to get the job done. Now he's ended up bankrupting his boss and quite probably the engineer that hired him. Especially if that stuff coiled around his auger is fiber optic and some small city is now without phone or internet for the next week or so.
I never left a rigger alone on a site, no matter how good they were.
In Texas, there are abandoned thousand pair phone cables that aren't marked. They just leave them, and when they're found, you have to shut down until someone comes along to verify the condition. The phone companies charged the crap out of those that hit their cables, but never stepped up to the plate to pay the thousands of dollars in down time from their abandoned cables.
ReplyDelete