When you need to dig in your yard it is very important that you have your utilities located first. You wouldn’t want to accidentally locate your gas line with a trencher during Uncle Ernie’s smoke break; the results could be explosive to say the least. Prior to any machine digging we always use the one call service to have utilities located. It is a free service where you make one phone call and they contact all the utilities in the area you will be digging. It is then the responsibility of the utility to locate their lines or pipes. The one call people claim this will be done within 48 hours not including the day of the call, the reality is that it often takes longer so try to give them a week to be safe.

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While the free service is a great deal, especially the price, they won’t locate the private utilities on your property. Examples of private utilities include sprinkler valve wiring, landscape lighting, pump or well wiring or any other wiring or plumbing that is beyond its respective utility meter. We now have several pieces of locating equipment that are used for locating missing sprinkler valves or minimizing or eliminating damage to private utilities when we are installing a new sprinkler or lighting system. Our equipment attaches to anything metallic and allows us to trace the location. We can trace the following utilities; telephone, power, cable, gas or any metallic pipe including copper and galvanized. We can also locate some plastic pipes such as drainage pipes by inserting a metallic electricians fish into them, from there we can locate the fish inside the pipe. We’ve also used this technique for locating water service lines made of plastic poly pipe.

The primary reason we have locating equipment is for locating lost sprinkler zone valves. In an effort to reduce weeds, alot of landscape companies often use beauty bark to cover flower beds. In addition to the weeds they often bury sprinkler valve boxes under several inches of bark. This is not a problem until one of these valves either fails to work or worse yet fails to shut off. When this day comes Aquasense can help by using valve locating equipment to find missing valves and either repair or replace them. A majority of missing valves can be found in less than 1 hour. We do charge a $25.00 locate equipment charge.