Before You Dig: The 811 Call and When the Law Requires It

811 is the national number for having buried lines marked before you dig. The Federal Communications Commission describes it as the call that gets buried utility lines, electric, cable and water among them, identified and marked before digging on property you own or manage, and it notes that local laws often require the call. A call or an online request reaches your state’s notification center, which passes the dig site to the utilities with lines nearby; each one marks its lines or says it has none there. The Common Ground Alliance’s 811 site calls it a free national service and asks for the call a few business days before any digging, fences and mailboxes included.

When the law requires the call

Texas’s damage prevention law turns on how you dig. It defines excavation as digging with explosives or with powered or mechanized equipment that disturbs soil 16 inches deep or more, and it requires notice to a notification center before that digging starts; a powered auger on a fence line is the backyard case. Texas811, the state’s notification center, asks homeowners to call before any digging, even in their own backyard.

California’s law counts every excavation, by hand tool or machine, but it does not apply to a homeowner improving a principal residence with digging that needs no permit, or to an owner who hires a licensed contractor for such work. The exceptions name owners, not the contractors they hire, and they cover only digging that needs no permit from a state or local agency. An excepted owner may still call, and the law names the case for it: a lot known to hold lines other than the owner’s own. A permit to excavate is not valid until the applicant has a ticket from the notification center.

How much notice

In Texas, notice goes in no earlier than 14 days and no later than 48 hours before digging starts, not counting Saturdays, Sundays or legal holidays. Each operator of electric, gas, telecommunications or other Class A lines then has until the 48th hour, on the same count, to mark them or to say it will not. Texas811 says the service costs the caller nothing; the utilities pay for it.

California wants the dig area marked in white first, then at least two working days’ notice, not counting the day of the call, weekends or holidays, and no more than 14 calendar days. The ticket is free and good for 28 days, and digging waits until every operator listed on it has marked its lines, shared where they run or said it has none there.

What the colors mean

Both states’ laws point to the American Public Works Association’s color code. Red is electric power, yellow gas, oil or steam, orange communications, blue drinking water, purple reclaimed water and irrigation, green sewer and drain lines, pink temporary survey marks, and white the digging you proposed. In California the tolerance zone runs 24 inches on each side of a mark, and inside it the excavator has to find the line’s exact position with hand tools before any power equipment goes in, with narrow exceptions.

What 811 does not mark

The lines you own are not the utility’s to mark. Texas811 says utilities may not mark lines that run from the meter onto private property or to the house, and that getting those located is the owner’s job; Texas’s law does not count a line serving only its owner, on the owner’s land, among the facilities it protects. California does not require an owner whose lines serve only that property to join the notification center, and its law leaves out unpressurized sewer lines and storm drains. In Texas the notification center has to warn you that water and sewer operators may not receive your notice.

If you hit a line

Texas’s law has the excavator contact the line’s operator at once, leave the damaged spot unburied until the operator agrees a repair schedule, and let only the operator or someone it authorizes make the repair. California’s adds a call to 911 when a gas or hazardous-liquid line is leaking, alongside the call to the operator.

Where it comes up

Fence posts, deck and pergola footings, a retaining wall and a pool all start with a hole. The retaining wall and pool permit briefs answer whether the work needs a permit; whether the digging needs a call is this page’s question, and in California the first answer can settle the second.