Residential Utility Locating: What Homeowners Need to Know
On a residential lot, most of what is buried belongs to you — and none of that gets marked by the free ticket.
File the Free Ticket First
Call 811, or your provincial one-call center in Canada, before any digging, including fence posts and tree planting. It is free, it is required by law, and it gets the gas, electric, water, and telecom companies to mark the lines they own up to your meter. Wait until every notified member has responded before you start.
What Is Left Unmarked on a Typical Lot
- The water service from the meter or curb stop to the house
- The sewer lateral out to the main, and any septic tank and field
- Irrigation mains, laterals, and valve boxes
- The gas run to a grill, a pool heater, a shop, or a generator
- Power to a detached garage, shed, well pump, light pole, or gate
- Low-voltage lighting, invisible fence, and data between buildings
- Anything a previous owner installed and did not record
On most lots that is more buried infrastructure than the utilities marked, and all of it is your responsibility to know about.
Projects Where It Pays For Itself
- Fence posts and deck footings, which go in exactly where services tend to run
- Pool and spa excavation
- Planting trees, where the root ball and the auger both reach service depth
- Trenching for a new circuit, water line, or irrigation zone
- Foundation work, drainage, and grading near the house
- Buying a property whose buried infrastructure is undocumented
- Locating a septic tank lid or a buried valve nobody can find
What Is Realistically Findable in a Yard
Metallic services, cable with a continuous path, and anything with tracer wire trace well. Plastic water and irrigation lines are the hard case, and whether they are findable depends on tracer wire, an accessible open end for a sonde, and your soil. Septic tanks and dry wells usually show on radar. Old low-voltage runs are hit and miss.
A locating company that tells you before mobilizing what it expects to struggle with on your lot is giving you the most useful thing it can.
Dig Carefully Even After a Locate
Marks come with a tolerance zone, and inside it the rule is hand or vacuum digging rather than a machine. On a residential lot that usually means a shovel used carefully, which is not a hardship at the depths involved. Photograph the marks with permanent features in frame before they fade — a photo and a tape measure will get you back to the same line weeks later.
Frequently asked questions
Can a homeowner hire a private locator directly?
Yes. Private locating companies work for whoever hires them, and residential jobs are routine work for most of them. Describe the job through Utility Hotline and locating companies serving your area will send their own quotes so you can compare.
How much does a residential locate cost?
It is quoted per job rather than off a rate card, because the price depends on lot size, how many targets are in play, whether there are connection points a transmitter can be clipped to, and whether you need marks only or a record you keep. Say what you are about to dig and what you think is buried, and the quotes you get back will be closer to the final number.
Do I need a permit?
Permits depend on the project, not on whether you had a locate done. Substantial work such as a sewer lateral replacement, a septic system, or a new electrical service usually needs one; planting a tree does not. The one-call notification is separate from any permit and is required regardless.
The utility marked nothing in my yard. Does that mean it is clear?
No. It means no member utility owns anything there, which is a different statement. The water service, sewer lateral, irrigation, and any circuit you or a previous owner ran are all still in the ground and all still outside the ticket. That is exactly the situation private locating exists for.
Related guides
View allWhen to Hire a Private Utility Locator
One-call is free, required, and incomplete. Here is how to tell whether it covers your job or stops short of it.
How to Locate Plastic Pipe and Empty Conduit
The hardest problem in locating is a plastic service with no tracer wire and no open end. Here is what gets tried, in order.
811 Call Before You Dig: What It Covers and What It Misses
Call 811 — or your provincial one-call centre in Canada — before every dig. Then understand precisely what the ticket did and did not cover, because that gap is where most private-property strikes happen.
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