No, and this is the misunderstanding that gets people into trouble. Calling 811 notifies Gopher State One Call, which in turn notifies its member utility operators. Those operators come out and mark only the lines they own. Anything you own stays invisible.

Roughly 60–70% of what is buried on a typical property is privately owned. That means an 811 locate alone may only account for about 30% of what is actually down there.

Call 811 first. Then call us. We handle the part they leave behind.

Anything you own. Generally that means every line downstream of the meter, the curb stop, or the main. Common examples we locate:

• Septic systems
• Wells
• Sprinkler and irrigation control lines
• Power to detached garages
• Power to sheds and outbuildings
• Power to pools and hot tubs
• In-ground pet fences
• Gas to shops and heaters
• Gas to outdoor grills and fire pits
• Outdoor and landscape lighting
• Pond pumps and lighting
• Backup generators
• Water lines to detached structures
• Phone lines to garages and shops
• Satellite dish and CCTV lines
• Power to gates and fences
• Driveway sensors
• Storm drains
• Power to fountains
• Power to coops and livestock waterers
• Free-standing antenna and radio lines
• LP and gas tank lines

Yes. Always. A private locate does not replace your 811 ticket — it completes the picture. Call Gopher State One Call for the public lines, then bring us in for everything they will not touch. The two work together.

Here is the shortcut that clears it up fast: if the line broke and you had to call and pay for the repair yourself, it is a private utility.

Utility companies mark up to the point where their responsibility ends — usually the meter, the pedestal, or the curb stop. Past that line, it belongs to the property owner, and locating it is the property owner’s responsibility.

Because you own it, not the water utility. Irrigation systems are almost always private, so they fall completely outside an 811 ticket.

Worth knowing up front: sprinkler systems are usually PVC, which carries no signal. We can typically trace the control wiring and main components, but every small branch line is not always locatable. We will tell you plainly what we found and what we could not confirm.

Usually not. That feed starts at your meter or panel, which makes it yours.

It is also one of the most frequently struck lines on fence, deck, and landscaping jobs — a live secondary feed a foot or two down, right where the post holes go. If you have any structure out back with power to it, get it located.

That is normal. Many cities and municipalities treat the water line past the curb stop valve as private property, and the same applies to the sewer service line. The utility marks its side, and the rest of the run across your yard to the house is yours to locate.

No. Septic tanks, drain fields, and well lines are private and will not be marked on an 811 ticket. If you are digging anywhere on an acreage or unsewered property, this is exactly the kind of work a private locate is for. Cracking a tank lid or cutting a drain field line is an expensive, stinky messy repair.

Give us a call or send a text at (651) 870-6530, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. No forms, no portal, no sleazy contracts, no robots, no waiting on an email reply. You talk to us and we get you on the schedule.

It depends on the size of the property, how many utilities are involved, and where you are located, so we quote each job rather than posting a flat rate that would be wrong for half of you.

Call or text with your address and what you are digging for, and we will give you a straight number. It is a short conversation, and it costs a small fraction of what a struck line costs to repair.

Most residential jobs run about 30 to 60 minutes on site. Larger properties, acreages, and commercial sites with more utilities in play take longer. We will give you a realistic window when you book.

Not usually. As long as we have clear access to the property and we know exactly where you are digging, we can complete the work while you are away. When we are done, the markings are on the ground waiting for you.

That said, if you know things about the property — where a previous owner ran a line, where a shop feed comes off, where an old system used to be — being there for five minutes at the start makes the whole locate better.

• The address and a clear description of the dig area. Marking your dig area in white paint or with white stakes is the best thing you can do — it is also what state law asks of you on the 811 side.
• Safe access to the work area, including gate codes or unlocked gates.
• Pets contained. We are friendly with dogs, but we would rather meet them through a window.
• A heads-up on the site — steep grades, standing water, livestock, soft ground, anything we should know before we walk it.
• Any records you have. Old as-builts, septic compliance paperwork, or a sketch a previous owner left behind all help.

We cover the Twin Cities Metro Area and the Greater Metro Area. We also do locates anywhere in the State of Minnesota and in most of Western Wisconsin. If you are outside our normal range, call anyway — we travel for the right job and we will be upfront about whether it makes sense for you.

Plan on digging within a few days. Paint fades with rain, irrigation, mowing, and foot traffic, and flags get pulled or knocked over. Schedule your locate close to when you actually intend to break ground rather than weeks ahead. We use water based paint on most of our jobs, undisturbed it generally lasts a week or two on grass we also mark with flags as well but recommend you schedule with us within a few days of the actual work taking place. Routine 811 tickets are good for 14 days so be sure to keep that in mind as well when planning.

Photograph the marks when they are fresh, and measure off something permanent — a foundation corner, a driveway edge, a fence post. If the paint disappears, you still have your reference.

We use electromagnetic locating. A transmitter puts a signal onto the line — either by direct connection at an accessible point, or by inducing it into the line — and a receiver traces that signal from above ground to follow the path of the line across the property. Energized lines can also be located passively in some cases without connecting, this is also how we discover unknown lines on properties all the time that homeowners didn’t even know were there to begin with.

Then we mark it. Paint, flags, or both, depending on ground conditions and what you are doing.

Electromagnetic locating needs something conductive to carry the signal — copper, steel, or a dedicated tracer wire buried alongside a plastic line. If a line is plastic, PVC, or fiberglass with no tracer wire and no accessible metal, the signal has nothing to travel on.

This is not a limitation of our gear specifically; it is how electromagnetic locating works everywhere.

Sometimes — it depends on the line and the access. If there is a tracer wire, we trace the wire. If there is an accessible opening, we may be able to introduce something traceable into the line. Non-metallic lines with no tracer wire and no access point are the hardest case in this trade, and no locator can guarantee them.

We would rather tell you that honestly on the phone than take your money and hand you a false sense of security. Tell us what you are dealing with and we will tell you what is realistic.

We can provide depth estimates, but treat every depth as an estimate rather than a measurement. Depth shifts with soil, grading changes, frost, erosion, prior repairs, and how the line was installed in the first place. It can change noticeably across a single yard.

Never let a depth number talk you into digging aggressively over a line. Many multiple factors can affect the accuracy of the depth readings on any locate equipment and even though we use the best most expensive equipment there is , the reality is depth measurements can be inaccurate for a myriad of reasons outside of everyone’s control even in seemingly perfect conditions.

Our Marks are very accurate. Generally within 1-2 inches or perfect. That being said. Marks show the approximate horizontal path of a line, not a surveyed coordinate. That is true of every utility locate, public or private. This is why we don’t advertise or sell “GPS” coordinates or maps of our marks, frankly the equipment isn’t good enough to accurately do that in our opinion and those maps are only as good as the person that makes them and even though they would be almost perfect everytime we do it our faith in the actual GPS system built into some of the locate tools on the market is very very very low. Until Trimble makes a locator we will hold off on selling GPS marks.

Dig with care near any mark. As you get close to a marked line, slow down and switch to hand digging or careful methods to expose it. Machine buckets and marked lines are a bad combination. Minnesota state law gives 24 inches on either side of a mark for a tolerance zone due to factors beyond the locators control that can affect accuracy in Wisconsin the tolerance zone is 18 inches on either side of the line that is marked. Any excavation that occurs within this tolerance zone must be done by hand (with a shovel) or the utility must be daylighted (spotted in the ground) before any equipment can be used to dig in this tolerance zone by law.

Locators use the APWA uniform color code, so the colors mean the same thing statewide:

In winter conditions, black or pink is used in place of white for dig-area markings, since white paint disappears against snow.

Anything that puts steel in the ground on a developed property:

• Fence installation — post holes are the number one source of private line damage
• Deck footings and post holes
• Retaining walls, patios, and paver work
• Tree and shrub planting, stump removal
• Trenching for electrical, internet, or irrigation
• Pool, hot tub, and pond installation
• Sheds, garages, and outbuilding slabs
• Driveway and sidewalk replacement
• Landscaping and regrading

If you are a fence contractor, deck builder, landscaper, or excavator, a private locate is cheap insurance against a repair bill and a lost day. We offer special rates for Contractors who can guarantee us continuous work or multiple jobs on a regular basis.

It is more important, not less. Rural and acreage properties tend to have long private runs to outbuildings, shops, wells, septic systems, livestock waterers, and yard lights — often installed years ago by different people, with no records anyone can find.

Almost none of that gets marked on an 811 ticket. It is exactly the work we are built for. We specialize in assisting our Rural customers to the north get all their private utilities marked for all the new fiber installations East Central Energy is doing in the northern metro counties right now.

A yard full of paint feels reassuring, and that is the danger. Those marks tell you about the utility company’s lines. They tell you nothing about the feed to your garage, the gas run to your grill, your irrigation main, or your septic field.

Take two minutes and look around before you dig: a gas meter with no yellow paint leading away from it, an electric meter with no red, a shed with lights on, sprinkler heads in the lawn, a grill or fire pit plumbed for gas. Every one of those is a line somebody has to locate, and the utility is not going to do it. We also will double check the marks the people your utility providers pay to mark on your property as well, we can’t count how many times a power line or a gas line from a propane tank is missed by 811 or completely mismarked.

We understand. We specialize in marking lines that have been damaged or cut in half during excavations where private lines were not marked and were hit and destroyed during excavation as well. We will be more than happy to come out and paint them after they are broken too so you or your contractor can pay to repair them. We also offer location services for broken or damaged lines as well and can usually even tell you exactly where it is broken within a very small area. We spent many years developing the skills required to find already damaged lines in the ground for repair as well as locating them to prevent that damage from happening.