Real world insight for locating, excavation and beyond!
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By Grant Piraine – President/Executive Director, NAPUA Introduction: Delivering Value The private locate industry has spent decades being defined by the service it provides rather than the value it delivers. Ask most contractors why they hire a private locate company and the answer is usually the same: to identify and mark privately-owned utility lines before […] The post Your Private Locator is…
The electrical test station is not on the map (Figure 32). It may have been installed after the map was created. The steel pipe was installed in 1985 and is 6’ south of the south edge of the sidewalk. After it transitions to plastic, that main is 26’ south of the centerline of the east-west […] The post Utility Map Reading: Gas – Part 4 appeared first on Planet Underground .
A welded steel gas main traveling north was installed in 1989. This main is located 3’ west of the east property line. It transitions to a 2” plastic main 40’ west of the centerline of this north-south street. Once the pipe transitions to plastic, it becomes 22’ west of the centerline of the north-south street […] The post Utility Map Reading: Gas – Part 3 appeared first on Planet Underground .
The 4” main runs through a larger protective steel pipe known as a casing. The casing was placed in the concrete tunnel before the steel gas main was pushed through it (Figure 9). This measurement is taken from the west side of the sidewalk on the east side of North Grove Street. The gas main […] The post Utility Map Reading: Gas – Part 2 appeared first on Planet Underground .
The gas line shown on the map below is a high-pressure line that feeds the regulator station seen in Figure 4. The map indicates that the maximum operating pressure is 300 pounds per square inch (Figure 1). The high-pressure main turns south at a point located 271’ feet west of the centerline of the north-south […] The post Utility Map Reading: Gas – Part 1 appeared first on Planet Underground .
Late locates: What’s driving it? According to the 2024 Common Ground Alliance (CGA) DIRT Report , nearly four out of ten excavation projects in the United States cannot begin on time because of incomplete or delayed locate responses. The data is clear—locates are late. The question is why? What the industry has been unwilling to address, until now, is the reason. That is a conversation industry…
North American Color Code Until the late 1960s, telephone cable was insulated with red or white-colored compressed paper pulp (Figure 60). Underground cables were pressurized with air to repel moisture, and if the cable was severed by excavation, repairs often took days, as technicians had to electronically identify corresponding red and white cable pairs. Plastic insulated conductor (PIC) using…
Cell Tower Since cell phone traffic makes up about 60% of all internet data, redundancy is vital. To prevent outages, most cell towers in urban areas have redundant backhaul, meaning the tower is fed by two fiber lines generally coming from opposite directions (Figure 40). A cell tower’s directional sector antennas positioned at the top of the tower (Figure 41) are arranged in three groups with…
Hardened Remote Terminal Performing the functions of a central office, this structure was designed to withstand harsh conditions such as long power outages caused by natural disasters. Generators provided backup power for the hardened remote terminal (H-RT) in addition to large batteries (Figures 23-24). These buildings were essentially bunkers that could withstand blizzards, severe temperature…
The original function of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) still exists today, but the concept of cascading switching centers is no more. Today switches have been replaced by what is known as IP transport, or more simply, the internet. Over 99% of all cell calls are completed using IP transport, and landlines are not far behind. The address 60 Hudson Street (Figure 1) is the former…
