That $450 buried cable locator rental was worth every penny

Last month I took on a retrofit at an old school building downtown, and the blueprints were a joke. I was about to trench a new run for a zone expander when I remembered the ground was full of old sprinkler lines and conduit from three different renovations. I rented a cable locator from the local supply house for $450, and it flagged a live 120V line I would have sliced clean through. That tool paid for itself in one afternoon, has anyone else been burned by trusting as-built drawings on older sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

hall.joel1mo ago

Man, I once trusted a set of 'as-built' drawings from 1987 and ended up knifing through an abandoned gas line that wasn't even on the map. Spent the next three hours explaining to the inspector why the dirt smelled like a barbecue.

the_lee1mo ago

Did you ever find out who signed off on those drawings, or did they just vanish into the great construction void? Because I swear half the time those as-builts are just the contractor's fever dream after a bad lunch. It's like people think burying a pipe makes an official record of it somewhere, but the ground just eats the truth. You're lucky it was just a gas line and not something that went boom, honestly. I've seen dudes hit water mains that weren't on anything and the whole block turned into a mud pit. Never trust paper older than you are, that's my rule.