# A shovel accidentally hit an outside buried coax cable



## DIYRemodeler (Feb 17, 2014)

I did the SAME thing a few years ago while working on my foundation planting. I pulled up the damaged cord and had the cable company come out and connect a new cord from the box to the house. And then I buried the new line about 6" below the surface and re-seeded. Usually landscaping companies have the utility, telephone and cable lines marked off before they start a project.


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## oh'mike (Sep 18, 2009)

I moved this to 'electrical' for you----

Just a tip to you and others that might be trenching in electrical---

roll out yellow 'caution' tape above the cable in the trench----that gives you a warning before the cable is hit---


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## MTN REMODEL LLC (Sep 11, 2010)

You can probably BS Comcast to repair that.... although they will try to charge a service, as theoretically they are obligated to bury that... but since it clearly is not within your home.... 

Just tell them you have some crappy reception when it rains..., the guys on the truck will repair it...

A utility check, out here, does not include cable anyway.


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## stadry (Jun 20, 2009)

we're digging all the time w/exterior bsmt waterproofing issues,,, back in the day, buried cables had caution tape above the cable,,, 6" sand cover, too,,, nowadays, you get 1-800-youdig service or whatever,,, overall, i'd guess the latter must be cheaper than the former

our comcast guys just threaded it thru the hedge then laid it on the ground,,, 1 month later, someone else buried the last 15' 3" deep :huh: we shovel cut a phone trunk line that was unmarked & got a $ 1,587 bill from at&t,,, good thing we photo all job sites previous to digging :thumbup:

the law sez ( ga & sc ), before you dig, call 811 :yes: it doesn't say ' if you're only digging 2", don't worry ! ' :no:


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

That will cost you. How deep is your wallet at this point? Last time I hit a buried phone line at an old mobile home I owned. It ended up costing me around $2800 for the repair bill.


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## sgip2000 (Sep 24, 2012)

gregzoll said:


> That will cost you. How deep is your wallet at this point? Last time I hit a buried phone line at an old mobile home I owned. It ended up costing me around $2800 for the repair bill.


I would have just gone without phone service.


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

sgip2000 said:


> I would have just gone without phone service.


Not when it is a 25 pair line. That feeder supplied phone service to twelve other trailers.


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## jbfan (Jul 1, 2004)

gregzoll said:


> That will cost you. How deep is your wallet at this point? Last time I hit a buried phone line at an old mobile home I owned. It ended up costing me around $2800 for the repair bill.


Was it a trunk line?


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

jbfan said:


> Was it a trunk line?


See post #8.


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## sgip2000 (Sep 24, 2012)

gregzoll said:


> Not when it is a 25 pair line. That feeder supplied phone service to twelve other trailers.


Ah. Did they splice all those wires or just pull a new cable?


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

sgip2000 said:


> Ah. Did they splice all those wires or just pull a new cable?


At that time you had crews that knew how to properly splice buried wires. Now days they just pull a whole new line.


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## deverson (Sep 17, 2012)

3M Scotckcast kit. 82A1. Epoxy and 15 minutes, done!


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

deverson said:


> 3M Scotckcast kit. 82A1. Epoxy and 15 minutes, done!


If only it was a 5kv line the OP hit. Comcast is going to just pull new coax, and the OP will find the old line in their recycling bin. It is safer that way. No way that water can get inside.

Of course now would be a good time for the OP to run a conduit and call both Telephone & CATV to pull the lines through the Conduit. Then again if they had called, then they would not have hit one of them.


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## miamicuse (Nov 13, 2011)

I guess things are different in different locales.

First, it is a coax cable for cable TV. Not a phone line or a trunk line to a community.

Second, it is in my backyard. So calling the utility location services won't have helped. The utility location service down here, Sunshine 411, will only mark the location to the outside of the property boundary, not inside. You want to dig up a concrete sidewalk, you call them. You want to put in a planter or landscape border inside your property line, they are not going to be able to mark anything for you. Been there, done that.


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## mm11 (Apr 30, 2013)

gregzoll said:


> *If only it was a 5kv line the OP hit.* Comcast is going to just pull new coax, and the OP will find the old line in their recycling bin. It is safer that way. No way that water can get inside.
> 
> Of course now would be a good time for the OP to run a conduit and call both Telephone & CATV to pull the lines through the Conduit. Then again if they had called, then they would not have hit one of them.


Say what??? If the OP would have hit and severed a medium voltage cable, there is a good chance they would have been severely injured or killed. Also, what is unsafe about a coax line being compromised by water?


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## miamicuse (Nov 13, 2011)

To clarify, I do have underground electric lines, they are in big metal conduits and they are buried deep.


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## miamicuse (Nov 13, 2011)

well, I did a bit more digging around and it got more confusing.

I know the phone cable is black, and the cable TV is orange. This from the color of the cable coming up from the ground to the respective boxes mounted on the exterior wall.

But the area I was digging is really challenging because there was a large palm behind the fence and it created a tight mesh of root system each the size of a finger. The palm has already been removed by my neighbor but the roots spreaded everywhere.

After some more digging I don't know what I got.










I put circles where each cable comes up and back down.










I found an orange cable which is the coax to my cable TV, the one I severed 90% of.

Then I found running parallel to it the phone cable, undamaged, both running at the bottom of the chain linked fence from the left to the right.

Then I found more black cables. One comes up from the edge of the PVC fence, and runs two feet and went back down.

Another comes up from a few feet away also went down at the edge of the concrete patio.

I don't know if these are part of the "run" of the long black cable running alongside the orange cable, or if they are abandoned old cables. One of them also had been damaged, but not by me.

It is almost impossible to dig them up. As you can see in order to expose these cables I had to take apart a lot of roots, see the pile of roots to the left side of the picture? That's about half of the roots I took up.

There is no way to do a continuity of these cable without cutting them, is there?


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## Robpo (Mar 30, 2014)

All being black, could it be irrigation?


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

mm11 said:


> Say what??? If the OP would have hit and severed a medium voltage cable, there is a good chance they would have been severely injured or killed. Also, what is unsafe about a coax line being compromised by water?


Well it is obvious that you never read what I posted, and who it was in reply to. To give you a clue. It was not the topic starter.

Read before you post next time.

As for coax being compromised and having water inside. A lot of reasons. Egress is one. Loss of signal is the other. If you are paying for a service. The first thing you do not want is to pay for something that you will never be able to use.


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## mm11 (Apr 30, 2013)

gregzoll said:


> Well it is obvious that you never read what I posted, and who it was in reply to. To give you a clue. It was not the topic starter.
> 
> Read before you post next time.
> 
> As for coax being compromised and having water inside. A lot of reasons. Egress is one. Loss of signal is the other. If you are paying for a service. The first thing you do not want is to pay for something that you will never be able to use.


I read what you wrote, and observed that it is very dangerous to hit a medium voltage cable.

I also asked why it was* unsafe* to get water inside of a coax, which you did not answer. 

There is nothing unsafe about wet coax. 

Bad signal, yes.

Capable of producing any type of shock or electrocution, no.


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## miamicuse (Nov 13, 2011)

Robpo said:


> All being black, could it be irrigation?


No not irrigation for sure.


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

mm11 said:


> I read what you wrote, and observed that it is very dangerous to hit a medium voltage cable.
> 
> I also asked why it was* unsafe* to get water inside of a coax, which you did not answer.
> 
> ...


No one stated about the OP hitting a high voltage cable, nor did the OP. I was replying to the fact that the person in question that posted about that Skotchlok kit posted incorrect info.

Besides. What does it have to do with the OP issue. Arguing about this. Get back on track and just let it go.


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## deverson (Sep 17, 2012)

Scotchcast kits are great for repairing damaged conductors. Rather than cutting splicing and heat shrinking the repair. I wouldn't use them on a 5kv line but for a UG cable or telephone wire repair, assuming the line in the house still works! I've used them for railroad signal circuits, UG site lighting and damaged coan cables. They do work well.


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## fa_f3_20 (Dec 30, 2011)

It is very common for cable guys around here, when they wire a new house, to just throw the service entrance on the ground and depend on the sod guys to cover it up. This of course leaves the cable only an inch or two down. As far as I'm concerned, if it gets damaged, it's their fault for not properly protecting it, and if they try to charge you to fix it, complain to your public service commission. Comcast is the worst -- it's common for them to try to charge the customer for things that are their fault. You have to make a stink about it.

Comcast employs idiots. When we built our house, we had conduits put in from the demarc point to the pole. Bellsouth had no problem with that -- they sent guys out with the right equipment and the job was done in a few minutes. The Comcast guys were totally flummoxed. They had to hire a subcontractor and they wanted to charge me $200 for it. I got them down to $50 but they wouldn't move off of that.


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