Planning to dig a gap? To plant a tree, set a fence put up, make a water backyard, construct a deck? Wait! There is likely to be one thing down there.

“Roots aren’t the one factor within the soil of your yard,” mentioned Sharon Yiesla, plant information specialist within the Plant Clinic at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle. “In metropolis and suburban areas, there are many underground utility traces you could simply injury with a shovel or a backhoe.”

Underground pipes and conduits deliver companies like pure fuel, electrical energy, water, web, cable TV and telephone traces into your own home and carry sewage away. It’s all too straightforward, if you dig a gap, to unintentionally hit one thing necessary.

Thankfully, utility firms and municipalities make it straightforward to keep away from fuel and electrical traces. You make a telephone name or enter a request on-line and a locator will come and mark the positions of these traces in your yard with spray paint or flags. The decision and the service are free.

Inside the Chicago metropolis limits, name 811 or 312-744-7000 or go to ipi.cityofchicago.org/digger to enter your request on-line. Elsewhere in Illinois, name 811 or 800-892-0123 or go to juliebeforeyoudig.com to enter an internet request with JULIE (Joint Utility Finding Data for Excavators), a not-for-profit based by Illinois utility firms to keep away from line injury.

It’s worthwhile to place the request not more than 14 days earlier than you begin your venture, however you additionally should permit a minimal of two enterprise days for the locator to do the work, based on David Van Wy, injury prevention supervisor for JULIE.

It’s a good suggestion to have utilities situated early in your planning course of. It would provide help to select the perfect website for a brand new tree or construction. After you’ve settled on a protected location, you possibly can choose an acceptable tree species for that website. Nonetheless, you will want to name for utility line location once more every week or two earlier than you truly begin work, as a result of the official location is barely legitimate for 14 days.

The locator will solely mark fuel and electrical traces that had been put in by the utilities or the municipality. Any traces added by the home-owner, akin to a fuel line connecting to an outside grill or an underground electrical conduit to a shed or storage, gained’t be marked. “The utilities don’t even learn about them,” Yiesla mentioned. It’s as much as you to maintain a transparent report of any non-public fuel or electrical traces that you just or a earlier proprietor has put in so you possibly can keep away from damaging them.

Van Wy urged having utility traces situated as quickly as you progress into a brand new residence, earlier than you begin any gardening. Preserve a report of these areas and be very cautious everytime you dig inside 18 inches of them, he mentioned. Utility traces could also be within the high foot of soil, so even routine gardening dangers disturbing them.

The implications of digging with out finding utilities will be extreme. Chopping electrical traces could cause energy outages. Even worse, breaking a fuel line crammed with pure fuel at excessive strain can set off an explosion and hearth. In Might 2021, a hearth began when a home-owner in McHenry County struck a fuel line whereas digging within the yard. In 2019, a fuel explosion and hearth attributable to digging destroyed 5 buildings in San Francisco, lower than a decade after an analogous error in close by San Bruno leveled 37 homes and killed eight folks.

Many residence tasks, not simply tree planting, contain digging far sufficient all the way down to strike fuel or electrical traces. Should you’re constructing a deck, the footings for the help posts have to be set a minimum of 36 inches deep. Panorama tasks akin to patios, paths and water gardens want excavations to create space for the underlying gravel layers. Regrading to alter the slope of quite a bit can also endanger utility traces.

“Studying what’s underground is a part of assessing the circumstances in your house panorama,” Yiesla mentioned. “For instance, if you wish to plant a tree in a specific website, it’s essential know concerning the solar and soil circumstances. It’s worthwhile to look overhead to see if the tree would run into energy traces because it grows. And it’s essential be certain there isn’t something necessary under the soil that could possibly be broken if you dig the opening.”

For tree and plant recommendation, contact the Plant Clinic at The Morton Arboretum (630-719-2424, mortonarb.org/plant-clinic, or [email protected]). Beth Botts is a workers author on the Arboretum.