Calling 811 before ground-disturbing work is free and is a legal requirement in both Indiana and Kentucky. It brings utility operators out to mark their buried lines on your property.
It is skipped on clearing jobs more than on any other kind of ground work, because owners associate it with trenching rather than with clearing. Stump removal, root raking and grading all engage the soil, and all of them can find a line.
It also has a gap that catches people out, and understanding that gap is the difference between a locate that protects you and one that gives false confidence.
The sequence
What happens, and in what order
Call or request online well before the work
There is a required notice period — typically a small number of working days — before you may begin. Requesting the morning the machine arrives does not satisfy it.
Describe the whole work area, not a point
The request covers a described area. If you describe the building site and then clear the access route as well, the route was never located.
Wait for the marks and confirm they are there
Operators respond within the period. Confirm marks are physically on the ground before starting, and understand that a no-response for a utility means something specific in each state — check rather than assume.
Handle private lines separately
This is the gap. 811 covers utility-owned lines up to the meter. Anything beyond it that you or a previous owner installed is not covered and will not be marked.
Keep the marks alive
Paint and flags fade and get destroyed by the work itself. If clearing happened weeks before excavation, the marks may be gone and the request may have expired. Re-request rather than guessing.
What 811 does not cover
Privately owned lines are the significant gap on rural property, and rural property has a lot of them: the run from the meter to a barn, a well pump line, yard lighting, an irrigation system, propane from a tank to a house, a septic line to a field, and buried electric to an outbuilding.
None of these are marked by an 811 request. On an older property nobody may know where they are. If you have any records — or any memory of what was installed and roughly where — that is worth assembling before work starts, and a private locating service can be hired where it matters.
Reading the marks
Colour coding is standardised across the industry: red for electric, yellow for gas and petroleum, orange for communications, blue for potable water, green for sewer and drain, purple for reclaimed water, and white for the proposed excavation area.
Marks indicate approximate horizontal position, not depth, and tolerance zones apply either side. They tell you where to be careful, not where it is safe to dig without thought.
Questions
Common questions on this
Do I need locates just for clearing?
If anything engages the ground, yes — and on most clearing jobs something does. Stump removal, root raking and grading all disturb soil. It is free, it takes a call and a short notice period, and it is the cheapest protection available on the whole project.
Who calls, me or the contractor?
Either can, and what matters is that somebody did and that it covers the whole work area. Agree it explicitly rather than assuming, because 'I thought you had' is a conversation people have after a line is hit rather than before.
What about the line from my meter to the barn?
Not covered. 811 marks utility-owned lines, and anything you or a previous owner installed beyond the meter is yours — the run to a barn, well pump wiring, propane, irrigation, septic lines. On rural property these are numerous and often undocumented. Assemble what you know, and consider a private locating service where it matters.
Keep planning
Related planning guides
- Planning utility runs on rural propertyOn rural ground the utility run is priced by distance, and the route you clear is the route you are stuck with.
- What happens before clearing startsEverything expensive about clearing is decided before the machine arrives, not while it is running.
- Getting a site ready for an excavatorExcavation is expensive by the hour, so anything the machine has to work around is money.
- Excavators: the machine that digs and liftsThe only common clearing machine that can pull material out of the ground rather than push it across the surface.
- Stump grinders: removing stumps without the holeGrinding removes the stump; excavating removes the root system — and which you need depends entirely on what goes on top.
Everything else is in the planning workspace.
Get it quoted
Services this relates to
Evansville Mulching is a free matching service, not a contractor. Nothing on this page is a determination about your property — a contractor standing on the ground is the only person who can make one.
Covering 10 towns across the Evansville tri-state area, and all 14 services.