If you are digging fence post holes in Pennsylvania with powered equipment, contacting 811 is not a courtesy. It is a legal obligation under PA Act 287, and it applies to homeowners as well as contractors.
What PA One Call actually does
811 is a free notification service. You tell them where you intend to dig; they notify the utility companies with buried lines in that area; those companies send someone to mark their lines on the ground. Nobody digs for you and nobody charges you.
The Pennsylvania One Call System is the state’s designated service. You can call 811 or submit a request online through their homeowner portal.
Who is legally responsible
Pennsylvania One Call is explicit that homeowners are covered: if you plan to disturb the earth with powered equipment, Act 287 obligates you to notify. They are equally explicit about scope — it does not matter how deep you are digging or where in the Commonwealth you are digging.
Two practical notes. First, “powered equipment” is the trigger, and a post-hole auger is powered equipment. Second, if you hire a fence contractor, the contractor makes the call as part of the job. We do. But if you are setting posts yourself, the obligation is yours.
Timing, and why it decides your install date
A business day means any day except Saturday, Sunday or a legal holiday. That is the detail that catches people out: place a request on Thursday and the clock does not run over the weekend.
PA One Call’s own advice to homeowners planning weekend work is to submit on a Monday or Tuesday so the lines can be marked in time. Build that into your planning. It is the same reason our crews schedule the dig date around the ticket rather than the other way round — and it is one of the things that shapes how long a fence installation takes.
What the paint and flags mean
Locators use a national colour code. The ones that matter most around a fence line:
- Red — electric power lines and conduit
- Yellow — gas, oil, steam, petroleum
- Orange — communications, cable, fibre
- Blue — potable water
- Green — sewer and drain lines
- White — the proposed excavation area, which you or your contractor mark before the locators arrive
Marks are a guide to horizontal position, not depth. Treat the marked corridor as an area to be careful in, not a line to dig right beside.
The lines nobody marks
This is the gap that causes most fence-post damage, and most articles skip it. The 811 service covers utility-owned lines up to the meter. It does not cover customer-owned lines — and a residential property is full of them:
- The feed from the house to a detached garage or shed
- Landscape lighting and irrigation
- Invisible dog fence loops
- Gas runs to a pool heater, grill or fire pit
- Septic laterals and the drain field
- Downspout drains and French drains
None of that gets marked. If you know something is buried out there, say so before anyone digs. If you are not sure, that is worth mentioning too — it changes how we approach a post location.
What we do on site
We place the ticket, wait out the notice period, and walk the marked line before the auger comes off the trailer. Where a marked utility crosses a planned post location, the usual answer is to shift the post rather than hand-dig blind — a few inches of adjustment along the run is invisible in the finished fence and removes the risk entirely.
On properties with a lot of unmarked private services, we will sometimes hand-dig the first foot at specific posts. It is slower. It is considerably cheaper than a repair.
What it costs to skip
Striking a utility is not just a repair bill. Damage to a gas or electric line is a safety event, and the liability for digging without a ticket sits with whoever dug. The call is free and takes a few minutes.
Requirements and notice periods can change — confirm current details directly with Pennsylvania One Call at 811 or pa1call.org before you dig.
Schedule Your Free Fence Estimate
We handle utility notification on every job we install. Book a visit at calendly.com/gatto-david/estimates or call 717-650-2132. You can also read about permit and zoning rules across York County or see the fence services we offer.