Click before you dig

CCT 01Who to contact: Utility Safety Partners, not 811

Utility Safety Partners is Alberta’s notification centre for buried utilities. It used to be called Alberta One-Call, and some older City of Calgary documents still link to the old albertaonecall.com address. Requests now go through utilitysafety.ca or the phone line.

In the United States, 811 is the dig line. In Alberta, 811 is Health Link, the provincial health advice line. The locate number is 1-800-242-3447.¹

Utility Safety Partners says marking all buried utilities before ground disturbance is mandatory under the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Code, the Alberta Electrical Utility Code and other rules.² The OHS Code binds employers and workers, so a contractor digging on your property is covered squarely. For a homeowner with a shovel, it is required by Alberta rules as Utility Safety Partners describes them and, in any case, strongly advised. The homeowner examples it gives are ordinary: landscaping, a new fence or deck, or planting a garden.³

The locate itself does not usually cost you anything. As a rule, operators of buried utilities do not charge to identify and mark their lines, although charges can apply for work outside normal hours or for repeated unnecessary requests.²

CCT 02How much notice to give

Utility Safety Partners asks anyone planning ground disturbance to submit a request at least 3 to 5 full working days in advance.⁴ Its homeowner page asks for at least three full working days before the project starts.³ Count working days, not calendar days: weekends and statutory holidays add to the wait, so a request placed on a Thursday reaches three full working days only in the following week.

You can submit online at any hour at utilitysafety.ca, or call 1-800-242-3447 weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mountain Time.⁴ Have the civic address, a description of the work, where on the lot you will dig, and the planned start date ready.

For electrical work, build the locate into the schedule before anything else is booked. A contractor quoting a garage feed or a hot tub trench will usually ask whether locates are in; the permit, the trenching and the inspection all queue behind them. The permit side is covered in electrical permits in Calgary.

CCT 03What happens after you submit

Each utility owner with lines near your dig area responds in one of three ways: it confirms in writing that it has no buried lines there, it marks its lines and gives you documentation, or it arranges an on-site meeting, for example where a fenced yard or a dog keeps a locator out.³

Marks are paint, stakes or flags, colour-coded by what is underneath:⁵

Two limits matter. Marks show the approximate horizontal line, not the depth, and locators will not give a depth. And locates expire: the documentation says when, and if your work runs past that date you request a relocate.² Keep the paperwork on site with whoever is digging.

CCT 04The lines nobody will locate for you

This is the part that catches electrical projects. Customer-owned lines, including water and sewer services, sprinkler systems and any lines connecting buildings on a property, are not registered with Utility Safety Partners.³ A locate request will not find them. You need a private locator, hired and paid for separately.

On a Calgary lot, customer-owned lines often include:

• an existing power feed from the house to a detached garage or shed;
• a hot tub feed, yard lighting, a gate operator or a buried cable to a fence-mounted receptacle;
• a gas line to a garage heater, barbecue or fire table;
• irrigation piping and controller wiring.

Previous owners rarely leave drawings. If there is a detached garage with power, assume a buried feed exists until a private locator says otherwise. For what a new garage or hot tub feed involves, see hot tubs, garages and subpanels.

CCT 05Digging near the marks

Within 1 m on either side of the marks, or 5 m of a high-pressure pipeline, expose the line carefully with hand tools.³ Because marks give no depth, a line can sit shallower than you expect, particularly where grades have changed since it was installed. Many contractors use hydrovac excavation to expose lines near a trench route; it removes soil without a blade.

If you hit or damage a line, stop work immediately and contact the utility operator so it can assess the damage and tell you when it is safe to continue.² A nicked cable jacket or scraped gas line that looks harmless can fail later. If you smell gas, or a cable is exposed and damaged, get everyone away from the area and call emergency services before anything else. The electrical emergencies guide covers what to do first.

CCT 06Planning an electrical trench

Locates are the first line of an underground electrical job, not the last. An electrician planning a trench for a garage subpanel, a hot tub or an outdoor EV charger works through the route, the cable or conduit type, the burial depth and mechanical protection the code requires for that wiring method, warning tape above the cable, and where it enters each building. The conductor size depends on the load and the length of the run; the voltage drop calculator shows why a long garage feed often needs a larger conductor than the breaker alone suggests.

Permits come with the trench. A hot tub in Calgary needs both a building permit and an electrical permit,⁶ and an EV charger needs an electrical permit.⁶ See EV charger installation for the charger side, and EV charger installation cost for why trench length, surface restoration and the route across a finished yard move the price more than the charger does.

Settle who holds the locate ticket before anyone digs. Whoever does the ground disturbance should have current locate documentation on site, including the private locator’s results. If a landscaper digs the trench and an electrician lays the cable, confirm in writing whose ticket covers the work and that its dates match the schedule. A standby generator on a new pad with a gas line and a buried feed needs the same care; see generators and backup power. Terms such as feeder, subpanel and service drop are defined in the glossary.

Look up as well as down. Before work or equipment operates within 7 m of an overhead power line, Alberta’s OHS Code requires the employer to find out the line’s voltage and set a safe approach distance.⁷ For lines from 750 V to 40 kV, that distance is 3.0 m.⁸ A mini-excavator swinging near the service drop to the house is a real hazard on tight inner-city lots.

CCT 07Calgary follow-ups and nearby towns

To follow up on an existing locate request in the City of Calgary, call 403-245-7252.⁹ Keep your ticket number handy. If one utility has not responded by your start date, that line is where to ask.

Utility Safety Partners covers the whole province, so the same request process applies in Airdrie, Cochrane, Chestermere, Okotoks and Rocky View County. What changes outside the city is the permit authority for the electrical work itself, and the utility that owns the wires. Check with the local municipality before you trench.

If you would rather hand the whole job to one contractor, locates, private locate, trench, feeder, permit and inspection, request a quote and a person reads it and replies.