Call before you dig: NJ 811 markout and surveys before a fence install

A fence is twenty or thirty holes in the ground, each of them three feet deep or better. Legally that’s an excavation, and in New Jersey you don’t start one without having the underground utilities marked.

This is the least visible part of a fence job and the one with the worst downside. Hitting a gas service or a fiber trunk with a post-hole digger is a very expensive afternoon. Here’s how the process actually works, what it covers, and — more important — what it doesn’t.

New Jersey One Call: what the law requires

New Jersey runs a statewide notification system. You call 811 or file with New Jersey One Call, describe where you’re digging, and the operators of the underground facilities in that area send locators to mark them.

The timing rules under the state’s one-call regulations:

• Wait three business days after the notice before you dig.
• Don’t call more than ten business days ahead of the work.
• The markout stays valid for 45 business days from the notification, provided the marks are maintained. Work continuing past that needs a fresh notification.

Business days, not calendar days — a holiday week pushes your start. This is one of several reasons a fence quote in spring doesn’t turn into a fence next week.

It’s free. There’s no charge to the homeowner for a markout.

Who makes the call?

On a contracted job, the contractor does. It’s our notification, our responsibility, and it’s part of every install we schedule — you don’t have to think about it.

If you’re setting posts yourself, it’s your call to make, and the obligation is yours. The same applies to a neighbor digging on their side of the line: their excavation, their notification.

Reading the paint

The locators mark in paint and flags to a national color standard — the APWA uniform color code. Learn these and you can read your own yard:

That last one runs the other direction. White is what the excavator puts down before the locators arrive, outlining the dig area so they know where to look. On a fence job, that’s the fence line — which is a good reason to have the run agreed and staked before the markout is requested rather than after.

Two colors are worth memorizing if you memorize none of the others: yellow is gas, red is electric. Those are the two that hurt.

What 811 does not mark

This is the part that catches homeowners, and it causes more damage on residential fence jobs than the utility mains do.

The one-call system marks the utility-owned facilities up to the point of service. It does not mark the lines you or a previous owner put in on your side:

• Lawn irrigation and sprinkler zones
• Pool electrical, pool plumbing and heater gas lines
• Invisible-fence wire for the dog
• Landscape lighting runs
• Gas or electric to a shed, garage, generator or fire pit
• Septic laterals and field lines
• Downspout drains and French drains
• The final service run across your yard, in some cases

Nobody is coming to mark those. If you know they exist, tell your contractor where before the first hole goes in, and if you have as-builts from a pool or irrigation install, dig them out of the file. Where the layout is genuinely unknown and the risk is high, private utility locating is worth paying for.

Invisible fence wire deserves a specific mention, because it’s shallow, it’s everywhere in northern New Jersey, and it looks like nothing in the soil. Tell us it’s there and we’ll work around it.

The tolerance zone

Once the marks are down, the marks are not a suggestion of where the line might be. They’re a zone.

New Jersey’s rules prohibit operating mechanized equipment within two feet horizontally of the outside wall of any marked facility unless the facility has first been located by hand digging. Hand digging means exactly what it sounds like — shovels, picks, probe bars, manual post-hole diggers.

For a fence, that has a practical consequence worth knowing before you’re surprised by it on install day: where the fence line crosses a marked utility, that post gets dug by hand, and sometimes it gets moved. A post can usually shift a foot along the run without anyone noticing in the finished fence. It’s a normal adjustment, not a problem — but it’s why we walk the marks before the auger comes off the trailer.

Do you need a property survey?

Different question, same stage of the job.

Most New Jersey towns want a copy of your survey with the proposed fence drawn on it as part of the zoning application. If you own the house, you probably have one — it’s usually in the closing package. If you can’t find it, a title company or the surveyor who did the original may have a copy on file.

You should want one even where the town doesn’t insist, in three situations:

• The existing fence was placed by somebody else and nobody has checked where the line actually is.
• Your neighbor disagrees about the boundary, even mildly.
• You’re moving the fence rather than replacing it in place.

An old fence is not evidence of a boundary. Our guide to how close to the property line you can build covers what happens when the survey and the existing fence disagree — and why that’s worth resolving before you build rather than after.

Reading your survey

Three things to find on it:

Setback lines. Where the ordinance requires structures to stay back from the line, especially in the front yard and on corner lots.

Easements. A utility or drainage easement crossing your property lets the utility come through. You can generally still fence, but anything of yours in the way is at risk when they do. Sometimes the right answer is a removable panel section over the easement rather than a continuous run.

The right-of-way. The strip along the street is frequently wider than people assume — the town’s right-of-way often extends past the curb and sidewalk onto what looks like your lawn. A front fence built on it is a fence built on public land.

What happens if a line gets hit

Damage to a marked facility during a properly notified excavation is one situation. Damage during an excavation with no notification at all is a much worse one — the excavator carries the liability for the repair, and gas or electric strikes escalate immediately from a cost problem to a safety one.

The homeowner exposure is real when the homeowner is the excavator. It’s one of the strongest arguments for having a licensed, insured contractor do the digging.

We handle the markout, the permit and the layout

Every job we schedule includes the utility notification, the zoning application and a walk of the marks before the first hole is dug. Licensed, insured, family-owned, our own crew — never subcontracted.

See how our installation process works, get a free written estimate, or call (973) 259-5354, Monday to Saturday, 8am to 8pm.