Potholing

Definition

Uncovering a marked line by hand or vacuum before a machine goes near it.

Why It Matters

The tolerance zone is the corridor and this is what the corridor demands. Florida's act requires hand digging, potholing, soft digging or vacuum methods to identify the facility inside the zone, and then allows mechanized equipment there under the excavator's supervision, which is a supervision rule and not a ban. The zone's width is a state number. Florida sets twenty-four inches from each side of the marked facility and Ohio eighteen, while Washington names no tolerance zone at all and arrives in the same place through a locate-accuracy definition. For a buyer this is the line between a bid that pencils and one that does not, because exposure is slow crew-heavy work priced by the hole. A seller who has been running machines through the zone was winning on a cost basis you cannot lawfully reproduce. Ask how many holes per thousand feet the estimates carry, and whether the vacuum truck is owned.