Visual inspection — sweep the ground to reveal buried services
Five services, AS 5488 colours, one rural corridor. The model above is the visual layer over this copy — search engines and keyboards never had to read a canvas. Colour lookup: utility colours. Quality levels: QL-D through QL-A. Enquiry sequence: BYDA.
Orange
Live cable. Assume it is energised.
Underground power on acreage runs from the road frontage to the dwelling, then out again to sheds, pumps and bores. Cover is often less than the standard requires, particularly where the ground has been regraded since it went in. Striking it is not a repair job. It is a fatality risk to the operator and to anyone standing nearby. We pothole to expose it by hand before a machine goes near the corridor.
Yellow
Gas main. Everything stops if you hit it.
A struck gas service means evacuation, emergency services, and the site shut down until the network operator clears it. Not hours — sometimes days. Polyethylene gas pipe gives an operator almost no warning: no scrape, no sound, no resistance you would notice in the seat. We locate it, mark it, and hand-dig every crossing.
Light blue
Water main. Cheap to find, expensive to hit.
A ruptured main floods the excavation, undermines the trench walls and stops the job while the repair and the make-good are sorted. On acreage it is often the property's only supply, so the house is out of water until it is back. Locating it costs about an hour.
Cream
Wastewater line. The one nobody mapped.
On acreage this is usually the transfer line from the house to an on-site treatment system and out to the irrigation field. It was rarely documented at install and almost never lodged anywhere you can look it up. Breaking it means contamination, a council notification, and a repair that cannot be deferred to next week. We probe for it rather than assume where it runs.
White
Comms. Fibre does not forgive.
Older copper is often direct-buried at shallow depth with no conduit and no marker tape above it. Newer fibre is less forgiving again — there is no splice-and-move-on, only replacement, and the carrier bills the damage back. Cutting it takes out the property's phone and internet, which on acreage is frequently the only connection there is.
Corridor
Rock in the trench line.
Floaters and bands stop a bucket cold. The job you priced as dirt becomes the job you stand over with a breaker. We flag it in the corridor before a machine is on site — two in the excavation path is enough to change the programme.
This diorama is an illustrative model. It is not a substitute for lodging a Before You Dig Australia enquiry before you dig.
