dig-safe-geelong

What is Hydro Excavation?

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 11:54:02 GMT

What is Hydro Excavation?

01/08/2019

How Does Hydro Excavation Works?

How the hydro excavation operates is through combining both highly pressurised water and an air vacuum. By combining these two systems, it enables the pressurised water to slice through organic and inorganic materials and fracture these materials. By implementing an air vacuum, this lifts the broken-down debris and other materials from the excavation site into a debris tanker. This minimises clean-up and enables the excess debris to be used at a later date for compression.

Now, there are two main hydro excavation vacuum sources, these include a positive displacement blower or a fan system. A positive displacement blower enables the user to excavate at a greater depth than the fan system, but has slower air flow. It can also flow the air at a substantial distance compared to the fan system. In comparison to the fan system, this option can disperse air in an immense amount which ultimately allows for rapid excavation. The fan system also is much easier to control and considerably lighter than a positive displacement blower.

Hydro excavation in its simplest form is the removal or movement of soil utilising pressurised water. Once the soil has been disturbed, the excess debris is transferred to a debris tanker using an air conveyance. By employing this method of excavation, it allows for a safer and more accurate excavation to locate utilities for replacement or maintenance.

Hydro Excavation Benefits

There are many benefits that can be attributed to hydro excavation, the primary benefit being improved safety. Hydro excavation provides improved safety and damage control when compared to mechanical excavation. Because of its much-improved accuracy, this decreases the injury rate and therefore improves the quality of the excavation.

Another benefit is that hydro excavation eliminates the worry of damaging important underground pipes and services such as gas, water, sewer and telecommunication lines. This in-turn reduces the high costs for damaging underground services . By minimising the damages also allows for more time to complete the excavation rather than focus on repairs.

Where Can Hydro Excavation Be Used?

Hydro excavation can be applied to various working environments including underground and subsurface utilities as construction for these are constantly being changed. Hydro excavation can also be utilised for the installation of poles, sign and line services as well as potholing or daylighting. As the equipment can be located a distance away from the work site, this reduces obstruction of traffic in the excavation area and increases workflow. Another application for hydro excavation is landscaping as this enables accurate excavation without disrupting the underground soil and services around the area being excavated. This in-turn keeps the surrounding soil strong and compacted. By using hydro excavation for pipe and sewer rehabilitation, this significantly diminishes the chance of puncturing a hole in the pipe works and adding more costs for repairs and replacement.

Contact Dig Sale Geelong

For professional hydro excavation services, talk to the team at Dig Safe Geelong. We have years of experience providing hydro excavation services to projects in Victoria including Geelong, Melbourne, Ballarat, Dandenong and Bendigo. Contact us today by giving us a call or filling out our online form.

Dial Before You Dig Certified Locator

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 11:53:59 GMT

Dial Before You Dig Certified Locator

31/07/2019

Dial Before You Dig (DBYD) is a Not For Profit organisation that aims to provide an all-in-one single point of contact for information on underground utility, cable and pipe locating to prevent any accidental damage to Australia’s underground infrastructure. DBYD strives to educate construction crews throughout Australia by providing a free enquiry service that provides a complete and detailed report on any underground utilities located in the area.

Without a Dial Before You Dig enquiry, construction and maintenance crews run the risk of striking cables or pipes underground, potentially causing major disruption to the local public’s basic services and damage to the local infrastructure. Certified locators for Dial Before You Dig such as Dig Safe Geelong are proven experts in all aspects of utility and underground locating and define the standard for locating in Australia.

What does it mean to be a Dial Before You Dig Certified Locator?

How did Dial Before You Dig start?

Dial Before You Dig draws its roots from a gas explosion incident in Bibra Lake, WA in 1984. This explosion was caused when a bulldozer struck a high-pressure gas line. Though the driver escaped without injury, the explosion caused major damage to the bulldozer, gas pipeline, nearby infrastructure and high-tension electric towers. This incident sparked a consolidation effort by several major telecommunication and utility companies, including Telstra, SECWA/ATCO Gas Australia and Western Power and Water Corporation to create the Perth One Call System in 1987. From there, the rest of Australia’s States and Territories quickly followed suit, and by the 1990’s the nation-wide Dial Before You Dig service was formed.

How does the Dial Before You Dig service function?

The Dial Before You Dig service begins when excavator crews lodge a free enquiry to either the online website or via phone on 1100. The excavator crew’s project information is then sent to Dial Before You Dig members such as Telstra, Optus, Energex or any other relevant members, who then respond with utility plans of the area and details of their own guidelines on what you may or may not be allowed to do within the area. If there are no plans of the area, or the plans have expired by the lodging date, a Dial Before You Dig Certified Locator such as Dig Safe Geelong can go to the site and perform utility locating work to create a new underground utility plan of the area.

There are several methods that DBYD Certified Locators use in order to locate underground utilities. These methods involve using ground-penetrating radar, non-destructive digging techniques, surveying, electronic locating and more. At Dig Safe Geelong, we supply and maintain all the equipment and highly trained operators needed to perform Dial Before You Dig certified utility locating services for your excavation project. No matter how large or small your project is, if you are excavating, you need to know what might be lying just underneath the surface and for that, you need Dial Before You Dig’s services.

What happens if I don’t use a DBYD Certified Locator?

Dial Before You Dig Certified Locators have the highest standard of achievement in cable, pipe and utility locating in Australia, having undergone rigorous assessment and training to reach that point. By choosing not to use a DBYD Certified Locator, you run the risk of striking an underground utility, potentially causing major damage to nearby structures or cause injury or death. You will be made liable for not choosing a DBYD Certified Locator and may be forced to pay major fines to compensate for the cost of repair/reinstallation or compensation for any individual affected by the incident.

Therefore, it’s in your best interest to choose Dial Before You Dig Certified Locators for any utility location work that you need to be completed. You’ll gain the benefit of highly experienced and accredited utility locators like Dig Safe Geelong that keep up to date on all the latest non-destructive digging and utility locating techniques and technology.

Jobs we offer as a Dial Before You Dig Certified Locator.

Certified Dial Before You Dig locators rely on a wide variety of different locating methods in order to accurately identify the location of underground utilities, and Dig Safe Geelong is no exception. Due to our diverse plant hire and locating experience, Dig Safe Geelong can provide the following services.

3 ways to determine the location of underground utility services.

Hydro-Vacuum Excavations – Vacuum excavators are defined by their ability to provide non-destructive digging services. Regular excavators, dozers, bobcats and other plant hire machines use destructive excavation techniques while working and using them near cables, pipes and other utilities pose the risk of accidental damage. When there is a risk of unknown utilities hidden beneath the surface, uncovering them with hydro vacuum excavations may be your only method of locating underground utilities safely.

At Dig Safe Geelong, we can supply hydro vacuum excavation services with our vacuum trucks for hire. Vacuum sucker trucks use powerful vacuum technology to blast a site with highly pressurised water, turning the soil and earth into a slurry. This slurry is then sucked away from the excavation site and into the vacuum truck for quick and easy removal. With various vacuum truck sizes available from 300 L to 5000 L, Dig Safe Geelong can provide you with the perfect non-destructive digging solution for cable locating in Melbourne and Victoria.

Electronic Locating Services – Electronic locating uses electromagnetic locators to accurately locate any conductive utilities such as electrical cables, fibre optics, storm drains, wastewater pipes, natural gas pipes and more. Dig Safe Geelong’s electronic locators work by using EMFs (electromagnetic fields) to locate metal objects beneath the surface. Most of the time, these metal objects are utilities.

Dig Safe Geelong uses powerful electronic locators, the Radiodetection RD8100 Precision Underground Service Locator for all our electronic locating services that we undertake in Melbourne, Geelong and Victoria. All our electronic locating services are completed with accredited service locators from Dig Safe Geelong, providing a cost-effective and detailed electronic locating service.

Ground Penetrating Radar – Ground penetrating radar or GPR uses powerful radar technology to locate any utilities beneath the surface. They accomplish this by sending radar pulses into the ground, which then produce reflections from subsurface structures. GPR can not only detect structures, but also any cracks, empty spaces and changes in the material underground.

Dig Safe Geelong uses Opera Duo Ground Penetrating Radar machines to locate any underground utilities in Victoria and Geelong. A robust platform for utility locating, our choice of ground penetrating radar technology ensures that you receive fast results and accurate locating data.

Certified Location Organisation

Locating electronic cables often involved getting direct access to the cable. However, due to the sensitive nature of directly accessing information networks, there are privacy and security issues involved with doing so. Not only that but locating teams must be properly trained to interpret information, locate and identify components and work around these networks without damaging them. Utility networks are not public property, and so permission must be given to access these networks. Dig Safe Geelong has a major advantage over uncertified locators as only a registered DBYD Certified Locator that holds a valid Certified Location Organisation (CLO) agreement is authorised to gain access to utility networks for the purposes of locating underground utilities. While Telstra is currently the only service provider to have signed an agreement with DBYD, the CLO program intends for as many utility network providers as possible to sign the agreement.

For a company to be granted permission to access utility networks through the CLO agreement, a locating company must have demonstrated the following attributes:

Necessary skills to identify which network is located on-site
Properly calibrated and up-to-date utility location and detection equipment
Possession of all the required PPE and safety gear to detect unsafe conditions and the capacity to greatly reduce or eliminate any risks while working with them
Relevant insurance for the type of work the company will perform, to protect the client, the local infrastructure and the business

All CLO agreements are valid for a maximum of two years before they need to be reviewed. All CLO agreements belong to the company, not individual employees.

As a Dial Before You Dig Certified Operator, Telstra Accredited Locator and experts in hydro excavation, Dig Safe Geelong is one of the foremost experts when it comes to utility locating in Geelong, Melbourne and Victoria.

Dig Safe Geelong is a fully comprehensive utility locator that employs modern and powerful technology to safely locate and identify all utilities and underground structures in your area prior to any excavation or construction project. Whether you are located in Geelong, Melbourne, Ballarat, Gippsland and elsewhere in Victoria, Dig Safe Geelong can provide professional and prompt utility locating service. Contact Dig Safe Geelong today to receive a free quote on our utility locating wet hire rates and our non-destructive digging services. Or if you have any other questions or requests, contact us using the enquiry form and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

What is Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)?

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 11:54:04 GMT

What is Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)?

30/07/2019

What Can GPR Map?

Mapping and locating structures underground can be crucial in areas hit by earthquakes as the GPR is a known tool that can help locate buried victims. The GPR method can map underground infrastructure to support future developments or infrastructure designs. Subsurface utility mapping and engineering (SUM/SUE) service providers turn to GPR for mapping, compared to traditional methods. Common structures that you might see being mapped with GPR include:

Water/sewage lines
Gas lines
Live electrical underground wiring
Road/bridge structural integrity
Concrete building structural integrity
Airport runway structural integrity

Ground-penetrating radar also referred to as GPR, is a term that is applied to the technique of releasing radio waves to locate and map subsurface structures. A GPR can typically create radio wave pulses ranging between a 1 MHz and a 1,000MHz frequency.

GPR has a variety of uses in various industries. Industries that support the use of GPR can range from civil construction and mine sites to archaeology and geophysics. Over the years, this technology had advanced due to its growing popularity and non-destructive nature. With a wide range of sectors utilising the ground penetrating radar technology, the GPR has developed to be able to accurately and safely locate more features of subsurface structures. Although some materials are still transparent to the GPR radio waves, most materials are not and can be easily located and mapped. The GPR can highlight features such as the depth and size of the structure along with the possible material characteristics of the underground structure.

Concrete structures like roads, buildings and airport runways use GPR to find structural issues before they become bigger concerns.

How Does GPR Work?

Ground-penetrating radar may sound complex to some but the general term for GPR is a subsurface utility mapping technique that works by emitting a pulse of radio waves into the ground. The radio waves can pulse range from 1MHz to 1,000MHz frequency range depending on the structure you’re mapping.

The GPR equipment then records these echoes that can come from subsurface structures. These echoes are similar to echolocation, which is what dolphins use and is utilised in ultrasounds. Finding these underground structures can be important to construction sites as they might restrict the work or become a hazard if work continues. As a pair, GPR can be assisted by vacuum excavation trucks, as they can target selected areas from undocumented infrastructure or natural obstruction on construction sites and complete non-destructive digging to unearth this infrastructure safely.

Overall, GPR is a useful tool that provides many industries with the data they need to accurately and safely continue their project.

Contact Dig Sale Geelong

If you’re looking to hire ground penetrating radar services for your site across Victoria including Geelong, Melbourne, Ballarat, Dandenong or Bendigo, talk to the talented team at Dig Safe Geelong . We have years of experience in our field and can assist with your next GPR project.