Gps Yard utilities layout

[sherrod624]

I'm building a house and will soon be digging trenches all over for power, water, and cable to pump house, shop, and storage barn. I was thinking it would be awesome to have a phone app that I could plot my layout with. Is there such a thing?

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[bczygan]

Camera?

Paper, pencil and tape measure?

 

[jbwilkins]

Most consumer GPS is only accurate to something like 10'-20'. Good enough to navigate by, but useless locating down to the foot...

 

[sherrod624]

I was hoping I could walk the trenches, plotting and use it for future reference If I needed to dig anything up or locate anything.

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[Franz1.0©]

Install locating tape as you cover.
If you can't find that, install plastic covered wire, splice it to a common feed point and you'll be able to use a tone tracker.

My septic tanks are tape located and I tossed old gears in as the openings were backfilled. 10# chunk of iron lasts a long time and pings real good with the metal detector.

 

[EOC_Jason]

Just take pictures...

Or take a screen shot from google maps, draw your lines on that...

 

[MT Mike]

Print off an aerial photo of your property. Sketch your trenches in, then measure each end or angle point from two separate points such as: northwest corner of house and northeast corner of house or corner of house and fence corner, etc. Show lineal distance of trench and approximate depth. Scan the sketch into a hard drive for future reference. This will be as accurate and as easy as anyone can ask for.

 

[wasfuzz]

Install locating tape as you cover.
If you can't find that, install plastic covered wire, splice it to a common feed point and you'll be able to use a tone tracker..

As a former locator DO NOT run/tie all to a common feed point - put a tracer wire on the water pipe, and one tracer wire your Telco, electric and gas if in a common trench and all run exactly the same way is sufficient, if not seperate wire for each. I even did my sewer/septic, just because it makes the job so much easier later on and costs almost nothing!!!

 

[kbs2244]

I just take a few PICs from different angles.
Save the PICs to disk or CD with notes on distances and depth.
If it is existing, I call JULIE and then take the PICs of their flags.

 

[ard]

Pictures pictures pictures.

Try and also get reference items in the shots- buildings, distant mountains, major trees, rock outcrops, etc.

I was obsessive about this over the years, even in the film days. I cannot tell you how many times I will go to 'the box' for details in wires, conduit, framing, trenching, etc.

As stated above the accuracy of GPS ***** on phones. Even my hand held GPS with positional averaging will not really do a great job.

Oh, throw in an extra two pieces of 3/4 or 1" conduit everywhere.