811 stops at the meter. We find the water, sewer, electric, gas, fiber and irrigation lines on the other side of it — then hand you a map you can actually build from.
Designated & Marked
Texas law says call 811 two business days before you dig, and you absolutely should. But 811 is a notification system — it tells member utilities to come mark their lines, and their responsibility ends at the meter or point of service.
Everything past that point is private, and it's the property owner's responsibility. On a typical commercial site that's the majority of what's actually in the ground: service laterals, site lighting, irrigation, fire mains, secondary electric to outbuildings, storm drainage, septic, fuel lines and abandoned conduit nobody documented.
We self-perform detection, marking and mapping — so the crew that finds the line is the crew that documents it.
Electromagnetic locating of energized power, metallic water and gas, telecom, tracer-wired conduit and cathodic systems — everything 811 leaves behind the meter.
What we find →GPR finds what a signal can't reach — PVC and HDPE pipe, fiber duct bank, septic tanks, USTs, vaults, voids and buried structures with no trace wire on them.
How GPR works →GPS-collected findings turned into CAD, GIS, KMZ and PDF deliverables with ASCE 38-22 quality levels attached — permanent records your design team can build on.
See deliverables →Before you core, cut or drill: rebar, post-tension cable, conduit and voids mapped on the slab surface so a saw blade never finds them first.
Before you cut →CCTV crawler and push-camera inspection of sewer, storm and drain lines — with sonde location so we mark the pipe's true path and depth from the inside out.
Inspect a line →Vacuum excavation to physically expose a line and record exact depth, size, material and condition — Quality Level A data for critical crossings and tight tolerances.
Verify a crossing →Subsurface utility engineering isn't one product — it's four levels of confidence. We'll tell you honestly which one your job calls for instead of selling you the most expensive one.
We pull as-builts, utility owner records and historical plans. Cheap, fast, and useful for route selection — but records are frequently wrong, incomplete or missing entirely. Planning only. Never dig on QL-D.
We survey what you can see — manholes, valve boxes, meters, pedestals, hydrants — and correlate it against the records. Better context, still no confirmed underground position.
Electromagnetic locating and GPR to designate the horizontal position of virtually every utility inside your project limits, marked on the surface and surveyed to project control. This is the minimum standard for design work, and it's what most jobs need.
Non-destructive vacuum excavation exposes the line so we can record precise horizontal and vertical position, plus size, material and condition. Reserve it for critical conflicts, tight-tolerance crossings and anywhere a strike would stop the job.
Tell us the address, the footprint and what you're about to do. We quote from site size and scope — no vague hourly guessing.
We review available as-builts and walk the site for visible evidence — meters, valves, pedestals, cleanouts — to build the search plan.
EM locating and GPR sweep the area on a grid. Everything we find gets marked on the surface and labeled by utility type, with depths where we can read them.
Findings are GPS-collected and drafted into CAD, GIS, KMZ or PDF with quality levels noted — usually back in your inbox within 48 hours.
Before The First Bucket
A utility strike is never just the repair bill. It's the shutdown, the emergency crew, the fines, the schedule slip, the claim on your insurance — and on a gas or high-voltage line, it's somebody's life.
"811 marked three lines. Pinnacle found eleven, including an abandoned duct bank sitting right where our pier was going. That one scan saved us a redesign."
"We hit a fiber line on a job two years ago and I've never forgotten the invoice. Now nobody on my crew breaks ground until Pinnacle has walked it."
"The CAD deliverable was clean, quality levels were labeled, and it dropped straight into our base file. That's rare. They're on our short list now."
Because 811 is a notification service, not a locating service. It tells member utility companies you're digging, and each one comes out to mark only the lines they own — which stops at your meter or point of service. Anything on the private side of that meter is the property owner's responsibility to locate, and on most commercial sites that's the majority of what's buried. 811 also won't give you depths, won't find abandoned or unregistered lines, and won't leave you a permanent record.
Electric and site lighting, gas and fuel lines, water mains and service laterals, sanitary and storm sewer, irrigation, fire loops, telecom and fiber, tracer-wired conduit, septic tanks and drain fields, underground storage tanks, vaults, cisterns and — with GPR — non-metallic PVC and HDPE pipe that carries no signal at all.
Nothing detects 100% of everything in every soil condition. Wet clay, heavy rebar, deep fill and rubble all limit what any technology can see, and we'll tell you on site when we've hit that limit rather than pretend we didn't.
It's priced by site size, scope and access — a residential backyard before a pool dig is a very different job from a twelve-acre commercial pad or a two-mile fiber route. Call or email with the address and what you're doing, and you'll get a firm number, not a range. Most standard residential and small commercial locates are a flat half-day rate.
Typically within 24 hours for the Austin metro, and we work weekends. If you've got a crew standing idle or an emergency dig, call — don't email — and we'll tell you honestly whether we can get someone to you today.
At minimum, everything marked on the ground in paint and flags, labeled by utility type, plus photos. Add mapping and you get GPS-collected findings drafted into your choice of PDF, KMZ (opens in Google Earth), CAD (DWG/DXF) or GIS shapefile, with each utility attributed by type, detection method and ASCE 38-22 quality level.
Yes. Austin and Central Texas is home base and gets same-week service, but we mobilize nationwide for multi-site portfolios, campus mapping programs and linear infrastructure work. Email utilitylocatingnationwide@gmail.com with the scope and we'll put together travel pricing.
Call 811 for the public lines. Call us for everything else. One afternoon of scanning is cheaper than one minute of striking a line.
(737) 937-6199