Does 811 Locate Water Lines? What Spokane County Property Owners Actually Get
The short answer is yes, with a limit. 811 locates the water utility's lines, and the water utility's lines stop at your meter. In Spokane County, that means the main in the street and the service up to the meter box get marked. The line from the meter to your house does not. Neither does anything else that carries water on your property. Here is how it works.
What 811 marks in Spokane County
When you call 811 or file online with Washington 811, the ticket goes to every utility that owns a line near your dig site. Each one sends a locator to mark its own facilities. For water, that is the City of Spokane, Spokane County, Vera Water and Power, Whitworth Water, Modern Electric, or whichever district serves you. Their responsibility ends where their ownership ends, which is the meter.
A normal 811 response marks:
The water main in the street or easement
The service line from the main to your meter (blue paint)
Public sewer mains, and sewer laterals only as far as the district owns them
Power, gas, and communication lines up to their service points
What 811 does not mark
Everything past the meter is private. These lines are not the responsibility of the utility owner. These lines will need to get located by a private utility locator. On a typical Spokane County property, that includes:
The water service from the meter to the house (the line most often struck during driveway, sidewalk, and landscaping work)
Well lines, if you are on a well instead of district water (most of the county outside the city is)
Irrigation mains, laterals, and valve wire
Water to a shop, barn, or detached garage
Yard hydrants and stock water lines on acreage
The paint at the meter shows where the utility's line ends. It says nothing about the 50 feet between the meter and your foundation, which is where the digging happens.
Why this matters more in the county than in the city
Many Spokane County properties were rural until recently. Deer Park, Colbert, Mead, Nine Mile Falls, Cheney, and Spokane Valley all have lots that started on a well and were later connected to district water, or the reverse. That leaves two sets of water lines in the ground, one live and one abandoned, with no record of either. Add irrigation, which most acreage has, and the number of unmarked water lines on a property is usually higher than the number of marked ones.
Soil conditions add to the problem. Much of the county sits on basalt or gravelly glacial outwash. Old lines were routed around rock, so they rarely follow the straight path you would expect between the meter and the house.
How we find private water lines
We use two methods. The pipe material determines which one applies:
Electromagnetic locating for metal water lines (galvanized, copper, ductile iron) and for plastic lines with tracer wire. We put a signal on the line and follow it from the surface. This is the most accurate method when it can be used.
Ground penetrating radar for plastic lines without tracer wire, which covers most irrigation and water lines in between the 70s-2010s. GPR also picks up the trench itself where the soil was disturbed. It works better in the county's dry, sandy soils than in rock, and we will tell you when a reading is less certain.
We mark potable water in blue and irrigation in purple, the APWA standard, so your excavator reads our marks the same way they read 811's. We are able to give depth estimates when requested at the time of service or during scheduling. You will still want to hand dig or pothole within the tolerance zone before you put a bucket across a marked line.
When to call 811 and when to call us
Call 811 every time you dig. It is free, it is required in Washington, and it covers the public side. Then, if any of the following apply, get a private locate before the equipment arrives:
You are digging anywhere between the meter and the house
The property is or was on a well
There is irrigation, or there used to be
You are trenching to a shop, garage, or outbuilding
The property has changed hands and you do not have drawings
You will want to call 811 first so the public marks are already on the ground when we arrive. We work off those and will verify their accuracy as well.
Scheduling a private locate in Spokane County
Our main office is in Deer Park. We cover Spokane, Spokane Valley, Cheney, Deer Park, Mead, Colbert, Nine Mile Falls, and across the state line into Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls. Call 509-710-2621 or send the address and a description of the work, and we will schedule a time.
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