PA One Call 811: Call Before You Dig in Lancaster County

We deliver a lot of containers to jobs that involve digging — fence posts, deck footings, landscaping, pool prep, farm drainage work — and we get asked often enough about underground utility safety that it's worth laying out plainly. Before excavation of any kind starts on a Lancaster or Lancaster County property, the call to make first isn't to us. It's to PA One Call.

What PA One Call actually is

Pennsylvania's call-before-you-dig system is PA One Call, reachable at 811 or 1-800-242-1776. It's the service that notifies gas, electric, water and communication utility owners that excavation is planned at a specific location, so they can come out and mark the approximate location of their underground lines before anyone breaks ground. It exists because underground utility lines aren't visible, and hitting one with a shovel, auger or excavator can mean anything from a costly repair to a genuinely dangerous gas or electrical incident.

Act 287 makes the call the law, not just good practice

Pennsylvania's Underground Utility Line Protection Law, Act 287, is what makes calling PA One Call a legal requirement before excavation in the Commonwealth — not simply a courtesy. It applies whether the digging is being done by a licensed excavation contractor or a homeowner with a post-hole digger, and it applies the same way whether the property is a rowhome lot in the city of Lancaster or acreage out in the county.

How to make the call

Dial 811 directly, or call 1-800-242-1776. Either number reaches PA One Call. You'll be asked for the address or location of the planned excavation, a description of the work, and how deep the digging will go. From there, PA One Call notifies the relevant utility companies, who send crews out to mark their lines with flags or paint directly on the ground.

Timing: give it 3 to 10 business days

PA One Call requires advance notice of 3 to 10 business days before excavation begins, depending on the type of work. That means calling the same morning you plan to dig isn't going to work — plan your project timeline around that lead time. If your dumpster delivery is tied to the start of digging work, build the PA One Call notice period into your schedule before you call us to book the container, so the two timelines line up instead of one holding up the other.

Why this matters even if the dumpster itself isn't being buried

We're obviously not digging holes with a roll-off dumpster. But a huge share of the projects we deliver to — fence replacements, deck footings, landscaping overhauls, farm drainage or fence-line work out in the county, shed foundations — involve digging somewhere on the same property, sometimes close to where the container ends up sitting. If any part of your project involves breaking ground, the PA One Call requirement applies to that work regardless of what else is happening on-site the same week.

What happens after the call

Utility companies typically mark their lines with color-coded flags or spray paint directly over where the buried line runs. Once those marks are down and the notice period has passed, you can proceed with digging in areas that are clear of marked lines, using caution and hand-digging near any marks. This process is standard across Pennsylvania and isn't specific to any one utility or contractor — it applies to homeowners doing their own digging just as much as it applies to licensed excavation crews.

A step worth taking seriously across Lancaster County

Whether your project is a backyard fence in the West End, a new driveway pad out in Manheim, or a farm outbuilding project out toward Mount Joy or Willow Street, the same rule applies: call 811 first, wait out the notice period, then dig. It costs nothing and takes a few minutes, and it's the single easiest way to avoid an expensive and dangerous mistake before your project ever really starts.

A note on private lines

The PA One Call process covers utility-owned lines — the gas, electric, water and communication infrastructure that runs from the street to your property. It generally does not cover private lines a previous owner may have installed on the property itself, like a line running to a detached shop, a well pump, or a private irrigation line that isn't tied to the municipal utility. This comes up often on rural Lancaster County properties with a well, a barn, or outbuildings added over the years. If your property has any of that, it's worth locating those lines yourself before digging near them, since PA One Call's notification won't necessarily flag them.

Common Lancaster County jobs that need a call

We see this apply constantly on the kinds of projects that also call for a dumpster delivery. A new fence line around a property in Lititz or Ephrata means post holes, which means digging. A patio or shed foundation means excavation for footings. A drainage or irrigation overhaul on a rural property out toward Millersville or East Petersburg means trenching across the yard or field. Even a mailbox post replacement technically counts, since utility lines can run surprisingly shallow and surprisingly close to the street in older parts of the city. If a shovel is going into the ground anywhere on the property, it's worth the call.

Coordinating the 811 call with your dumpster delivery

Because PA One Call needs several business days of lead time, and because our container delivery can often happen much faster than that — including same-day in many cases — it's worth sequencing the two correctly. Place the PA One Call notice as soon as you know your start date, then call us once you have a firmer sense of when debris will actually start coming off the property. That way the container isn't sitting empty waiting on utility marks, and your dig crew isn't waiting on us either.