RAL said:
Every state has a "Call before you dig" 800 number, or in many places, you just call 811. They will send someone out to mark the cable locations, and that gets you off they hook for being responsible for damage.
Before doing any of this work, I did call the call-before-you-dig number, and they marked out the utility lines, including the TW cable. From what I can tell, they even did a pretty good job of tracing the paths and marking them on the ground with spray paint. They were color coded no less. They did great work--even better than what I had hoped for. Are you saying my having done that actually gives me immunity if I subsequently sever the cable anyway? Anyone know? Is that how it works? As you can probably tell, I haven't really done this before. When this mishap occured I could clearly see where the TW cables were, as by then they were largely very exposed in the trench. It required a lot of gingerly digging not to cut them with a shovel when I was digging the trench. I just got unlucky in that the boulder snagged one of the cables (the live one) when I was pulling the boulder out of the trench with my SUV. It's just an inherently crude extraction process. The other, obsolete cable was fairly close to it, but the bolder didn't snag it, and it didn't sever.
The cable looks very much like this one:
So, I guess that means it's double shielded. Apparently the sticky stuff I encountered is a gel.
I checked the pricing on direct burial RG6, and it's fairly cheap, maybe 10 cents a foot....
Since a lot of the cable pathway is currently laid open because of the open trench, I'm sorely tempted to install a conduit so any future cables can be run through it and I hopefully won't accumulate a spiderweb of obsolete cables under my lawn, leading to future confusion as to which is live and which isn't. Anyone here done that? What material should I use? PVC, electrical conduit, smurf, pex, or other? What diameter? What would I use to cover each end of it so that it doesn't fill up with rainwater? If I provide it, will the cable company even use it, or will they just robotically bury any new cable 3 inches under the turf because that's their standard practice? Anyone here have experiences that might indicate which way the chips will fall?
So, yes, I should call TW and ask. My earlier attempt at that yielded a baffling result, so I'm not sure how useful it will be this time. The earlier time, before calling the call-before-you-dig number, I actually called up Time Warner cable because I was under the mistaken belief they weren't covered by the call-before-you-dig number, and I was trying to ask them to come mark their cable. The first tech had no idea what I was talking about, and so he transfered me to another. I kid you not, the answer given me by their tech support was: "We don't mark cables. You should just pull up the cable yourself, starting at where it connects to your house, if you want to see where it goes so that you don't dig through it." WTF? I thought I might actually have to do that. Luckily, the call-before-you-dig marking crew did mark where the TW cable was buried, even though when I called it in they never mentioned it as one of the utilities they'd be marking. Despite that, the tech at TW never even suggested calling the call-before-you-dig number. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the TW tech's don't seem very knowledgable about these types of burial questions. It doesn't seem to be in their purview.