Early this year I started noticing the appearance of the little ‘flags’ in various yards and blvds and such.
These are similar in size and material to the little yellow flags lawn care companies put out when they’ve spray weed killers or whatever to warn you to stay off the lawn, but they are, as I said, bright orange, and have only two large block letters: a T and a V snugged up together, but I don’t know for sure which order they are to be read in.
At first I thought they were another form of lawn/poison warning, but I’ve noticed they often march along in a row that approaches a street and then continues on the other side.
So…are they markings about where some utility is buried, a ‘Dig Safe’ type thing? TV cable would seem obvious, but I know for sure that some of the lines marked do NOT correspond with the way the buried utilities run. For example, these markings leap ‘across’ the street near where I work, but that whole street was dug up a year ago, and the water/sewer/electric/etc. workings run DOWN the street, not across.
Third guess: they mark where something is to be installed, like spray painting arcane symbols on the pavement? But: some of these flags have been in place for 4 months now, with no other indication of anything happening. Wouldn’t they worry about the flags being shifted/destroyed by children in the interim?
Just very curious.
Those flags are indeed markers for buried CATV conductors. Here’s a page with all the flag colors.
http://www.mqtcty.org/departments/eng/eng.htm
Further, underground utilities routinely cross over each other. The communications conductors don’t have to parallel the pipelines. Typically, gas & electric are buried at a depth of 72" or greater. Communications lines - telephone, CATV - are installed at 36" or 48" below grade.
That may be true of the main lines, but watch out when you’re digging in your yard - the phone and cable lines from a junction box to your house are sometimes just a couple of inches down, so it’s pretty easy to slice into them.
Huh. So they are a sort of dig safe thing. Meaning they are going to dig that road up again??? <grumble, grumble> They had that road blocked from traffic for a good six months last year, while they replaced sewer and water lines. It made my commute greatly more inconvenient, not to mention always having to give directions on the ever changing detours to patients who got lost.
Then they finally paved it, and it’s wonderful and smooth…and they’re going to dig it up again less than a year later? Insanity.
Thanks for the answer, though.
Not necessarily. Depending on what’s going in there, they may be able to install it without tearing up the road. This seemingly magic feat is accomplished by use of a horizontal directional drill.
Here’s a pretty typical one used for installing small diameter conduits. In this application, the pipe will be bored under the road, and a communications cable then pulled through the duct.
http://www.vermeer.com/equipment/directional_boring/D16x20A/
Aw, are you sure it isn’t a Virginia Tech fan, showing a little school spirit?
