Our utility locating technicians are highly skilled at their jobs. They are trained not only on locating underground utilities, but also recognizing and investigating the surface features and structures associated with them. In order to understand the full extent of Level B utility information, we first must investigate the Level C information of above-ground structures to paint the full picture on plans. Most surface features take the forms of electrical boxes, handholes, manholes and fire hydrants. Pretty common stuff you’d expect for maintaining and accessing utilities.
So what happens when a technician encounters an uncommon surface feature? Sometimes we run into structures that have never been seen before that clearly extend into the subsurface. Our technician Terrell was called out to a job site to scan an area that was repurposed government property. The client was looking to ensure the safety of a proposed trenchline and the area needed to be examined. Terrell was scanning the area when he ran into an unusual domelike structure. He had already found an electric line associated with the structure, but was also picking up some odd hits radiating from the structure that he couldn’t identify.
When we run into unusual features, the techs will usually research the item independently or reach out to other technicians to see if they’ve encountered them on other sites. In this case, nobody had run into one of these on a job site before. He called our training director to help perform some research into this structure, who worked to find images of similar structures online. It could’ve been a number of things: an access hatch, a vent for an underground bunker, a UFO even. If you guessed a hardened communications antenna however, you’d be right.
These hardened UHF (meaning Ultra High Frequency) antennas are an old relic from the Cold War era, where attacks on US soil and military sites were well prepared for. These antennas were built to withstand blasts that would prevent disruption of communications for defense missile systems. We were able to find photos of similar structures through internet searches and researched the structures to determine the extent of the utilities powering this antenna. These antennas have robust grounding systems that protect the electronics from an electrical overload. Armed with this additional information, Terrell was able to correctly identify the grounding on the site. The lines ran in a spiderweb-like fashion out from the surface structure, which makes sense in context. If one line failed or became overloaded, the antenna wouldn’t lose communications with crucial defense systems.
This job was the perfect case study on why research is an important part of the utility locating process. With the knowledge that this was a decommissioned government site and an image of the antenna, we were able to look into not only what the system was used for, but also how the system operated. This knowledge is then passed onto our clients to work around existing utilities and understand what’s underneath their site. If your team needs to locate existing utilities and subsurface structures, our team at Trinity Subsurface can help! Visit our website to find out more information about our utility locating services and schedule us for your next project today.
