Comment by ericd
3 years ago
Wow, have you considered buying some conduit and renting a trenching machine and giving the driveway portion a go yourself? Might be worth talking over that option with the muni fiber people. Though sounds like the overhead portion would still be $$$.
A friend did this at his farm in central VA, but for power line instead of fiber. It was previously above ground, unsightly, and occasionally damaged by trees. He dug the trench from the road and had the power company lay the wire in it and make connections at each end. I don't remember the total numbers, but he saved thousands by doing the dig himself (with rented equipment) vs paying the power company to manage it.
Of course, this assume you're comfortable with heavy machinery and can work around other utilities (most counties have a "Miss Utility" service that will mark existing services).
Yep, depending on the lay of the land doing the grunt work can save thousands or tens of thousands - if you have the company do it they'll almost certainly bring in a crew of 4 or 5 with a underground "hog" machine that's supposed to work perfectly but doesn't actually so the backhoe appears and then they cut into a buried utility line that was marked but backhoes can't read and then you wait for the power company to come out and then they fight over whose fault it was while the freezer slowly drips onto your floor.
Or you can rent a ditch witch and do it yourself and dig by hand near anything remotely marked by the marking crew.
lol sounds like this might not just be a hypothetical scenario for you.
I've considered it, but I suspect it might end up like bombcar's experience with cutting buried lines. I'm not much of a digger for the manual work either. And there's a seasonal creek to cross which seems like a lot of fun.
I'm not too worried about the overhead portion; in theory, I could group with neighbors and we all pay a share, or I could pay it and consider it a goodwill gesture to my neighbors; they wouldn't need to pay that portion if they wanted to get online (and some of them have overhead drops for electric and what not, so they'd be able to get a cheap drop for fiber, too)
Well, you'd probably start by getting Miss Utility to come out and mark your lines. I think bombcar's point was that you care a lot more about not cutting those than any contractor will, and so you're less likely to do it.