Why Your Chicago Plumber Should Always Call JULIE Before They Dig

It’s a Small Thing That Tells You Everything About a Contractor. Before Anyone Puts a Shovel in Your Yard for a Sewer Repair, French Drain, or Water Line Job, Here’s Why the JULIE Call Actually Matters.

 

You’ve probably seen the flags and spray paint marks show up in a neighbor’s yard before a construction crew starts digging and never thought much about it. That mark is the visible result of a call to JULIE, and whether a contractor makes that call before they start digging on your property is one of the clearest, cheapest signals you’ll ever get about whether you’re working with a professional or someone cutting corners. This isn’t a minor procedural detail. It’s Illinois law, it’s free, and skipping it has put people in the hospital. If you’re about to have any excavation work done at your home, sewer line repair, French drain, catch basin work, or root removal, here’s what you should know before the digging starts.

 

What JULIE Actually Is

 

JULIE stands for Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators, and it’s Illinois’s one-call system: a single free number, 811, that connects a call to every utility company with underground lines in the area where digging is about to happen. JULIE’s own history traces back to 1974, when four major Illinois utility companies realized that burying their own lines was inadvertently damaging each other’s, and built a shared system to prevent it. JULIE doesn’t own or mark any utility lines itself. It simply routes the request to whichever gas, electric, water, or telecom company actually has infrastructure buried in that spot, and those companies send someone out to mark it with paint or flags before anyone digs.

 

It’s Not a Courtesy. It’s the Law.

 

Illinois has required this since the Underground Utility Facilities Damage Prevention Act took effect on January 1, 1991, and the law has been strengthened several times since. Anyone planning to dig, regardless of depth or how small the project seems, is required to call JULIE at least 48 hours in advance, not counting weekends or holidays. That requirement applies to a licensed contractor running a sewer line excavation exactly the same way it applies to a homeowner installing a mailbox post. There’s no size exemption and no “it’s probably fine” clause. If a contractor tells you locates aren’t necessary for your specific job, that’s not a judgment call they’re legally allowed to make.

 

How Long a Locate Request Actually Lasts

 

A JULIE locate isn’t a one-and-done formality that stays valid forever once the flags go up. The ticket is good for 25 days from the day it’s submitted, and state law requires digging to actually begin within 10 days of the ticket being issued, shown as the “dig by” date. If a project runs longer than that window, whoever’s digging has to request an extension before the ticket expires, which triggers the utility companies to come back out and re-mark, or re-confirm, their lines. This matters more than it sounds like it would: a sewer repair or French drain job delayed by weather or a permit holdup can quietly run past its locate window, and digging on an expired ticket carries the same legal exposure as never having called at all. A contractor who tracks this properly is checking the dig number against JULIE’s Positive Response System before crews break ground, not just trusting that the flags from three weeks ago are still accurate.

 

What Actually Happens When Someone Skips It

 

The consequences aren’t hypothetical. Striking a gas line can mean an evacuation, a hazmat response, or worse, and it happens often enough nationally that utility companies run entire public safety campaigns around it. Striking a buried electric or fiber line can knock out service to an entire block, and the excavator, not the utility company, is typically on the hook for the repair cost. This risk is especially real on plumbing excavation work, since sewer laterals, water services, and gas lines are often buried in the same corridor running from the street to the house, sometimes within a few feet of each other. On top of the physical risk, digging without a locate request is a violation of state law, and damages caused by an unmarked, un-requested dig can leave a homeowner or contractor personally liable for repair costs that have nothing to do with the plumbing work itself. A ten-minute phone call, and the patience to wait out a 48-hour window, is what stands between a routine sewer repair and a five-figure utility damage claim.

 

The Chicago Wrinkle Almost Nobody Knows About

 

Here’s a detail that trips up even some contractors: digging within the City of Chicago’s corporate limits doesn’t route through the standard JULIE 811 call the way it does everywhere else in Illinois. Chicago runs its own separate locate system, historically called DIGGER, reachable at 811 or directly at 312-744-7000, while the rest of Cook County and the suburbs go through JULIE’s standard system. A contractor who only knows the suburban process and applies it inside city limits, or vice versa, can end up with an incomplete locate request. It’s a small distinction, and exactly the kind that separates a contractor who understands the local system from one just going through the motions.

 

What This Looks Like on a Real Job

 

Any project that involves opening ground has this step baked into it before work ever starts. A sewer line repair that requires excavating a damaged section, a French drain or drain tile installation, work on a catch basin that sits below grade, or tree root removal that requires digging to reach a damaged joint all fall under the same requirement. Root intrusion specifically is worth understanding on its own, since it’s the single most common cause of sewer line failure in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs, and it’s often the reason a routine cleaning call turns into an excavation-based repair in the first place. So does a lead service line replacement, since that work runs from the water main all the way to the house. On any of these, the locate request goes in first, the marks get respected, and the actual repair work doesn’t start until the ground has been cleared to dig safely.

 

How to Tell If a Contractor Is Actually Doing This

 

You don’t need to take anyone’s word for it. Ask directly: “Did you call JULIE for this address, and when did the locate request go in?” A contractor who’s actually done it can tell you the date and generally point out the flags or paint marks on the property, since those marks are the physical proof the request was completed. If a crew shows up ready to dig the same day you called with no visible locate marks anywhere and no mention of a locate request, that’s a legitimate reason to pause the job. It’s not being difficult to ask. It’s the same instinct as asking to see a license or insurance certificate, just for a step that’s easy to skip and expensive to skip wrong. Our guide to finding a good plumber in Chicago and spotting a bad one covers the rest of that vetting checklist, and the JULIE question belongs right alongside it.

 

You Might Need to Make This Call Too

 

This isn’t only a contractor’s responsibility. Homeowners planning their own outdoor project, a fence, a mailbox post, a garden bed, a new sprinkler line, a deck footing, are required by the same law to call JULIE before digging, and it’s free for homeowners the same way it’s free for contractors. JULIE’s own site covers how to submit a locate request online or by phone if you’re planning any digging project yourself, separate from work being done by a licensed contractor.

 

A Small Habit That Says a Lot

 

Calling JULIE before digging doesn’t cost a contractor anything except a little bit of scheduling patience, waiting out the 48-hour window before the shovel goes in the ground. Skipping it costs nothing until the moment it costs everything: a hit gas line, a neighborhood without internet for a day, or a homeowner facing a repair bill for damage that had nothing to do with the plumbing job they hired someone for. It’s a small, boring, unglamorous step, and that’s exactly why it’s such a reliable signal of whether a contractor is doing things the right way even when nobody’s watching.

 

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