Why More Plumbing Contractors Should Be Looking at Hydrovac

Below the Surface | Artisan Group

There’s an opportunity right beneath your feet.

Plumbing contractors know how to repair the water main, replace the sewer line, or make the underground connection. The problem is that getting to the plumbing can turn a relatively straightforward job into an excavation project. Sometimes that means tying up a crew and equipment on a small dig. Other times, it means hours of careful excavation around existing utilities, difficult access, or working through Southern Utah’s summer heat.

Your crew may be perfectly capable of handling the excavation. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best use of their time or resources.

Hydrovac gives plumbing contractors another option. Instead of owning another specialized piece of equipment or committing a crew to a dig that is consuming the job, you can bring in hydrovac for the excavation that calls for it, get the pipe exposed, and move your crew into the plumbing work.

You don’t have to own the machine to put it to work.

Stop Treating Every Underground Job Like a Trenching Job

An excavator is built to move dirt efficiently. Hydrovac uses pressurized water to loosen soil and a vacuum to remove the material, allowing more controlled excavation around buried infrastructure.

That makes it particularly useful when a contractor needs to expose a water main, locate a sewer connection, verify a utility crossing, or remove soil around existing pipes and conduits. It can also provide working room around an underground repair without requiring the same approach used to open an entire trench.

Hydrovac is not a replacement for an excavator, and treating it that way misses the point. Conventional equipment remains the right choice for bulk excavation on many projects. Hydrovac becomes useful when the excavation reaches the point where targeted exposure and greater control matter more than moving a large volume of material.

On the same project, there may be a place for both.

The Locate Marks Don’t Tell You Everything

A painted line on the ground is not a verified utility depth.

Before crossing an existing facility, a contractor may need to establish where it actually sits underground. Utility daylighting, sometimes called potholing, creates a targeted excavation that allows the facility’s location and depth to be physically verified before the larger excavation continues.

Utah’s excavation procedures require additional precautions when working near marked underground facilities.[1] OSHA also recognizes appropriately adjusted hydro vacuum equipment as an acceptable means of locating underground installations under specified conditions.[2]

Hydrovac is not damage proof. Water pressure, operating technique, utility condition, soil conditions, and the type of facility being exposed still matter. It does, however, give a contractor a way to uncover existing infrastructure and gather information that surface markings alone cannot provide.

That information can change how the rest of the project proceeds. Knowing the actual depth and position of an existing line can affect trench alignment, elevation, clearance, equipment selection, and the sequence of work before a larger excavation is opened.

When the Dig Isn’t Worth Tying Up Your Crew

Not every underground repair warrants committing your own crew and equipment to hours of excavation.

Sometimes it is a relatively small exposure in a difficult location. Sometimes the crew is carefully working around existing infrastructure. Sometimes Southern Utah weather makes an otherwise simple hand excavation a much more demanding part of the day. In other cases, the excavation is simply taking longer than the plumbing work it was supposed to support.

That does not mean your crew cannot handle it. The better question is whether they should.

Bringing in hydrovac for targeted excavation can get the line exposed and establish the working room your plumbers need so they can move into the repair or installation. On the right project, it keeps a relatively small excavation from consuming the schedule and resources of the larger plumbing job.

Hand digging will always have its place, and hydrovac will not make every excavation faster or easier. The opportunity is recognizing when the excavation has become a disproportionate part of the job and bringing in specialized equipment to handle it.

Hydrovac Capability Without Hydrovac Ownership

This is where the business case becomes more interesting for plumbing contractors.

Buying a hydrovac is only the beginning of the investment. Once you account for a purchase or lease payment, insurance, maintenance, repairs, storage, a suitable tow vehicle for trailer mounted equipment, operator requirements, water supply, slurry handling and downtime, ownership can be difficult to justify for a company that only needs the equipment periodically.

Depending on the vehicle combination and how it is operated, commercial transportation requirements can add another layer of registration and compliance.[3] Then there is the simplest equipment problem of all: when your machine is down, it is your problem to solve.

For a contractor using hydrovac every day, those costs may make sense. For a plumbing company that encounters the right application a few times a month, or only on certain types of underground projects, the economics can look very different.

That does not mean you need to pass on work that would benefit from hydrovac.

A plumbing contractor can estimate the complete project, subcontract the specialized excavation, and retain the plumbing scope. When the project is priced correctly, the subcontracted excavation can be incorporated into the overall job while leaving room for the contractor’s coordination, project responsibility, overhead, and intended margin. Profitability is not automatic, but neither is equipment ownership a prerequisite for offering the capability.

The better question is not, “Should we buy a hydrovac?” It may be, “How often do we actually need one, and what is the most profitable way to have access to it when we do?”

Look at the Job Cost, Not Just the Equipment Rate

Hydrovac can carry a higher hourly equipment rate than other excavation methods. Looking at that number by itself does not tell you which approach will produce the best result for the project.

A contractor should look at the complete operation. How long will the excavation take? How many people will it occupy? What equipment needs to be mobilized? Can an excavator handle the bulk work while hydrovac handles the utility exposure? What are the material handling and disposal requirements? How quickly can the plumbing crew move into its scope once the excavation is complete?

There will be plenty of jobs where conventional excavation makes more sense. A small dig in open ground may not justify specialized equipment, while dense caliche or rock can make hydrovac inefficient or unsuitable for portions of a project.

There are other jobs where a relatively small excavation is holding up an otherwise productive plumbing crew. In those cases, the relevant comparison is not simply the hourly rate of one machine against another. It is the cost and operational impact of completing that portion of the project using each available method.

The right excavation method should support the economics of the entire job.

Working With an Excavation Contractor Who Understands Plumbing

Subcontracting the excavation only works well if the excavation crew understands what your plumbers need when the digging is finished.

A pipe being visible is not necessarily the same as a pipe being ready to work on. Your crew may need clearance beneath the line, room for a coupling, access to a connection, or enough exposed pipe to remove and replace a damaged section. The location and shape of the excavation can affect whether the plumbing crew can actually perform the work efficiently once they arrive.

Those details are easier to address before excavation begins than after the equipment has left the site.

This is where Artisan Group is different from a hydrovac operator that only sees the excavation scope. Artisan operates full service plumbing and excavation divisions alongside our hydrovac equipment. We understand what it takes to expose the pipe, but we also understand what the plumber needs to do next.

When another plumbing contractor hires Artisan for hydrovac or excavation support, we are not there to take over the plumbing job or the customer relationship. Our job is to understand your scope, coordinate with your crew, and perform the excavation with the work that follows in mind.

Tell us what you are repairing or installing, what needs to be exposed, and what your guys need to complete the work. We can provide hydrovac as a standalone service, combine it with conventional excavation when the project calls for both, and then hand the site back to your crew for the plumbing work.

Having full service plumbing and excavation divisions gives us an understanding of both sides of that handoff. We know why the excavation matters because our own plumbers work on the other side of it.

For plumbing contractors, that creates a straightforward opportunity: take on the right underground work, bring in specialized excavation when it makes sense, and keep your own people focused where they are most productive.

You handle the plumbing. We understand what you need from the excavation.

Need Hydrovac Support on an Underground Project?

Artisan Group provides hydrovac excavation for plumbing contractors and other trades throughout St. George, Washington, Hurricane, Ivins, Santa Clara, and surrounding Washington County communities.

If you have a project that requires utility exposure, potholing, targeted excavation, or a combination of hydrovac and conventional excavation, send us the project location, scope, and anticipated schedule. We can look at what needs to be exposed and determine whether hydrovac is the right fit for that portion of the job.

Explore Our Hydrovac Excavation Services →

Sources

1. Blue Stakes of Utah 811. Excavator’s Guide. Utah utility marking, tolerance zone, and excavation procedures.

2. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Use of Hydro Vacuum Excavation Equipment and Other Acceptable Means to Locate Underground Utility Installations. October 23, 2003.

3. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Do I Need a USDOT Number? Commercial vehicle requirements vary based on vehicle configuration, weight, operation, and jurisdiction.