The duty lands on whoever moves the dirt
Virginia's dig law is the Underground Utility Damage Prevention Act, Title 56, Chapter 10.3 of the Code of Virginia. Its central sentence sits at section 56-265.17 A and reads: "No person shall make or begin any excavation or demolition without first submitting a locate request to the notification center." No person. Not the contractor specifically, not a trade of any kind. The duty attaches to whoever is about to move ground.
North Carolina writes the same idea from the other end. The Underground Utility Safety and Damage Prevention Act, G.S. Chapter 87, Article 8A, puts the duty at G.S. 87-122(a) on "the person responsible for the excavation or demolition". So the question is never what trade you are. It is who is cutting the ground.
That matters on a residential job, because the answer moves with the facts. If we cut the footing trench, we are the excavator and we place the ticket. If you hire a machine on a Saturday and dig the trench yourself, you are the excavator, and hiring a concrete crew for the pour afterward does not move that backwards. How the ticket actually fits a pour day is on our page about calling 811 before a pour.
Where the homeowner carve-outs stop, and they stop in different places
Virginia's homeowner exemption is one line, at section 56-265.15:1(1): the chapter does not apply to "Any hand digging performed by an owner or occupant of a property." Hand digging is a defined term at section 56-265.15 A and it means nonmechanized tools or equipment, naming shovels, picks, manual post hole diggers, vacuum excavation and soft digging. A trencher, a two man auger or a mini excavator is not hand digging, and the carve-out is gone the moment one shows up. That section carries eight exemptions in all. The other seven cover agricultural tilling, railroad work on railroad land, emergencies, shallow routine pavement maintenance, permitted mining, an operator hand digging to find its own line, and certain sign posts. None of them reaches a footing trench.
North Carolina's is genuinely wider. G.S. 87-124(1) and (2) exempt the owner of a single-family residential property working on their own land. With no encroachment on any operator's right of way, easement or permitted use, even mechanized work is outside the notice requirement. With an encroachment, nonmechanized work still is. The same homeowner with the same machine on the Virginia side of the line is not exempt at all.
Read the North Carolina carve-out narrowly, because it limits itself. By its own opening words it lifts only "The notice requirements in G.S. 87-122(a) and G.S. 87-122(b)". The conduct rules in 87-122(c), which is where the tolerance zone lives, and the damage reporting duties in 87-126 are not exempted. Being excused from the call is not being excused from care.
Virginia 811's own homeowner FAQ goes a step further than the statute and tells property owners that "Your contractor is responsible for contacting Virginia 811." That is the notification center's guidance, and it is sound advice on most jobs, but it is not what the Code says. The Code binds any person who makes or begins an excavation, and the homeowner carve-out reaches only an owner or occupant hand digging. What that supports is the negative: a hired crew is never inside the homeowner exemption. What we will tell you plainly is what we do, which is place the ticket for the digging we do.
Grading a subgrade counts as excavation in both states
People ask whether a driveway or a patio is really excavation. Both statutes answer it in their definitions and neither needs interpreting. Virginia's, at section 56-265.15 A, covers any operation in which earth, rock or other material in the ground is moved, removed or otherwise displaced, and it names grading, trenching, digging, ditching, drilling, augering and scraping outright.
North Carolina's definition at G.S. 87-117(9) names auguring, backfilling, boring, digging, ditching, drilling, grading, ripping, scraping and trenching, and it expressly includes manual equipment as well as machines. Stripping a driveway pad, cutting a footing trench for a garage, augering pier holes and scraping a patio subgrade all sit inside both lists, and backfilling sits inside North Carolina's by name.
Neither definition carries a depth floor, and neither carries a square footage floor. The twelve inch figures that circulate come from narrow exemptions rather than from any general permission. Virginia's section 56-265.15:1(5) is about routine pavement maintenance on the paved portion of a public road no deeper than twelve inches. North Carolina's G.S. 87-124(3) is about tilling soil for agricultural or gardening purposes that encroaches on an easement and is less than twelve inches deep. Neither reaches a footing trench, a driveway subgrade or a patio dig.
Where each state starts counting
Virginia has no single sentence telling an excavator to wait a set number of days. The clock sits on the operator's side of the transaction. Under section 56-265.19 A the operator or its contract locator has to mark the line and report the marking status to the positive response system "by no later than 7:00 a.m. on the third working day following the excavator's locate request", unless the excavator supplied a scheduled excavation date or the operator is held up by extraordinary or exigent circumstances, and a scheduled date has to be not less than 48 hours and not more than 12 working days out from the request.
The arithmetic is defined too. Section 56-265.15 A and B exclude Saturdays, Sundays and legal state and national holidays, and, unless the chapter says otherwise, run every period from the original locate request. A ticket placed on a day that is not a working day counts as submitted the next working day at 7:00 a.m., so a Saturday call buys no head start. Virginia 811 publishes the actual holiday list for the year on its own site, and that list changes annually, so read theirs rather than a wall calendar.
The honest shorthand in Virginia is three working days, which is also what Virginia 811 tells homeowners. Copy that says Virginia requires 48 hours notice is wrong, and it is wrong in the direction that gets a line hit. The 48 hours in section 56-265.19 A is the floor under a scheduled excavation date, not a notice period.
North Carolina states it directly instead. G.S. 87-122(a) requires notice "no less than three full working days before the proposed commencement date", with working day defined at G.S. 87-117(23) as every day except Saturday, Sunday or State legal holidays. Subaqueous work runs much longer. Since the rewrite that took effect on October 1, 2025 there is a floor and no ceiling, so the old three to twelve working day window that older guides describe no longer exists.
A waiting period running out is not permission
This is the part most people have backwards. In Virginia, since the amendments that took effect July 1, 2023, waiting does not clear you to dig. Section 56-265.17 B says the excavator may only commence work after confirming, by reviewing the positive response system, that each operator has marked its lines, reported that its lines are not present in the area, or otherwise posted a response indicating excavation may begin, or after being told that no operators are to be notified. A clock expiring is not on that list.
North Carolina carries the same confirm-before-you-dig duty at G.S. 87-122(c)(2), and it spells out two situations in its own words. You may begin before the waiting period ends if every operator has already posted an appropriate positive response, under 87-122(c)(4). And where an operator never responds at all, 87-122(c)(6) lets you proceed if there are no visible indications of a facility such as a pole, marker, pedestal, meter or valve; where there are such indications, you owe an additional notice to the center detailing the facility, and an arrangement for the operator to mark it within three hours.
Virginia's regulation adds a site duty that hardly any article mentions. 20VAC5-309-180 requires an excavator, prior to excavation, to verify they are at the correct location, verify the locate markings against the positive response system, and check for unmarked utility lines to the best of their ability. On a residential lot that is a walk of the work area with the ticket in hand, and it is a rule rather than a courtesy.
Ticket life, and the handout that still prints the old number
Section 56-265.17 D makes a Virginia ticket good for 15 working days, counted from 7:00 a.m. on the next working day after the locate request or from a scheduled excavation date, whichever is later. Three working days before that period ends, or at any point the markings on the ground become illegible, the excavator has to contact the notification center and ask for a re-mark. The re-mark is due within 48 hours from 7:00 a.m. on the next working day after the request, and it is good for another 15 working days.
North Carolina counts in a different unit as well as a different number. Under G.S. 87-122(a) a notice expires 28 calendar days after the work start date, and no work may continue past that without a fresh notice given the same way. The widely repeated figure, that a North Carolina ticket runs 15 full working days, was true once and is now wrong: the 2025 session law struck it and the change took effect October 1, 2025. North Carolina 811's own Law Quick Reference Guide, revised in September 2019, is still posted on its site and still prints the old number. Anything drafted from that handout carries the old number with it, so check the date on whatever you are reading.
Because the two are different units, never convert one into the other or split the difference. Marks that wear off before the digging is finished have a rule of their own in Virginia, and it sits on the excavator: section 56-265.24 B says that when markings become illegible due to time, weather, construction or any other cause, the excavator notifies the center, and that notification counts as an extension. It matters most on footing and foundation work, because a footing trench is where a residential dig goes deep enough to find something.
Two feet in Virginia, a defined tolerance zone in North Carolina
Virginia measures out from the mark. Section 56-265.24 A puts a general duty on anyone excavating within two feet on either side of a marked line to take all reasonable steps to protect, support and backfill it. Then it splits by direction, and the split is the part that usually gets dropped. For an excavation not parallel to the line, those steps include exposing the line to its extremities by hand digging, keeping mechanized equipment out to two feet from the extremities of the exposed line, and protecting what has been exposed. For an excavation running parallel to the line, the step is hand digging at reasonable distances along the line of excavation. One statute, two different duties, and which one you owe depends on which way your trench runs.
The Commission's own rule is tighter on the trigger. Under 20VAC5-309-140 the hand digging duty attaches when excavation is expected to come within two feet of the marked location rather than only once it does, and the excavator has to maintain a reasonable clearance between the marked location and the cutting edge or point of any mechanized equipment, a clearance that includes the width of the utility line, if known, plus 24 inches.
North Carolina turns the same idea into a defined term. G.S. 87-117(22) sets the tolerance zone at half the known diameter of the facility plus 24 inches on either side of the designated center line, or, where the diameter is not marked, 24 inches on either side of the outside edge of the mark. Mechanized equipment stays out of that zone, apart from noninvasive equipment built to protect the facility, until the excavator has visually identified the precise location of the line or has visually confirmed that none is present up to the depth of excavation, under 87-122(c)(9)a. For a parallel excavation inside the zone, the line has to be visually identified at intervals not exceeding 50 feet.
North Carolina then singles out the lines that hurt people. Under 87-122(c)(10) only nonmechanized equipment goes within a 24 inch circumference of an oil, petroleum products or highly volatile liquid pipeline system, a gas transmission line or an electric transmission line, unless the operator has consented in writing and the operator's representative is on site while the machine works.
Who hears it when somebody digs without a ticket
Virginia routes enforcement through the State Corporation Commission, the same body that regulates utilities, rather than through a trade board or a court in the first instance. Section 56-265.30 A gives the Commission the enforcement power. Under 20VAC5-309-20 any person may report a probable violation to the Commission's Division of Utility and Railroad Safety, in writing, by phone, by email or in person, and the report is due within 30 days of that person becoming aware of the circumstances.
A report does not go straight to a hearing. Under 20VAC5-309-40 A the staff may issue a warning letter to the person reported, issue an information letter to a county, city or town, enter settlement negotiations, or request a Rule to Show Cause order. A civil penalty follows only after a hearing on notice served at least 30 days ahead, under section 56-265.32 A, and that same subsection says the Commission may not impose civil penalties on any county, city, town or other political subdivision.
There is a standing stakeholder body inside that process. Section 56-265.31 A has the Commission appoint an advisory committee with seats for Commission staff, a utility operator, the notification center, an excavator, a municipality, the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Board for Contractors and an underground line locator, and among its duties is reviewing reports of violations and making recommendations to the Commission. It is part of the path, not the first step on it.
North Carolina uses a board built for the purpose. G.S. 87-129(a) establishes the Underground Damage Prevention Review Board, 15 members appointed by the Governor. It has to contact anyone a report is filed against within 15 working days. It determines the action or the penalty, and the statute names "training, education" ahead of money. Where the Board recommends a penalty, it is the Utilities Commission that issues the order, not the Board. An appeal runs to arbitration before the Utilities Commission within 30 days, and from there to superior court.
The penalty ceilings themselves sit in section 56-265.32 A and in G.S. 87-129(b1), and Virginia's is the higher of the two by a wide margin. Separate from any penalty, Virginia gives a damaged operator three times the cost to repair against an excavator who willfully failed to submit a locate request, provided that operator is a member of the notification center, with punitive damages capped at $10,000 in any single cause of action. Neither act is purely civil either, and both halves of that get printed wrong: North Carolina makes falsely claiming an emergency a Class 3 misdemeanor at G.S. 87-125(c), Virginia has no equivalent false emergency offense, and Virginia carries a separate criminal provision of its own at section 56-265.24:1.
What this page does not decide, and who does
Neither statute prints the paint colors. Both adopt the American Public Works Association code by reference, Virginia at section 56-265.21 in a single sentence and North Carolina at G.S. 87-121(a)(1), so a color chart is never quotable from either code and we will not print one we could not open at the source. What the colors mean, and which lines the free ticket never reaches, is on our page on who marks utilities before digging.
Two other things are site questions and we will not pretend otherwise. In Virginia, whether a particular operator serving your county is a member of the notification center decides whether the ticket counts as notice to it at all, and that is a question for Virginia 811 about your specific address. Where the public line ends and your private line begins, at the meter, the cleanout or the interface box, is a question about your lot, and a private locating contractor is who answers it. Neither statute sets a price for private locating and neither notification center publishes one, so we will not print a figure for it. That is a quote to get from the locating contractor for your site.
The building permit and the road entrance permit are separate questions with separate desks, and a locate ticket clears neither of them. The state level rules for those are on the Virginia permit guide and on the North Carolina permit page.
Numbers worth keeping: Virginia 811 at 811 or 1-800-552-7001, with the positive response line at 1-800-552-3120, and North Carolina 811 at 811 or 1-800-632-4949. Both services are free to the caller. North Carolina writes that into the statute at G.S. 87-119 and Virginia 811 states it on its own homeowner FAQ. The Virginia center also answers to Miss Utility, and the Commission's own damage prevention page uses both names.
Both acts were read at the statute for this page on September 11, 2026. Virginia's act was amended effective July 1, 2023 and North Carolina's rewrite took effect October 1, 2025. Both have changed recently, so treat anything here that carries a number as good on the date above and confirm it with the notification center before you plan a job around it.