Design verification
Potholing for design
Expose crossings at proposed boring, trenching, or tie-in points so the design engineer gets confirmed depth and offset — before mobilization, not after a strike.
Non-destructive digging
Find the line before the shovel does.
CEI's hydro excavation crews pothole, daylight, and expose live utilities with pressurized water and vacuum recovery — so what's marked on the plan matches what's actually in the ground, before anyone starts trenching, boring, or excavating.
The problem with blind digging
Locate tickets are a starting point, not a survey.
Sunshine 811 marks give you a general corridor. They do not give you exact depth, exact offset, or the abandoned service that never made it onto a record drawing. That gap is where mechanical excavators strike gas lines, cut fiber, and turn a two-hour crossing into a full shutdown with regulators on-site.
Hydro excavation closes the gap. High-pressure water breaks up soil, an industrial vacuum lifts the slurry into a debris tank, and the utility comes into view — untouched, uncut, and ready to be verified.
- Zero mechanical contact with gas, fiber, water, or electric
- Precise excavation footprint — inches instead of a trench box
- Clean spoils, contained on tarp or returned as backfill
- Traffic-friendly setup with truck staged clear of the work area
How CEI runs a hydro excavation
Water in, spoils out, utility exposed — with the truck staged where it belongs.
Our vac trucks stage curbside on a compact footprint. Hoses extend to the work area. The operator controls the wand from the surface, so no one is in the hole until the line is confirmed and safe.
Cut with water, not steel
The wand delivers a controlled, pressure-regulated stream that fractures soil, clay, and compacted fill without shock-loading whatever's underneath.
Vacuum lifts spoils out
A high-CFM vacuum pulls the slurry up the boom-arm and into a sealed debris tank — no muck in the street, no spoils pile crowding the work zone.
Verify, photograph, backfill
Every exposure gets measured, photographed, and (on your request) staked or flagged. Clean spoils can be returned as native backfill to keep restoration light.
Where hydro excavation earns its keep
Common CEI scopes.
Whether you're designing a horizontal bore, staking a new tie-in, or troubleshooting a service line that isn't where the drawings say, hydro excavation gets the ground truth.
Utility exposure
Daylighting for construction
Full daylighting runs to expose long stretches of parallel or crossing utilities before excavators, directional drills, or micro-tunnel equipment arrive on-site.
Tight-access work
Congested corridors & sensitive sites
Backhoes need swing room. Our vac truck doesn't. When the work is next to a building, live traffic, an airport apron, or a fiber trunk, hydro excavation is often the only method that gets approved.
What you get from every dig
A record of what's in the ground — not a guess.
Every hydro excavation scope CEI runs closes out with the same documentation package. It's the difference between "we potholed the crossing" and a deliverable your designer, permitting reviewer, or utility owner can actually rely on.
- Georeferenced photos of each exposed utility
- Measured depth-to-top and offset from a marked reference
- Pipe or conduit type, apparent size, and observed condition
- Field sketch or as-exposed markup returned same-day
- Backfill and restoration to your spec — cold patch, flowable fill, or hand-tamped native
Frequently asked
Questions we get before the truck rolls.
How is this different from a locate ticket?
A locate ticket paints a general corridor on the ground. It does not tell you the depth of the line, the exact horizontal offset, whether the line is where the record drawing says, or whether there are abandoned or unmarked services alongside it. Hydro excavation gives you an eyes-on-metal answer at the exact point that matters — the crossing, the tie-in, the bore path.
Won't the water damage the utility we're exposing?
No. The pressure and stand-off distance are dialed in to fracture soil, not cut coatings or damage jacket materials. That's the whole point — hydro excavation is the industry-accepted method for exposing live gas, fiber, electric, and water without shock-loading them.
Can you work near active traffic or a live intersection?
Yes. Our vac truck stages outside the work zone and the operator runs a hose into the excavation, which keeps the equipment footprint small and MOT plans clean. We coordinate with your traffic control team or bring our own for smaller scopes.
What restoration do you handle?
Standard scope is native backfill and either a cold patch or a flowable-fill cap, per your spec. If you need permanent asphalt or concrete restoration bundled in, we'll price that as a separate line item or coordinate with your paving sub.
Do you provide as-built documentation?
Yes. Photos, depth and offset measurements, pipe/conduit ID, and a field sketch of what was exposed at each location — packaged in the format your designer or utility owner needs.
Can hydro excavation be bundled into a larger CEI scope?
Often — especially with CIPP mainline crossings, manhole rehab tie-ins, or cleaning & CCTV programs where a service lateral or crossing needs to be confirmed before rehab. One crew, one PM, one closeout package.
Have a crossing you can't afford to guess on?
Send us the location, the utilities you need exposed, and the timeline. We'll return a scoped hydro excavation quote with truck day-rate, per-hole pricing, and documentation format.