Florida 811 (Sunshine 811): How It Works and What It Won’t Mark
Florida 811, run by Sunshine 811 (legally, Sunshine State One Call of Florida), is the free notification service every excavator and homeowner must contact before digging anywhere in the state. One call or online ticket, and the utility companies that own buried lines near your dig site send a locator to mark them at no charge. It is the single cheapest step in any excavation, and skipping it is against Florida law.
This guide covers how the Sunshine 811 process actually works, what the law requires, what gets marked for free, and the one thing most people learn the hard way: the long list of underground lines that 811 will never mark.
What is Florida 811?
Sunshine 811 is Florida's one call center for underground utility damage prevention. It does not locate anything itself. It is a notification hub: you tell it when and where you plan to dig, and it notifies every member utility with buried facilities in that area. Each utility owner (or its locating contractor) then marks the approximate location of its own lines with paint and flags, following the APWA uniform color code.
The service is completely free for homeowners and excavators. Utility operators fund it, because a marked line is far cheaper than a cut one.
Is calling 811 the law in Florida?
Yes. Chapter 556 of the Florida Statutes, the Underground Facility Damage Prevention and Safety Act, requires anyone who digs to contact Sunshine 811 at least two full business days before excavation begins. That applies to professional excavators and to homeowners planting a tree or setting a fence post. There is no depth exemption: Florida law does not say "only if you dig deeper than X inches." If a shovel, auger, or trencher breaks ground, the law applies.
Digging without a valid ticket exposes you to liability for the full repair, plus fines and, for gas and hazardous lines, civil penalties. If a strike causes injury or an outage, the costs run into thousands of dollars before the first lawyer gets involved.
How to create a Sunshine 811 ticket
- Contact 811. Call 811 (or 800-432-4770), or create a free online ticket at sunshine811.com. Ticket entry takes about ten minutes.
- Describe the dig site. Address, the part of the property you will excavate, the type of work, and the start date.
- Wait two full business days. Weekends and holidays do not count. Utility owners must respond by marking their lines or reporting "clear."
- Check the ticket status. Before digging, confirm every utility has responded. Florida tickets are valid for 30 days; renew if the job runs longer.
- Respect the marks. Hand dig within 24 inches of any marked line. Machine excavation inside that tolerance zone is how most strikes happen.
What happens after you call
Each member utility dispatches its own locator to your property. Over a day or two you will see paint lines and small flags appear: red for electric, yellow for gas, orange for telecom, blue for potable water, green for sewer, purple for reclaimed water. The marks show the approximate horizontal position of each line, with a legal tolerance of 24 inches on either side. They do not tell you depth. Ever. If you need depth, that is a job for ground penetrating radar or soft-dig potholing.
Curious what each color and abbreviation means in detail? See our full guide to utility marking colors and the APWA color code.
What Florida 811 marks, and what it won't
Here is the limit of the free service: utility companies only mark the lines they own, which typically end at the meter, the property line, or the service point. Everything past that point is a private facility, and 811 does not touch it.
| Marked by 811 (public) | Never marked by 811 (private) |
|---|---|
| Electric service to your meter | Power from the meter to a pool, dock, gate, or outbuilding |
| Gas main and service to the meter | Gas lines to a pool heater, generator, or outdoor kitchen |
| Water main to the meter | Irrigation and sprinkler systems, wells, water to guest houses |
| Sewer main in the street | Your sewer lateral, septic tank and drain field |
| Telecom trunk lines | Landscape lighting, private data conduit, camera wiring |
On a typical Florida commercial site, well over half the buried lines are private. On residential property with a pool, the ratio is often worse. That is why serious excavators pair the free 811 ticket with private utility locating before breaking ground. We wrote a separate guide on exactly what 811 will not locate and who is responsible for it.
Do I need to call 811 for small jobs like tilling or planting?
Legally, yes, if you disturb the soil. Practically, the shallow utilities are the ones a garden project hits: fiber and cable are often buried barely a foot down, and gas services in older neighborhoods can sit shallower than code. Tilling a yard, planting shrubs, or driving landscape edging are all common strike scenarios in Sunshine 811's damage reports. The ticket is free and takes ten minutes. Make the call.
What if I hit a line anyway?
- Any gas line: stop, do not restart equipment, move upwind, and call 911 and the gas operator from a safe distance. Even a nicked coating must be reported.
- Electric: assume the line is live. Keep everyone away and call the utility.
- Water, sewer, telecom: call the owner immediately. Never bury damage, even cosmetic scrapes. A weakened line that fails months later is still traced back to your dig.
811 is step one. It was never the whole answer.
Sunshine 811 is free, legally required, and genuinely effective at protecting public utilities. But it marks only public lines, shows only approximate position, and tells you nothing about depth or the private half of what is under your site. Professional excavators in Florida treat it as the floor, not the ceiling, of damage prevention.
Very Best Utilities covers the rest: private utility locating, GPR scanning for non-conductive pipe, and full-site underground utility locating anywhere in Florida. Request a locate and we can usually be on site within days, often same-day for urgent work.