LEHI VAC TRUCK HYDRO-EXCAVATION — NON-DESTRUCTIVE DIGGING

A vac truck — properly called a hydro-excavation or hydrovac truck — uses a high-pressure water wand to break up soil into slurry, then a 15-inch industrial vacuum hose to suck the slurry into a 10-13 cubic yard debris tank on the truck. The result is a precision hole with intact, undamaged utilities at the bottom. No blade, no teeth, no tiger-tooth bucket risking a $40,000 fiber cut at a Silicon Slopes campus.

The reason vac trucks matter in Lehi is the combination of two factors. First: bench-side cobble-clay soil that makes blind digging miserable and dangerous near gas, fiber, or live electrical. Hard clay with cobble rock — same stuff that slows a mini-ex to 15-20 feet of trench per day — is also the stuff that makes a bucket strike unpredictable. Water at 2,500-3,500 PSI breaks soil cleanly, slides around pipes, and exposes utilities without touching them.

Second: utility density. Lehi master-planned communities and tech campuses run higher private-side utility density than older neighborhoods. A typical Traverse Mountain front yard has irrigation main, gas service, electric primary, secondary lighting, smart-home wiring, and pool-heater stub-out under the same 4-foot envelope. A Silicon Slopes office campus parking lot has fiber, primary electric, fire water, domestic water, gas, security conduit, and storm drain in the same 5-foot working depth. Bucket excavation in either environment is too risky. Hydro-excavation is the right tool.

Where we use the vac truck in Lehi

Daylighting buried utilities on tech campuses. Adobe, Vivint, IM Flash, and the Silicon Slopes office cluster all have routine utility upgrade scopes — fiber expansion, fire suppression line installs, domestic water service upgrades. Before any directional bore or excavation near a known utility crossing, we daylight the line to visually confirm depth, direction, and pipe material. Blue Stakes 811 marks locations on the surface but can be off by 18-24 inches in dense campus environments. Daylighting removes the guess.

Potholing for directional drilling. HDD contractors require entry and exit potholes to verify grade and elevation of the bore. Common at Thanksgiving Point office park expansions and across the Silicon Slopes campus footprint. Our vac trucks cut 2x2 or 3x3 foot potholes to bore depth without disturbing surrounding utilities.

Pool heater and ADU gas stub-out exposure. Traverse Mountain pool installations, ADU gas tie-ins, outdoor-kitchen builds — all need the gas stub-out exposed safely so Dominion Energy can tap. We hydro-excavate around the meter to the stub-out, document the run, and leave the hole open for the utility crew.

Deep catch basin and manhole cleanouts. Thanksgiving Point retail, Silicon Slopes parking lots, Lehi HOA storm drains — all accumulate sediment over years. One pass with the vac truck empties what a shovel crew would take a day to move.

Slot trenching near live utilities. Where conventional excavation would risk strikes, we cut a precision slot trench with the vac truck — 12 inches wide, full utility depth, zero blade contact. Used routinely around buried gas mains, primary electrical, and live fiber on Lehi tech campuses.

Subgrade exploration for contractors. General contractors building additions, pool excavations, ADUs, or structural footings in Lehi yards use vac truck pothole grids to map unknown utilities before construction starts. Particularly valuable in 10-15 year old master-planned-community properties where developer as-builts didn't capture everything.

Emergency spill response. Chemical spills into containment, flooded basements needing bulk water evacuation, industrial vault flooding at tech campuses. Debris tanks rated for liquid loads up to 3,500 gallons.

Why the Lehi context matters

Winter is the complication for bench-side homes and tech-campus parking lots. Frost depth in Lehi is 30 inches — December through March the top 2.5 feet of soil is frozen solid. Bench-side Lehi runs colder than valley floor by 5-8 degrees, which extends frozen-ground season by a few weeks. A conventional excavator hammers through it. A hydrovac with heated water handles it cleanly — we run 180°F water and frozen soil breaks apart within minutes. This is a capability most dry-vac or cold-water rigs don't have, and it's why our trucks work every month of the year, not just April through October.

Cobble is the other Lehi-specific factor. Softball-size rocks in clay matrix don't vacuum through standard boom hoses on bench-side jobs. Our trucks run 15-inch debris hoses with reinforced walls, 350 HP blowers, and rock ejection systems — enough to pull cobble up 30 feet of boom without clogging. Lighter dry-vac units built for California sandy loam get stuck in the first hour on a Traverse Mountain or Skye Estates jobsite.

Pricing model

Vac truck work is hourly, not flat-rate, because no two jobsites are the same. We bill in portal-to-portal hours — truck leaves the 1490 N 300 E yard, works the job, dumps at approved disposal, returns — and the rate includes truck, operator, support tech, and dumping fees where applicable. Most residential daylighting jobs are 2-4 hours. Commercial pothole grids on tech campuses run 6-10 hours. Scheduled recurring work (HOAs, property managers, Silicon Slopes facilities teams) gets contract pricing with discounted hourly rates.

Blue Stakes 811 locates are mandatory even for vac truck work — the law doesn't care which tool is doing the digging. We file on every job and wait the full 48 business hour period before arriving on site. Locating a utility incorrectly and striking it with water is still a strike, still a fine, still a rebuild.

Membership discount

Residential and small-commercial customers on the Quality Service Club — $79/year — get 15% off vac truck hourly rates along with every other Valley service. For recurring commercial accounts running 10+ hours per month (Silicon Slopes campuses, Thanksgiving Point property management, Traverse Mountain HOA), we write dedicated service agreements that beat standard hourly rate and include guaranteed dispatch windows.