Warning tapes have become a valuable investment for accurate location and preventing damage to costly underground utility installations. When installed properly, these warning tapes avoid deep digging when locating utilities such as electrical lines, gas pipelines, and communication cables and prevents damage, service interruptions, or personnel injury. Warning tape comes in handy to ensure proper digging and marking of the ground while alerting workers about the underlying utilities.

What are detectable warning tapes?

Now that you know what warning tapes are let’s understand what detectable warning tapes are all about. Detectable underground warning tapes help locate, detect, identify, and protect the buried water, gas, telecommunications, and sewer lines. Detectable warning tapes come in different sizes and colors, denoting the cables that lie beneath.

You can customize them for various widths, usually 3 inches to 6 inches. You can choose the width you use based on its size and how deeply it will be buried along with the underground utility. 

The detectable warning tapes locate the buried non-metallic pipes. They consist of an alum detectable underground Tapeinum foil that makes it easy to identify them with a metal detector. When properly installed, they eliminate the possibility of a catastrophic digging accident that can impact human lives or damage the costly underground utility.

With a metal detector, you can quickly and accurately locate the utilities so that you know where to dig. Even if the underground tape isn’t visible to the human eye, the metal detector will catch the foil cover and let you know what lies beneath. 

 What type of detectable warning tape should you look for?

The underground detectable warning tape is formulated for extended covert usage. These are resistant to acids, alkalis, other destructive agents typically encountered in soil and rodents. The imprinted warning message is encased to prevent ink deterioration and allow for total reflectivity to the human eye. 

So, look for an industrial detectable warning tape with excellent flexibility, no adhesives, and printed with a cautionary message. The following are some colors you must consider:

• Red tape for electric or high voltage 
• Orange tape for the fiber and telecommunication lines 
• Yellow tape for the gas, oil, and water pipelines
• Blue tape for portable or drinking water 
• Green video for sewer, storm drain, and force mains 

 Why is detectable warning tape essential?

Underground detectable warning tape lets you locate and prevent any damage to valuable utility installations. When excavating, workers must first identify the utilities to avoid costly mishaps and severe injuries to the crew. More so, it saves you from indulging in high repair costs, fines, and outages. As per reports, the lack of any underground detectable warning tape results in damages every 6 minutes. 

In time, using detectable warning tape in your construction projects lets others find the utilities easily so that you can avoid an expensive and dangerous event from happening. detectable warning tape helps identify the right cables, fibers, lines, and optical cables buried underground.