(Radio Iowa) – Today’s date is August 11th, or in numerical terms, eight-eleven. That means it’s time for Eight One One Day which is celebrated as a reminder by Tyler Jass at Iowa One Call as an important telephone number which homeowners need to remember. “The number to call is 811 to have any locates marked before you dig,” Jass says. “It is the law to call 811 at least 48 hours before any digging occurs, including Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays.”

The call and the service are free, but if you skip the call and damage a buried utility, you could face fines and expensive repair costs. Jass says the call center for Iowa One Call logged more than three-and-a-half million locate requests last year. “So, as you can tell, the construction industry has not been impacted by COVID,” Jass says. “If anything, it has gone up and we are seeing the results of that.”

Homeowners should contact Iowa One Call whenever they plan to excavate, whether it’s to put up a fence, plant a tree or for a large project like a deck or a home addition.