A Marshalltown business has invested $400,000 in state-of-the-art equipment designed to make excavating buried utilities safer, accurate and cost effective.

Mark Stevens, of Marshalltown, opened Hydrovac Excavation Services, LLC in January and recently purchased a Hydro-Excavator, a large, multi-purpose truck.

It works this way: Pressurized water and air are used to simultaneously excavate and remove soil at a controlled rate.

“The soil and water slurry are picked up by an 8-inch tube to a truck-mounted debris tank,” Stevens said. “The process allows for quick, clean, and precise removal of soil which requires less backfill, less labor force, less restoration and less environmental impact than conventional digging methods.”

A controlled flow water stream allows for surgeon-like accuracy.

With 25 years experience in the trenching business, Stevens knows that traditional methods for excavating around buried utilities calls for shortcuts, specifically, workers using shovels digging out and around the utility lines, and sometimes descending into trenches to do more excavation.

“Workers using shovels have damaged utility lines,” Stevens said. “And more often than not, such incidents results in serious injury and sometimes death. More than 40 percent of pipeline system leaks and ruptures are caused by damage from an outside force. Hydro-excavation is a safe and efficient way to avoid accidental line damage and trench cave-ins.”

Canada mandates hydro-excavation be used in the excavation or installation of underground utilities.

Petrochemical plants and others in that country discovered that due to cold weather and permafrost, using heated water made hydro-excavation the only viable option to excavate year ’round.

Any business making a $400,000 investment in equipment wants it to pay for itself and enhance profitability sooner than later.

And a new business, like Stevens’, might be under the gun to see results almost immediately.

However, Stevens said he is convinced he is meeting a market in utility line excavation which is not being addressed.

He said he has not had the opportunity to use the Hydro-Vac in central Iowa but expects that to happen soon.

“Fairfield is the closest place to Marshalltown that I’ve used the equipment,” Stevens said. “We don’t have any ethanol plants in the area, and those are facilities where I’ve used the equipment.”

Hydrovac Excavation Services LLC is located at 1801 Iowa Ave. West. Contact 641-752-2949 or hydroexcavationsservicesllc.com.