TL;DR
A service lateral is the underground equivalent of a service drop: buried conductors running from the utility's transformer or handhole to the meter base on the house. Depending on the utility, ownership of the trench and conductors may split at the property line or the meter, which determines who pays when a fault develops.
What it means
A service lateral is the underground equivalent of a service drop: buried conductors running from the utility's transformer or handhole to the meter base on the house. Depending on the utility, ownership of the trench and conductors may split at the property line or the meter, which determines who pays when a fault develops. Locating it through 811 before any digging, fence posts, or tree planting is mandatory, since a shovel strike on one is both lethal and expensive.
Where it sits in the glossary
Service lateral is part of the Trade jargon group inside the ProFix Directory glossary. Browse every term in this category from the glossary index.
Why Ohio homeowners should know it
This is a term Ohio homeowners encounter when reading contractor quotes, hiring paperwork, or inspection reports. Understanding it well enough to ask one good follow-up question is usually all the protection a homeowner needs.
ProFix Directory keeps definitions short on the index page and saves the longer context — Ohio-specific rules, where the term comes from, and which ProFix tools touch it — for these per-term pages so the term is easy to cite and easy to share.
ProFix tools that touch this term
See also
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