If I were your neighbor I wouldn't be thrilled with you moving a utility box further onto my property.

Generally those get put where they get put when the homes are built as part of the development (or when the utilities were undergrounded, assuming they are), and as it's a utility that serves YOU I'm not sure there's any reason you should expect to get it wholly off your property. Private utilities are also rather notorious for putting things "about" where they go. You likely have an easement for the utility on your property anyway, as they need access for maintenance. Only way to know for sure is to look at your lot plat. We have a utility and drainage easement entirely around our property ranging from 5-10 feet.

Regarding 2"...did you survey it and you know for sure it's 2" over? Without an actual survey it's impossible to know for sure where property lines are. Regardless, I don't understand why you can't just inset your border. 2" is nothing. You also can't put irrigation ON the property line anyway - usually the heads are set a few inches inside or so, so you're not digging up your neighbor's property to install. I guess I'm just struggling to understand what the issue is.

Does cox have the same rights as the city, allowing them to place their boxes wherever they choose?

Cable companies have agreements with municipalities to place their equipment in the public right-of-way; it's part of their franchise. The first thing to find out is if the box is in fact within the easement, and you might be able to ascertain that from your deed. Or you can contact your local municipality and ask them. But as anj_p says, 2" seems like very little to quibble over, especially as you're a Cox customer.

Utility boxes with an unfortunate placement - typically in the front yard - are a fact of life. Moving them is not going to achieve much of anything (a couple inches but still in front yard??) and at a big expense. And disguising them or attempting to only draws unnecessary attention to them. It is not a very satisfactory answer I know but best to just ignore them as best you can.

btw, if the box is on your property (or your neighbors) you can be sure there IS an easement involved. Utilities cannot plant them willy-nilly on private property without one.

@gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9) a fact of life, true - but better than overhead wires everywhere! IMO overhead wires are way worse unless you have an alley they run down. But they're also more susceptible to outages during storms. I'd take a utility box in the front yard any day over overhead lines.

That being said - we picked our lot in our development knowing that it would not have a utility box in it.

Anj_p - we measured ourselves. It’s actually 3 inches over the property line. It may seem trivial, but it’s not. We have a paver path that leads from the driveway to the front door and backyard. The edge of the pavers are on the property line and so they line up with the front yard lawn edge sll the way down. We want to do a 3ft border fence along the left side of our front yard and along the edge of the curb. It’s not possible to go around the box or lose 3 inches, because it won’t line up with the edge of the pavers in the side-yard.

The sprinklers are already positioned in the corners of our yard.

Our neighbor’s house is being used as a rental. She just had gravel dumped on her side, she doesn’t want the hassle. We helped her with it as we had a crew here doing some landscaping for us. Our sprinklers do end up spraying her side unfortunately, but we take care of her weeds. The border fence is really to keep everything contained, prevent her side getting wet, and prevent dogs constantly walking across our yard. i would like to grow some vines on it too.

Gardengal48 - the 3 inches are needed, as I explained in my comment above.

Gardengal ”btw, if the box is on your property (or your neighbors) you can be sure there IS an easement involved. Utilities cannot plant them willy-nilly on private property without one.”

I’ve read many stories about boxes showing up in yards when there was no easement, and the internet company had to come out to move them. I’m not saying the same likely applies here, but i wouid like to know for sure that we have an easement, so we can familiarize ourselves with our land.

Anj_p - true. i would never buy a home with overhead wires. it’s always been one of my prerequisites! If your tree grows close to them, they will butcher the tree however they choose as they have the right of way.

Thanks Bookwoman. We’re looking into that now. We’ve never had an issue with the box, in all the years we’ve lived here, but now we’re making changes to the landscaping, it’s causing a problem with a fence that needs to run down that side. There’s no way to go around it. The only way would be to put a post on the left side and right side of the box, which would look really ugly.

You need to get a survey. Your measurements are not reliable, and it's possible you have your pavers on your neighbor's property (if previous owners didn't get a survey before they set their pavers, it's anyone's guess). You'd need one anyway to put in a fence.

Regardless, I'm still not understanding why you can't just bump your fence around the utility box. Is it because you don't want to lose a tiny portion of your yard? Looks-wise no one will be able to tell. I guess I'd need pictures but I'm still not understanding the issue.

You said you couldn't do irrigation but you already have irrigation?

Anj_p - we recently put the pavers in, so we had the property line checked before we hired the company to install them.

The irrigation is done, but we have to make changes, to add in bubblers where the vines will be planted.

A fence requires posts. How do you go around a utility box? It would require installing a post to the left and a post to the right of the box, to support the fence, which would look ugly.

The front lawn edge lines up with our pavers. I want the fence to line up too.

In my area fences have to be wholly within your property. Ours is about 6" from our property line. So make sure you can even do a property line fence. This varies with every jurisdiction so yours may be different. Our city also has requirements that the nice side has to face neighbors. We did a black picket fence so it doesn't have a "nice" side.

And, yes, fence posts are spaced about every 8'. The two posts by the utility cabinet would just be inset 3" or whatever to go around the utility box. If you don't have to put the nice side toward your neighbors you might not even have to move them out that much.

Alternatively you can angle the entire fence from your pavers to the front and you won't see any offset.

Without a photo to illustrate the situation, any advice you receive is just speculation based on a not very thorough description. Can you post a photo of what you are trying to describe? And your location?