Apps for land survey - Property lines

[dodge man]

Never really heard of the term "construction survey". We do construction staking but this is where we stake parking lots, building, highways etc and don't worry about boundaries.

When looking at deeds and surveys, each situation is unique, kind of hard to give any kind of info that is usefull over the internet.

When people call and want their conrers found, no matter what the price, I tell them you have to put a value on my services. They can be expensive and it not like its something you can lay your hand on when I'm done like a new car. You have to decide if its worth hiring someone to do it for you. There is nothing wrong with you measuring and trying to find your corners, but you also suffer the consaquences if you are wrong. If you are looking for advice on the internet I'd say you don't have the necessary skills. Good luck.

 

[California]

When people call and want their conrers found, no matter what the price, I tell them you have to put a value on my services. They can be expensive and it not like its something you can lay your hand on when I'm done like a new car.

How about a surveyor going back and locating a pin set by the same surveyor 20 years prior? Is un-assisted satellite GPS close enough to make this simple? (I have one back corner clearly pinned but can't find a pin for the other back corner in heavy brush.). Is a couple of hours of billed professional time, sufficient to research the surveyor's prior records then go stake an existing pin?

 

[dodge man]

I will rarely go out and just find one pin set by another surveyor. How do I know he did a good job the first time? There are a couple surveyors I would trust and do that though. 20 years ago was also not a sure thing it was done with GPS. Bad things happen to pins also. People move them, what looks like a corner might be a random piece of junk. If you find several then you know how they fit.

One thing to understand is that GPS doesn’t work well in trees, if it all. So if there is heavy tree cover you can’t use GPS. I only use survey grade GPS, anything else is worthless for my work.

 

[Oldoak]

I will rarely go out and just find one pin set by another surveyor. How do I know he did a good job the first time? There are a couple surveyors I would trust and do that though.

That is just the point I was about to bring up. A lot of surveying had been done in my area over the years (rural farm and woodland) being broken down into smaller acreages. Several times it has come up where even surveys conducted by professional, registered surveyors didn't match. Who's to know whose survey was right?

I'm not really asking a question. Just throwing out what I have actually seen happen.

 

[Jstpssng]

That is just the point I was about to bring up. A lot of surveying had been done in my area over the years (rural farm and woodland) being broken down into smaller acreages. Several times it has come up where even surveys conducted by professional, registered surveyors didn't match. Who's to know whose survey was right?

I'm not really asking a question. Just throwing out what I have actually seen happen.

There is a point when dealing with old deeds when surveying stops being a science and turns into an art. What continually frustrates me is when I've been respotting a line for a day or more; then suddenly find a new surveyor's pin which is 40 or more feet off the line which has been accepted for years. I will generally accept his findings, as he is the one with the license; yet I also am accountable to our clients for my time; and the simple courtesy of a letter when a major discrepancy is found would be nice. When I was working for myself respotting property lines I sometimes found myself eating a day or more of work/expenses, whereas had the surveyor taken the time to notify his client's abutter- AKA, my client- that a discrepancy was found, it would have save me some money. Unlike a surveyor, the nature of my job didn't allow me to build that into my bids.

 

[dodge man]

Surveying is like every profession, there are good ones and bad ones. Surveyors call multiple corners driven in one spot pin cushions. They drive me nuts. They are often done under the mistaken line of thinking that a distance in a deed should hold no matter what. Say someone has a deed that say 200 feet wide. What do you do if you find a pin at 199 feet? Drive a new pin? Except the one you find? Give up? I normally would except the pin if it fits the adjoiners deed.

Sometimes deeds don’t fit together perfectly either. On paper they leave a gap or create an overlap. How do you resolve that?

I will say as a matter of fact I don’t contact the neighbors if I find a problem after I’m done. I am not my clients advocate, I don’t favor them because they hired me but I do advise them on the course of action they can take if there is a problem. My job is not to go around talking to adjoiners unless I think they can show me corners.

I have learned some people get very emotional over boundary problems. I have seen people I consider reasonable go off the deep end. They usually end up in court, paying a lawyer a lot of money, standing in front of a judge who would like to throw them out of his court.

 

[bcp]

When my area was divided into 2.5 to 5 acre properties, probably in the 1960's, corners were apparently done by tape and compass. Then people built things. My NW corner moved about 25ft E and 10ft N when surveyed. The whole east line moved the 25ft. The neighbor who lost the property at my line gained the same on his east line, etc.

One property line nearby now has a zig-zag to go around a garage built to the first lines.

Bruce

 

[California]

When my area was divided into 2.5 to 5 acre properties, probably in the 1960's, corners were apparently done by tape and compass. Then people built things. My NW corner moved about 25ft E and 10ft N when surveyed. The whole east line moved the 25ft. The neighbor who lost the property at my line gained the same on his east line, etc.

Yeah. My eleven acres and the neighbors' similar parcels were subdivided off a much larger orchard in 1905. A few years ago the easement that comes in a quarter mile to reach my place got fenced down to barely wide enough for a harvest truck, as the orchard on the far side of the easement was torn out and replaced by a fenced high-end vineyard. Legally they could have fenced off most of the width of the easement.

And - that easement boundary must have been laid out by compass. When the parcel alongside and beyond me was sold in 2005 a survey showed my far corner was several ft inside the fence of the (different) vineyard across the lane. That survey revealed my line of mature trees all down the quarter mile mutual boundary with the neighbor beside me, has my trees planted right at my property's boundary - so the harvest haul path beyond is all on his side. So far I've convince the successive owners to not fence our mutual boundary because its to our mutual benefit to cross the line to turn around when discing or spraying. But its inevitable that parcel will eventually be sold to a weekender who thinks he needs more security and a boundary fence will make my last row of trees un-maintainable, or worse, he may butcher the quarter mile of trees to get his fence on the line. The realtors who have sold that property twice recently, both insisted on a fence there. I've so far been able to talk both new owners out of doing it, I told them the ambiance of looking out and seeing unbroken orchard for some distance was part of the charm of what they bought.

Country living entails constant change when you least expect it.