Cost to Survey 80 Acres

[newbury]

<snip> The lawyer I hired assured me I was buying the stated acres <snip>

And what would have been your recourse if the lawyer was wrong?

 

[Kenneth in Texas]

$450 2 years ago for a 7 acre tract, all 4 corners staked. There was a wide variance between surveyors i called, lowest was $450 and highest was $1200 and others were in the middle, personally i just cant see BIG money for a survey but then again they will get whatever someone is willing to pay i suppose.

 

[JamesHW]

$ 7,000 quoted for my 80 acres around 10 years ago when we were contemplating a development project that was subsequently abandoned. We have basically what is left almost a 90 acre parcel of which my mother sold 5 frontage lots ranging from a 1/2 acre to 2 1/2 acres over the years. So in addition to the original 4 corners a surveyor has 12 extra corners to deal with on the 5 lots and two pipe stems left between them for access. The back corners have galvanized pipes, but all the small lots have rebar that is hard to find. Also there a 50 foot deep ravine & stream traversing the SE corner making the project more difficult.

Over the years I have overlaid property boundaries onto aerial shots of the property trying to figure out exactly where the property line falls in relation to the terrain with some success. Not a replacement for a well blazed survey, but sufficient for my purposes. This got a lot easier when Google Earth Pro was made free last year that allows me to zoom in on the property lines and provides coordinates for all of the borders. I also have a app named Topo Maps on my smart phone that has been helpful in locating the corners when I get turned around in the woods. Yes, not accurate to the foot, but puts me in spitting distance of any points on the map where I want to go and helpful for posting the property.

 

[JamesHW]

OK, I checked and your plats do not have the boundaries in Google Earth. But it is a much better aerial view as you can see from this screenshot of where the two pieces intersect on the eastern side:

 

[kevin37b]

Mowers can find them! Maybe an 1 1/4 shaft with a sticking up about a foot, with a 4 inch gear on it. I've seen lots of them.

Bruce

Love it . When you hear the big bang , it is time to turn ?

 

[mapper]

With regards to Dan's posting, GPS positions from a standalone unit are only as good as the signals they are receiving at best a few meters, if you are under or near any sort of overhead obstruction, including trees without leaves, the signals can be blocked or a condition called multipath can result. When doing high accuracy surveys one receiver needs to be on a known point and the other can roam to take measurements. There are services available that operate receivers continuously now that one can use via cell connection to a survey grade system for real-time positioning (RTN/RTK) operations or the data can be downloaded for post processing for higher accuracy work.
Another poster mentioned using aerial photos from the county with his property lines overlayed. One must use a great deal of caution with this, if the imagery is uncorrected it can be off by a considerable amount, How much depends a lot on how much terrain relief their is the steeper it is the greater the error. I expect however that the imagery is probably ortho-corrected. Ortho correction accuracy is dependent on two things, proper positioning of the raw photograph in space at the moment of exposure and an accurate model of the terrain to correct the raw image to. The cost of producing or to images is directly related to the resulting accuracy. Most of the countless work that I was involved with over the past few years specified a medium level accuracy, +/- 5'-10'.
I hope my rather long winded explanations help a bit.

 

[dmccarty]

With regards to Dan's post about using 2 dedicated GPS units. Are they automotive or hand held units or land survey quality worth any where from $10,000 to $30,000 each . Also if they are survey grade, there are numerous settings to program in and one has to be experienced in surveying and the use of this type of GPS to get a correct reading and sometimes due to other variables they can still give a wrong position.
Al

These are hand held units, and at this point older ones, though I doubt it matters much given trying to locate property lines in the woods. Trying to find a property line, especially in the woods, with normal hand held units is problematic at best. The other problem is how does one know they actual latitude and longitude of a given point on the line? Now, we did some work so we were able to load a county supplied plot onto one of the newer GPSes. That is great but with the inaccuracy of a "cheap" handheld GPS are you really on the line or not? Maybe the GPS says you are on the line but you are really not. How does one know if it is a false positive? Is the county plot even accurate?

No way would I use the results from a "cheap" hand held GPS to put up a fence or anything of value. Nor would I cut down a tree based on the same GPS. A surveyor is very cheap compared to a mistake.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

I'm reading this thread with great interest as I'm getting ready to get one of my boundaries surveyed. I think the corner pins are already in place, but the South boundary of our property is full of honeysuckle and brush so I'm wanting to get it done while the leaves are down. I spoke to a local surveying/engineering firm and they figured it would be about $3-400 to do the boundary and $500ish to confirm all the corners. I'm going to have them mark the boundary through the brush every 50 feet or so (maybe even closer) so it will be easy to see.

My concern is that our neighbor seems to be encroaching on to what I think is our property line. Plus, I don't want to encroach on his property as we cut some trails through the woods. I've looked at the aerial photos with the lot lines marked on them on the County's website and the neighbor's driveway by their house seems to be really close to the line. They've since widened the drive at that point. I do understand that the County's site's renderings might not be totally accurate.

My question to y'all is this - what should I use marking the line after the surveyor puts in the wooden stakes? Rebar? (will it last?) Steel rod from the scrap yard? I want something that I can drive into the ground and even put it a few inches below the surface so if the wooden stakes get removed I still have something to find the line.

Sorry - hopefully this isn't too much of a derail of the thread!!

You be adding to the thread. :thumbsup:

15 years ago we had one property line surveyed and it cost about $900. The surveyors had to go down the 800ish line and find some corners. We have quite a few corner pins on the inside of the property and they checked quite a few of them. I would guess they had to cut a trail about 800ish feet in the woods and the other pins/corners the referenced was another 1500ish feet so a good 2300ish feet. 10 years ago we had to have the house lot surveyed and which I think cost $750? They had to find corners and such so they marked around 1500ish feet in total with one long 800ish line.

In both survey's they surveyors put a pin in between the corners ON HIGH ground so that one could see each corner from that pin. I wish I had had more pins put in along the line and been able to keep the line clear. These pins were round pipes about 18 inches long driven in some cases below grade and in other cases left above grade. I wish I had them put in a bit every 50-100 feet. You want the surveyor to place the pins since the pins will then be right on the line or at a known offset. This is not something you want to do if you want to know the exact line location.

The second survey was a bank requirement to build the house.

The first survey was because a house was being built and it was obvious that they did not know the location of the property lines. Why did they not know the line location? Because the husband had pulled down the flaggings.. I knew the septic field, the ONLY septic field for that house, was along our line and given how the house was sited and they had pulled down the flagging, I knew the septic field would be built on our land. So we payed for a survey ASAP. The owners were not happy about this which tells you something.... They were angry with us, did not say thank you, nor offer to pay for the survey they should have bought in the first place. That survey was expensive but worth every cent and cheaper in the long run but not just because of the septic field. That survey saved us even more money in the future...

Years later, a new owner decided to put up a fence. Said owner does not know the line location even though I had walked it with him after he had bought the house.... Nor did he ask me prior to starting the fence build. They started building the fence and it is real obvious they are going to eventually build WAY over the property line. We have a chat and that middle pin the surveyors had placed was worth it's weight in GOLD. :thumbsup:

That $900 survey was expensive but it saved us many thousands of dollars in legal fees and much angst. The survey allowed us to nip some problems in the bud before they became very serious.

In our area, property lines can be hashed on larger trees. Two horizontal hashes in the tree says they line is nearby. Three horizontal hashes indicate a corner is nearby. Corners usually have three tree marked and somewhere between the three trees is the corner.

Later,
Dan

 

[dodge man]

I'm a land surveyor and the OP has a very fair price for the survey assuming it will be good work. Unless I had surveyed recently, it would probably be more.

I always see some scary comments in these threads about using your phone or some kind of aerial map. The people that say this is unrealable are correct. There just isn't a short cut or a do it yourself method.

 

[dodge man]

I'm a land surveyor and the OP has a very fair price for the survey assuming it will be good work. Unless I had surveyed recently, it would probably be more.

I always see some scary comments in these threads about using your phone or some kind of aerial map. The people that say this is unrealable are correct. There just isn't a short cut or a do it yourself method.