Surveyor question (goes along with HVAC!)

[Richard]

Since this is only moderately related to HVAC I figured new thread.

I have some kind of plot map. This was used (evidently) when the land was deeded over to my wife.

Just to keep this story simple... my house sits on a square piece of land. The gravel driveway you see when you drive up is NOT my actual/legal driveway. It's the gravel road that has been used for driving around on the farm for 30 years. We DO have an easement for using this.

My legal driveway (for simple conversation) extends out the SIDE of my house and extends through the woods. My legal driveway is 25' long and is evidently about 1 1/4 acres of net land. I'm not sure how long that makes it but that gives you an idea of length.

The legal driveway has a couple dogleg turns in it and comes out on the county road. Part of it (probably nearing 3/4 of the length) is in walkable terratory and the last part is in the woods, still walkable.

Here's my question.

This map has all sorts of coordinates where each bend in the drive is. Lat/Long kind of things.

I know that no one here can give an accurate answer to this question BUT...

If I wanted a surveyor to come out and put some spray paint along my borders (or maybe stake it?) with the coordinates already known, is this something that might cost $400 or $1,500?

No work done MAKING the datapoints, just finding them and marking them. This way, I might be able to use this legal driveway as my burial plot for the geothermal system we're looking at and still keep the system buried on "my" land.

Is there some other way I might be able to plot these coordinates into something and discover the answer myself??

If so, I'd rather spend $400 to buy the tool and do it myself, than spend $400 for someone else to do it (that make sense?)

 

[MarkV]

Minimal experience here Richard, I would expect it to cost $500+ based on estimates to mark a fence line at my place. I would also closely look at whether you can put the Geo loop under a drive and still make it a drive in the future if the need arose.

MarkV

 

[Richard]

I hadn't thought of that angle I must admit.

However..... the basic problem today is the wife doesn't seem to want to even bring the issue up with her father about us buying a parcel of ground so we can build this. putting it on the land around my house is evidently 99% ruled out although I have ONE more question to ask the guy (can we drop closed loops into the well, I'm expecting that answer to be negative.)

Hate to word it this way...but when the current generation passes (mid 80's) she will inherit 25 acres of the 250.

I will admit that I don't know what will happen but I think it's certainly fair to argue/suggest/speculate that since she (and her cousin next door) are the only ones living out here (not counting spouses), I think it's very reasonable that when she gets her 25 acres to suggest at least PART of them (maybe one?) if not all of them, be adjacent to her (our) existing property.

If this is reasonable and indeed happened, then it would be a relatively moot point since she could gain ownership of something.

As for me ever putting a legit driveway where the land plot calls for it? I would have to say it would take about an act of congress for me to do it. I already have two graveled ways in/out with an easement for both. I'm about a zillion percent sure that I'm never going to willingly create a driveway through the woods since it would simply become an expense to create.

I'm sure enough about that, I'm willing to put a loop under it and take my chances.

To tell the truth, the genuinely realistic risk is... putting the loop under the legal driveway and 5 years from now, be working on the farm behind the houses, digging some stumps or something and oops....forgetting where my driveway is and hack through the lines

THAT is something I could see happening

 

[chh]

I was just invloved in getting a piece of church property surveyed, a relatively small job, and the price was $700. That was for a full legal survey and documentation though.

 

[Dmace]

I as well as many other surveyors in my area do not charge for a quote, so you lose nothing by getting one. If you have coordinates for some known boundaries like property corners, wells, building corners, etc... that a surveyor could use to "tie-in" to this survey then it would be an easy task and not very expensive. Now if all you have is the coordinates for the driveway then the surveyor has no way of knowing the exact points as they pertain to the ground since no coordinate system is a set standard and they can be off by as much as 40ft.

BTW, if your driveway is 1-1/4 acres and 25ft wide, that would make it roughly 2178ft long (25ft wide x 2178ft long = 54,450 sq.ft. = 1.25 acres)

 

[SuperDuty335]

You can expect to pay anywhere from $0.35 to $0.75 per horizontal foot for line marking. The coordinates you mention may be relative to the state coordinate system or perhaps just arbitrarily chosen for your particular plat. Regardless, there should be a distance and bearing for each line segment. If the plat and easement record are fairly new, marking the lines should be simple.

 

[Richard]

It's been 10/11 years since done...however...(light bulb goes off in head) I looked at the map and it has the name of the guy who actually did it. I'd like to think if he's still around he'd have an advantage of what the numbers mean since he already walked it.

Bad part is... he's in another town 50 miles away. I have no idea how he got to do it in the first place, but I don't care about that.

Planning on calling him later today.

 

[dooleysm]

Have you looked into a vertical closed loop? I believe "they" can basically drill a well and sink your closed loop system straight down.

We have a horizontal closed loop, and I think we only had to run a 300' trench. It didn't require nearly as much as I assumed going in.

 

[zzvyb6]

Try using Google Earth just for no-cost fun. A few fish finders that are GPS based will do a decent (not perfect) job. You need to have an airport locally to take advantage of "differential GPS" which uses the known location of the airport's beacon to give much better accuracy.

 

[dmccarty]

Its been a few years since we had some property lines redone. I THINK it was about $100 per hour which included four men. They remarked a 850ish foot long line. And then did another 850ish long line. To find a verify a good corner they ended up marking/check about 1400-1500ish feet total for that one 850ish foot line. They also rechecked/remarked a bunch of corner pins. I think this cost me $800ish for a days work back in 2002ish.

For the most part this was all in thick woods. Part of the 1400-1500 feet they worked was already cleared for them and not too bad. The rest is/was pretty thick.

I used the same company that laid out the property lines decades ago. They had the plots in house.

Later,
Dan