Surveyors

[BillyP]

Another post got me to thinking about this.

Are surveyors always right? What if they make a mistake or disagree with another surveyor?

 

[cowboydoc]

With the new satellite surveys I think they are always right. I have never known them to be wrong and I have dealt with alot of them over the years.

 

[8NTX]

I think they are definitely more accurate now with GPS, etc. But as an appraiser for over 20 years, I've seen my share of mistakes. Mainly different land sizes (usually off by tenths of an acre), based upon the same set of metes and bounds descriptions. A piece of land I bought a few years ago ended up as 12.979 acres on the new survey, when the old metes and bounds description said 12.75 acres. Surveyors will sometimes use a tree as a corner marker rather than an iron rod. That can get them into trouble, esp. when the tree falls down and rots.

 

[DaveNay]

I think the problem isn't so much the surveyors being wrong, it is that they are too accurate. Don't get me wrong, I am an engineer so there is no such thing as too accurate, but what happens sometimes, is that the surveyors find discrepancies between the legal descriptions and what is really present in the world. This is mostly due to historical inaccuracies. This error can be as little as your neighbor and you "sharing" a piece of property, or even etire state lines.

Dave

 

[Egon]

Surveyors will be as accurate as the base reference point accuracy.

There are different degrees of accuracy required for different types of survey systems.

Egon

 

[EddieWalker]

I buy and sell a few homes every year along with a few land deals. I use several different surveyors depending on who's got the time to take care of me the quickest.

Everyone I've ever talked to has agreed that GPS surveying isn't 100% accurate. Sooner or later you will have a descrpency and it's extremely hard to find the mistake. Large surveys have been know to be off by many acres using a GPS survey and none of the ones I deal with use GPS.

From what I'm told this is common knowledge among surveyors and well documented.

I'm not a surveyor and I'm not speaking from first hand knowledge, just repeating what I've been told.

 

[IrTxRx]

I bought lunch for a surveyor recently and had a very interesting discussion. he said his GPS is accurate down to a centimeter. However, he cannot read the coordinates in the county records and plug them into his GPS. Texas law requires that current surveyors "walk in the footsteps of the original surveyor." Ropes, chains and cross-referencing trees is clearly less accurate than GPS, but are more correct, legally. When he did my survey, he staked the actual coordinates and then had to re-figure for historical error to get the correct, legal boudary lines.

The education was worth the $6 lunch

 

[MikePA]

<font color="blue"> Are surveyors always right? What if they make a mistake or disagree with another surveyor? </font>
First, my experience...My FIL was a Civil Engineer before he retired. I worked for him doing everything related to surveys; from deed research to field work, from subdivision plot plans to surveys so someone could put a fence in, perc tests, road layouts, etc.. All my experience is pre-GPS and pre-laser. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif We used steel tapes and plumb bobs instead of GPSs and lasers.

Surveyors can and do make mistakes. GPSs, lasers and computers have pretty much eliminated 'math' errors. Having said that, it's still a human being entering the data. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

The biggest 'error' I've seen is when a deed description doesn't 'close'. If a deed description is accurate, you should be able to start at the starting point (where else /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif ), traverse every boundary, make every turn and distance correctly and, if the deed closes, end up exactly where you started. If you don't, the deed doesn't close. Which line (degree and/or distance) do you adjust?

Additionally, if you look at the descriptions for a deed and compare it to the deeds of all adjacent properties, the descriptions of the common lines should be exactly the same, save the direction. One deed will say '157 feet, 4 inches NW' while the other will say '157 feet, 4 inches SE'. What if the deeds don't match? Which one is right?

That's where the field work comes in. You go out into the field with the deed of the property you are surveying, the deeds of the adjacent properties and you look for landmarks which could indicate which deed is more accurate.

We'd bring all this information back into the office, plot it out, make a judgment call (when deeds disagreed or didn't close) as to what was the most accurate, then go back into the field to mark the property lines and corners. It's up to the surveyor/civil engineer (they aren't the same) to make sense of all this and some of it requires a judgment call. A few inches here or a degree there in order to get a deed to close or to get it to match the adjacent deed might not make a difference in a parcel that's 1,000 acres. It could make a big deal when you're going to have to tell someone to move their fence or pool. In some cases, we looked at more than just the adjacent deeds. We'd pull the deeds from surrounding parcels until we'd reach one that had a geographically significant landmark, e.g., major highway, geologic survey marker, etc. Obviously, we didn't do this for every survey since no one would pay us for this much time for a quarter acre, suburban parcel.

So, no, surveyors are not always right and they can and do disagree. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask away.

 

[OkeeDon]

Mike, your experience reflects mine. Recently a friend of mone, a Realtor, listed and sold a 5 acre piece of commercial property. When it came time to arrange a survey to close the deal, she had a tough time getting a surveyor to do the job. Seems that the area in which the property is located is well known to all the surveyors for having accumulated errors dating back to the original surveys, and every time a surveyor does work in that small area, they are opening themselves up for possible liability. They all know that however they call it, they're going to make someone angry. She finally did get a firm to do the job, but at a much higher rate than normal.

As far as mistakes are concerned, our city has over 50,000 building lots of approximately 1/4 - 1/3 acre each, all platted pretty much the same time (over a 10 year period, by the land developer). The plats were drawn by computer based on aerial photographs. There's plenty of room for error, and it shows -- almost every Planning & Development committee meeting involves several requests for variances due to improper surveys.

 

[SageBrush]

Excellent MikePa, well done.

As a commercial surveyor, I know nothing is ever perfect. But, two surveyors should agree with each other if they use the same documents and as you said, close them up. Which ones to use as the most accurate is the fun part. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I could only imagine the vague deeds out there. I know our Alabama land deed is not 100% clear until you research the original plots first and find out the actual distances from the county road easement. Which is not a great benchmark or hub. /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

Its a bit of a mystery to the neighbors. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif