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Cell phone surveying
I haven’t been on here in a while but I had to share this.
We are working on a survey where the seller/buyer got together and used their cell phone GPS to survey off some property. They then got an attorney to write up the deed based on their waypoints. They have, a couple of years later, decided to get us out there. Holy Mackeral! I do not recommend a cell phone survey!!! Way off!! LOL
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24 Replies
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I am pretty sure how you will answer this question, but did they at least leave something at the corners, or just some “VERY ACCURATE BECAUSE THEY WERE DERIVED BY OUR PHONE” coordinates?
Ken
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I think it would be okay if they had used the cell phone to call a land surveyor.
Historic Boundaries and Conservation Efforts -
They did. Roof bolts. The only problem is, when they showed us the corners they set, there are more corners in the description than they showed us. I guess they forgot about a couple of them that they set. We have to go back out and see if anything is there or not. They don’t have a clue if they showed us all of them or not. That is just what they could remember. Distances weren’t bad 5-10 feet on lines 100′ long. They used azimuths the cell phone showed them and they aren’t close to anything. Though they were going around a field, they put all of the corners in the edge of the woods. This most likely explains the angles and distances being so jacked up. Besides the fact, they USED A CELL PHONE! LOL
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Wow!!
I guess if they are originals then, good as gold ????
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Horse shoes, hand grenades and cell phone surveys.
Willy -
Well, all the original monuments, agreed to and set by the parties to the transaction, are probably there. You have found some and the rest should be found by a magnetic locator “somewhere” in the vicinity of the points in their description. That’s a pretty good start.
Better than 3 smokes on horseback and the elm tree that was there when granddaddy bought the land.
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I’m going to use this in the field… too good
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They shouldƒ??ve made some Google Earth QC checks.
And think how much better it couldƒ??ve been with mag compass and rag tape.
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I witnessed something similar yesterday and today.
Yesterday I was out with a local surveyor from the county south of me and he had some cell phone app that apparently has access to tax maps and it was over layed onto an aerial image. He used it to get an idea of where he was in relation to his property. I thought that was a fairly good way to make use of technology available. I was setting some gps control points and he just needed them to be close to some area so he can Calc some points and turn angles and look for the corners.
Today I was on a job and a soil scientist was out there and darned if he did not have the same thing and he was using it to take soil bores. He was about 50 to 75 feet off on the lines and corners.
I predict that this technology in the wrong hands has the real potential to make us a lot of business resolving property disputes. Do not be timid on your prices because it will be a bloody disaster.
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I predict the return of the plumb bob.
We’ll be plumb bobbing from our phones to set our property corners.
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So what was the reply when you turned them into the Board for surveying without a license?
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It is not against the law for anyone to survey and divide their own land by whatever means including pacing the distances and guessing at the directions.
The monuments that land owners set are senior to the directions and distances when they are called for in the descriptions in the deeds.
The trouble is getting a Title Company to write title and a bank to loan money for the purchase.
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Where is the legal support for this statement? In the 5 states I am licensed you cannot mark lines to divide real property without a license. You can certainly prepare descriptions based on whatever measurements you like, but setting monuments put’s it into unlicensed practice.
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Broadcom and Qualcomm have both rolled out duel constellation GPS on phones since the FCC decision allowing cell phones to access the Galileo E1/E5a signals last November.
Soon five meter phones will be as rare as phone booths and pagers….sub-meter phones are here
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It is given……..there is no law against a private land owner setting something in place to divide their own land.
They must personally do it themselves as a family, no hired hand or contractor involved.
It must be a new division and not following an old deed to survey their outer boundaries.
Most every one I’ve followed went from xtie to xtie or some sort of fence corner or post to another as set.
When there was an existing fence, it usually stated as fenced in the deed description.
Many times the seller and buyer actually measured it and built the fence together.
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I saw a DIY instance. My dad and uncle inherited Grandma’s 80, and described their split split by aliquot parts SW SW and SE SW, so no survey needed for the legal split. Uncle wanted to build a fence from a known corner to the other side and showed Dad where he would end up. Dad said okay, as he was too sick to get involved. I have no idea how Uncle came up with the position, as I doubt he taped a quarter mile, much less the full half mile. Maybe counting tractor wheel rotations along the road? It is obvious on Google Earth that his end point was off a trifle, and my later measurements say 23 ft. His fence isn’t quite straight, either, so it is maybe only 0.3 acre in Dad’s favor. Not too bad. He might have been able to get a survey for the value of the land he lost.
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Lewis v. Smith is a widely cited case in Oklahoma. Two brothers erected a fence between their quarter sections. 30 years later their heirs and assigns had a survey done. The state court said “tough luck, the fence is the line now”.
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Iowa has a fairly short acquiescence statute and Dad’s been gone for 16 years. The land now belongs to my sister’s son and my cousin.
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In every case I’ve read where it comes up the court will say something to the effect of “Landowner A surveyed his property. To do so he employed Surveyor X”. The landowner does the survey, the surveyor is the tool he uses.
You can’t hire yourself out to mark property lines unless you are licensed, but you can certainly occupy your own property without and employ any legal means at your disposal to mark out the limits of your occupation. Improvements, fence, mower, plantings, or markers – whatever floats your boat.
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One of California’s most interesting cases is Aborigini Lumber Co vs Hyman near Fort Bragg, CA. Surveyed by the buyer and two unlicensed assistants to the Union Lumber Co. surveyor Thorne W. Holmes…short story they ran the blazed boundary 500 feet too far north. Aborigini was a successor to the shorted tract and lost when they sued.
Hyman was involved in another unusual case near the harbor, a water boundary where the court refused to quiet his title between the water boundary and the measured location primarily because doing so would substantially increase his acreage and create other conflicts…Hyman v Haun…
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1130336697024203666&q=hyman+v+haun&hl=en&as_sdt=4,5
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