Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo
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Regardless it is impossible to tell, for sure, which of the bars is the one you set. I say clean it up. As Stephen Ward pointed out, any number of them may not be surveyors marks at all. This isn’t about you, it’s about the landowners having a mark they can rely on. Not having several conflicting opinions that they can argue about.
If they were clearly identified, or are already of record in some way, that might or might not change my attitude.
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If you aren’t going to identify your bar, how can you complain that’s it’s been taken out?
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Posted by: @holy-cow
Blasphemy. Capping or otherwise identifying has not always been the standard practice/required practice. One of those could be the one I set correctly several decades ago, if it were near here. Leave my bars alone, dammit.
If you set it correctly, and the next guy does it right, he will fall very close to your bar rather than another one.
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That’s what I was thinking maybe its an old concrete monument. They all look to be the same size and age.
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Do you work in a nonrecording state? In recording states it is standard practice to replace damaged or insubstantial monuments with new ones. The record is there for all to see, so nothing gets lost. I can see this being an issue if there is no reliable way to leave a record.
I hope you have learned, like many of us, over your career to take more pride in your work than an unmarked rebar represents.
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Many times that I have followed other surveyors’ work and all except one call will be very close and that one outlier boundary will be as much as 0.6ft off in length.
I usually have concluded that the closing computations were made between those monuments and the surveyor called his closure good enough and did not correct his traverse by DMD, Compass or any other method.
Today, I find the same problem when I follow other surveyors who are using GPS under canopy or that their helpers are accepting false information and calling it good.
I have found 0.6ft differences 40yrs ago on ancient corners and I have found that last week on new monuments with a direct site between monuments.
It is a fact that some do not look or spend any or enough time on a boundary to find what evidence is hidden underground. Their schedule does not allow them a day of scouring thru the growth and digging to find what is not above ground to match the numbers they have to meet to get the survey completed.
The many posts on this site of several monuments that were found within 0.5ft from one another is proof of that. And WTF when one surveyor has set a couple of them that close together without finding the first one.
I often wonder how many of mine are that way after the many years of sending crews out to survey places and the fact that they have left very little information in their notes and a few refused to turn over any of their raw data files. They would actually delete them before handing in their work. That would happen once with a warning the next time they were sent packing.
My solution is to honor the oldest monument in place as dated by the appearance of the rebar, pipe or whatever was in place and most of the time it is more rusted and worn from the elements or it is something very unique and you can’t find that material any longer.
The best find is to be absolutely confident that it is the monument being called in the original description and the false monuments are something else or were surely set at a later date.
In this picture, the monument that the top is deeper in the ground appears to be the oldest and the other two are close to the same material that I would not doubt that the same surveyor could have set all three decades apart.
0.02
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@mark-mayer
He would also date the rebar by the deformations. I actually picked up the good habit of more detailed monument descriptions from a post of his.
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I ALMOST set one kinda like that many years ago. Before we had a Schonstaedt we used the old dip needle and sometimes a pipe or rebar just wouldn’t register. We had run the traverse and computed up all the corners and had one to set. I was kinda nervous because it hit in a gravel driveway for the neighbor. We turned the angle, pulled the distance and ran the dip needle one more time, Nada. Kicked the gravel out of the way to set the rebar and VOILA, a 2 inch pipe. The distance hit in the pipe but not quite the center. New location of the pipe and revise the plat. WHEW!!!
Andy
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Yes. Recording state for new descriptions but not necessarily for retracement work. Slippery slope. Nevertheless, it is extremely rare that my surveys do not end up in the county files. I want others to be able to follow my work. In the case of the original post, the first bar set would have been mine that was then pincushioned by those who feel they have somehow accomplished a finer set of measurements from somewhere else instead of following what I have so kindly provided for them to follow. Have been capping bars for ages but not since day one, as that was not the standard. Filing the surveys is the standard. Some choose not to meet that standard and get away with it. Many choose to do extremely inferior levels of research prior to developing their own ideal view of how certain corners should be set. Those people need to be drummed out of the profession.
The key element to take from this discussion is that destroying my monuments may land you in trouble if I have proof that you are the one who did so. Bragging of doing such on a public resource, such as this, is bad form. We do not work with micrometers and the world is not perfect (anyone’s perception of perfect). Get used to it.
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Surveyed in two different towns before noon today. In one, the producer of probably 80 percent or more of the surveys between 1960 and 2015 firmly believed that his work was private and solely on behalf of his clients. Any surveys recorded were done so by his clients or their lender/title company/etc. You must work blind, stumble onto his work, keep searching for more of his work, then finally figure out whether or not to agree with his work. Most of it is very good work…ƒ??ƒ??..once you discover that it exists. In the other town, the producer of probably 90 percent of the surveys between 1955 and 1985 set a great example and made his work available to the world. Those of us who have followed him have kept up his tradition with very few exceptions.
Neither of these fellows ever capped a bar. One left his tracks in the public files available at the courthouse, as I do, while the other hid his work in hopes of selling his files someday for a fortune (sold, but no fortune, that is for certain). Both were very competent at surveying.
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The important part of a metes and bounds is that the controlling information is the bounds portion that states the proper record information as to the adjoining and client tracts and any other boundary information like Headright boundary (Block Boundary or Section boundary) to place the record placement of the monuments when the metes (bearings and distance) do not match the senior record placement of the monument.
All this will confuse the person that relies on the numbers only and the idea that I can measure better than anyone because even now there is confusion between what plane, geoid, datum and where is this supposed to be in reference to the controlling monument.
It is way too easy to overthink the analysis of monument location when we are dealing with the history of when the location of any monument was first established by record and what we actually find on the ground when the story begins a hundred years or more ago and what evidence we find today.
Above all else, the original monument is what is in the right place when the original surveyor of that grant from the state is found. Does not matter if it is not exactly on the distance of record.
When we find monuments set by the original surveyor that has divided the grant and set monuments for boundaries inside the grant, we are out there to close up the gores and gaps that exist, and that information should be included in our reports so the next surveyor will know why some apparent pincushions exist.
So, that is why we are a licensed surveyor and not just a guy that carries around all this surveying equipment that has cost us enough to send a kid thru college.
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@mark-mayer
Of which we know is the cost based on Angies List, every realtor in the world, every DIY article and just about every phone call I get!
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A word not used enough in surveying: rehabilitate
That corner needs rehabilitated.
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They dont have any marks on them with a surveyor’s number…they all look like just rebar to me. Not saying that I wouldn’t hold one. I will say that walking away and leaving that mess is not helping anyone.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong. -
@mark-mayer
Yep.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong. -
I like that!
This corner was marked with 3 pieces of rebar, of unknown origin and REHABILITATED with 1 rebar with a yellow cap marked XYZ 12345.
I’ve found rebar before, missing their cap and set mine on it and noted same on my survey…
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will!
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