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Gotta love doing this
First corner yesterday. 5/8″ bar set in 1900. Found in 1942. Found in 1952 at a depth of 10 inches prior to upgrading gravel road to paved road. All references gone. No more recent information. We get a very weak signal at what might be the right spot. An hour and a half later and 20 inches deep we find the bar. Hole is no bigger than what is required to pull a fistful of material out. We set a new 1/2 ” bar with top one inch below pavement surface. Plenty of new references.
Second corner. 3/4″ bar set in 1942 and found in 1952 with no newer references. All references gone. Still a gravel road. Twelve inches and 20 minutes later we are recording new references.
Third corner. 3/4″ bar set in 1952 prior to upgrade to pavement. Same story as first corner. An hour and a half later and 24 inches deep we find the bar. Same small diameter hole. Set 1/2″ bar with top one inch below pavement surface. A few new references.
Fourth corner. 5/8″ bar set in 1920. Similar to first and third corners. Nine inches and 30 minutes later we find bar and record new references.
Fifth corner. Same story as first corner. Very weak signal that might be the right spot. Look at the time and decide it is time to call it a day.
That was all in the afternoon. The morning survey had been a stroll in the park compared to spending the afternoon just getting started on a full section breakdown, where we may find a stone from about 1890 at the center corner once we have a clue where that spot might be.
Too many crews would have never dug for the bars we found. Wham, bam, collect that paycheck. None of them were ORIGINAL in some people’s minds as none were set by the Government surveyors in 1867. To tell the truth, we did not see a two-foot high mound of soil with a wooden stake and pits in the cardinal directions from 1867 anywhere on the centerlines of the roads around the section. ????
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21 Replies
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I learned something there. I didn’t know that rebar was used in 1900, nor that large at some of the other dates.
I think there was a lot of 1/2″ used until state boards started requiring it to be bigger. I should go measure when things thaw out, but I think the corners of my present lot are marked with 1/2″.
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Glad you’re still a “hole digger”…
I agree with your sentiment too many surveyors avoid ‘recovery procedure’ because of the time and effort. If I state a pedigree or call a previous corner on my survey I want to be sure. And after all this time I enjoy other following surveyors trusting my work.
I also don’t feel I’m doing my work if I don’t get accosted at least once a week by a county maintenance crew for chipping holes in their fresh bituminous overlay. 😉
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These are good:
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Wouldn’t want anything wider than about 2-3 inch maximum width. With the sharpest sustainable edge. The smaller the hole the better. What would really help would be a high-powered suction device to remove material. The equivalent of the woman Willie Nelson told Robert Redford about in The Electric Horseman. A ball hitch was involved.
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Slammer Tool comes with 2″ and the wide blade. I got both.
N
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20v Dewalt DCV581H does great to clean drilled and agured holes
A 7/8in bit will break up asphalt and pavement and a garden agur will clean that out quickly
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That vac looks like a winner——if it has enough ummph.
Use a 3/4-in bit quite a lot.
Big challenge yesterday was clumping of the base material and then soil as we got deeper. Had to rip chunks from other plastic chunks. Slow going for sure through a small hole.
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That’s what I was thinking, but according to Wikipedia: “Several people in Europe and North America developed reinforced concrete in the 1850s.”
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I find I used the narrow point the most – preparing holes for stakes and wooden pegs we use for marking boundaries here
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Hey, that’s a NZ invention/patent.
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What would really help would be a high-powered suction device to remove material.
At the suggestion of Norman Oklahoma, I tried a shop vac on a monument preservation project (30+ monuments to recover and raise) and it worked great. I needed a generator anyway to power my demolition hammer, so the vac was simply plug-n-play.
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You could also go the other direction, i.e. blow the stuff out. However, on a recent post regarding hammer drilling, on a hole in concrete that was going to get a rebar stake glued into it, I had a McDonald’s straw in the car so I manually forced some air in to clear the hole. Worked really well, except my face and sunglass got covered in concrete dust. So a suction vac would have been ideal. And I’ve never seen the point in leaf/rubbish blowers.
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Here is the Chisel Point Slammer Tool
It’s about right, for digging deep. With a tuna can, to remove the loose material, it will work.
Also, carrying some quikrete, and a bucket, or cool mix asphalt is a good idea. Otherwise, you have to come back and fix the hole. Which means clean out the hole, and fix it.
N
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Thus, the goal of having the smallest hole possible.
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For this post, may I refer to you as Hole Digger?
I have an airless jackhammer that does the trick. I’m not sure where you can buy one now, but they used be sold by Lo Ink. It is similar to what Nate showed except the bits are regular jackhammer bits. You could also buy a rebar driver bit, which would allow for a small diameter hole through the pavement and then you could drive the rebar below the road surface and place a cap on it.
To get the dirt out I use an old metal serving spoon with the spoon bent at 90?ø. When I want to set a flared base monument I normally use a post hole digger and the last foot or so I use the bent spoon.
P.S. You can check with Tyler Parsons. He had one for sale with his survey equipment. Not sure he still has it.
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Yes, sir, big spoons are very helpful. In this case it was like ripping bread dough apart. Fingers were the best weapons. Slow but effective. This is clay country. Highly expansive clay.
Hole Digger out. ????
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We get a very weak signal at what might be the right spot…Too many crews would have never dug for the bars we found.
The idea that you could get a signal over the possible location of an old monument and not dig for it is alien to me. If there is one thing that this message board has taught me it’s to be grateful that I live in a location where:
1. Surveyors do a professional job
2. Surveyors are compensated for doing a professional job
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It really is becoming a lost art. I was out yesterday on a job, city had been through and installed new sidewalks, relocated all aboveground utilities to underground, and apparently nobody has bought or sold property there since. Everything along the right of way, both north and south, was gone. The original subdivision was done in 1940, and is all beach sand, so forget original monuments.
I started with the sidewalks and centerline of cross streets, pieced together where everything should be, then went digging. The blocks are 550′, 60′ right of ways, and finally found 3 points, two on the south right of way 1400′ apart. Yep, had to go 4 blocks to find anything. The single pin I found on the north right of way was….
99.98′ at right angles, and 150.09′ from the westernmost pin. These were 50′ lots. Then I located the building on our property, and the two adjacent properties, all 3 multi unit condominiums. I knew the one east of us was done back in the days of zero setbacks, so used it to see how it fit with the pins I had found. Projecting it out, intersection was 660.07′ to the westernmost pin. That was 12 50′ lots and one right of way.
I went back today and set pins, after having my coords blessed by the guy signing the plat. As I was setting them, the manager of the condo to the west came over and asked for a business card. They also need a boundary, and had one of our competitors out a month ago. He said their crew dug holes for two days, and had to concede defeat, told him there was no way to accurately survey in the block anymore.
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I have actually read monument description in recorded deeds that called for “magnet reading” and “rust found” and the location did not match any call or accessories to the location and went to the location and found the original monument from the existing accessories.
It is amazing to what shortcuts are used by crews pressing the “EASY BUTTON” on their DC and leaving work before it is completed properly.
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I could see a five or six inch diameter hole in the pavement. The small minimalistic two inch hole .. (picturing Rocky Squirrel telling Bullwinkle: ‘Again?! that trick never works!) .. just means you’ll be digging it out wider once you find the iron.
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