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Pebble in my shoe
Last year we did a job in an old somewhat messed up subdivision and the clearing contractor clipped this guys corner leaving it slightly bent and the plastic cap missing. The property owner complains and I go out and verify the location is the same as when we recovered it prior to any work taking place. Straighten the corner and rehab it, but I??m not about to put my cap on it. This is completely unacceptable to the guy who demands a new pin and cap or otherwise the pin is in his words ??metal junk??. Around and around I went with him over a 50 cent plastic cap. I??ll look up the LS on the cap in the notes and see if it??s possible to get another from them after verifying the position is valid with them, but I decided to end the call before telling him to pound sand. To him that cheesy cap was the only thing in his mind that made it his corner and not a ??piece of metal junk??. No reasoning with some people.
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19 Replies
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Why not put your cap on it and file a Monument Record?
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@frozennorth Fair question. May come to that. Mostly I don??t want assume liability for a corner I did not set. Is that unreasonable?
Forgot to mention that fellow involved mentioned a boundary dispute he is in with a neighbor that I??d be purchasing a front row seat to.
Willy -
I think the Monument Record protects you from that liability, since you will show that you only restored it to make it “readily identifiable and reasonably durable” in line with AS 34.65.040.
If I’m the property owner, I would want to be made whole, too. I think it’s the statutory duty of the clearing contractor to make him whole, and their means to do that is to pay you to “reference and replace” destroyed mons and “reference and rehab” damaged ones.
Without a cap, it seems that this guy’s monument got downgraded to a goat stake.
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Forgot to mention that fellow involved mentioned a boundary dispute he is in with a neighbor that I??d be purchasing a front row seat to.
Yuck, not fun.
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@frozennorth You know what they say about no good deed going unpunished.
If the guy wasn??t such a jerk I??d be far more inclined to go the monument record route and perpetuate the corner with my cap. My instincts say don??t do it.
Willy -
If you’ve located it and accepted it, then you kind of own it already. I’d have no issue re-habbing it, and if he insisted on having an ID cap, and was paying for it, I’d probably yank it and set something new in its place, and write that on the plan.
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I do believe the contractor needs to pay to have it reestablished.
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@mightymoe Agreed, but likely not worth the hassle getting them to do anything as they were operating under the client’s charge, so I sort of own it. I have to suck it up, replace it and record a monument record.
I’ll probably turn the table on him and thank him for taking his property corners so seriously and send the clearing contractor a thank you card for the job security.
I guess my real issue was putting my cap on another surveyor’s pin. I’ll yank it and set a new one and move on.
Thanks for being my sounding board.
Willy -
It is one thing to verify the pin is at the same coordinate that you located it previously. But no way in heck should you put your cap on it without verifying it is indeed where you would mark the boundary corner. Just saying a pin has not moved in no way obligates you to assume the liability for it marking a property corner. Now if someone wants to hire you to survey the property and set a capped corner so be it.
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Last year we did a job in an old somewhat messed up subdivision and the clearing contractor clipped this guys corner leaving it slightly bent and the plastic cap missing. The property owner complains and I go out and verify the location is the same as when we recovered it prior to any work taking place. Straighten the corner and rehab it, but I??m not about to put my cap on it. This is completely unacceptable to the guy who demands a new pin and cap or otherwise the pin is in his words ??metal junk??. Around and around I went with him over a 50 cent plastic cap. I??ll look up the LS on the cap in the notes and see if it??s possible to get another from them after verifying the position is valid with them, but I decided to end the call before telling him to pound sand. To him that cheesy cap was the only thing in his mind that made it his corner and not a ??piece of metal junk??. No reasoning with some people.
What state are you in? Very interesting replies. In Louisiana we are not required to stamp our monuments. Interested in learning what other states require you to do after setting a pin.
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Interested in learning what other states require you to do after setting a pin.
For Washington State:
RCW 58.09.120
Monuments??Requirements.
Any monument set by a land surveyor to mark or reference a point on a property or land line shall be permanently marked or tagged with the certificate number of the land surveyor setting it. If the monument is set by a public officer it shall be marked by an appropriate official designation.Monuments set by a land surveyor shall be sufficient in number and durability and shall be efficiently placed so as not to be readily disturbed in order to assure, together with monuments already existing, the perpetuation or reestablishment of any point or line of a survey.I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of licensees not being required to mark their monuments. How would the next surveyor know who set it or who to call if they discover a discrepancy during a retracement?
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of licensees not being required to mark their monuments. How would the next surveyor know who set it or who to call if they discover a discrepancy during a retracement?Yeah, it makes about as much sense as surveying in a non-recording state. Just baffling to me…
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I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of licensees not being required to mark their monuments
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will! -
While going around with the property owner on the phone yesterday, he was going on about how much money he had to spend to have the corners set, so I asked him, if he’d spent that much money, surely he would remember who did the work. Crickets. He comes back with he’ll have to look it up later. So today I get a couple photos from him of a Record of Survey done in 2004 by a company out of business. The caps were illegible when we tied them so I wanted to know who set them and if there was a record or if the surveyor was still around before I went and pulled his corner up and replaced it with one my own. He bought the place in 2014. The big lying jerk. Just glad he’s not my neighbor.
Willy -
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of licensees not being required to mark their monuments. How would the next surveyor know who set it or who to call if they discover a discrepancy during a retracement?
Yeah, it makes about as much sense as surveying in a non-recording state. Just baffling to me…
Built in deniability I guess.
Willy -
THRAC ALERT
Way back in 1974 I attended a national convention held in Chicago at the Conrad Hilton Hotel. One fellow was the coordinator for a technical session so provided commentary in between speakers. He thought he was a comedian. He told us that his wife generally packed his suitcase for his frequent travel. As he was walking to the session, he discovered there was a pebble in his shoe. His wife had placed it there. Her goal was to make him limp while away from home.
Those in attendance having naughty minds understood what he was really saying. The rest were struggling to grasp why she would want him to have foot pain.
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I have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of licensees not being required to mark their monuments. How would the next surveyor know who set it or who to call if they discover a discrepancy during a retracement?
Yeah, it makes about as much sense as surveying in a non-recording state. Just baffling to me…
Well, both should be done, but at minimum one or the other needs to be done. I started surveying in Texas, which is a non-recording state but registrants are required to mark their monuments “where practical”, which pretty much all have interpreted to mean “you better put a cap on that rebar“. Plus the (relatively) unique practice of re-writing descriptions (that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms right there) meant that there was generally a good record of who had done what in the past.
Some states have evolved differently for sure, but there has to be some way to trace work done back to the licensee. There’s no point to having licensed surveyors otherwise.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
While I wholeheartedly support capping/tagging and recording as important to efficient maintenance of the cadastre, I don’t agree with your last statement. We need those monuments to be put in place by someone who knows what they are doing, even if the irons look unfortunately anonymous.
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While I wholeheartedly support capping/tagging and recording as important to efficient maintenance of the cadastre, I don’t agree with your last statement. We need those monuments to be put in place by someone who knows what they are doing, even if the irons look unfortunately anonymous.
I probably should have clarified that it doesn’t serve the aims of professional licensure, which is there to protect the public by holding licensees accountable for the professional services they provide.
Surveyors would still be needed, but without a way to determine who set what, either by recording laws or by monument tagging laws, there’s no accountability for license holders. I could set whatever I feel like, and if I get called out on a mistake or negligence I can just deny that it was me who set it. Holding me accountable would likely require litigation rather than a simple complaint to and investigation by the board.
It would be like going in for surgery and having a totally anonymous surgeon operate on you. If they botched the procedure due to negligence, how do you hold them accountable? You’d still need the surgery, but that MD means nothing if they can’t be held accountable for their professional actions.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman
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