Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Pincushion of the Day
- Posted by: KevinFoshee
Yes! I’ve done it many times. As a retracement surveyor, I have no authority to “correct” a previous surveyor’s work. How will you feel when a future surveyor does not accept your pins because they are off a few hundredths? Technology may improve our precision, but, it won’t help our accuracy.
Not talking about a few hundredths.
You say you??ve done it many times. I??m really curious if you are answering the question I posed. Let me put it another way. Let??s say you survey a one acre lot that adjoins another one acre lot. The adjoining lot owner later subdivides his lot into four .25 lots. Three new pins are set on the common line and the Surveyor places the pins a few tenths…NOT A COUPLE OF HUNDRETHS…off line. You come back to Survey your original clients lot. You are saying that you will change that line and go pin to pin now? What if the new pins are set a foot off?
- Posted by: aliquotPosted by: David3038Posted by: StLSurveyor
So…assuming the lot is 300×900 and you “fixed” one corner by 0.37′ the you altered the overall acreage of the lot in question by about 0.0038 acres, assuming you only “adjusted” one of the rear corners. Did you verify that the larger tract that adjoins the subdivision was not in “error” too? Did you ask the other surveyor why he believes the line is 0.37 inside the lot? Seems like a whole lot of “to do” when you could have drawn a line from found pin to found pin and reported the variation on your plat instead of making it work mathematically. Each to his own.
But this is a good read
https://www.amazon.com/Pincushion-Effect-Jeffery-Lucas/dp/B009ANB3PO
No acreage was altered…it was maintained. The original subdivision pins are on line between the corners of the adjoining tract. The newer pin set 50 feet away on the same line to further divide the existing lot was not placed on line and done by a different Surveyor who is now dead. I??m completely comfortable in my decision.
David
It depends on how you look at it. You may have maintained the paper area, but you changed the area as marked on the ground.
It is hard call to make. I will usually hold a junior corner that is off by a small amount like that if I am convinced that the junior surveyor actually correctly surveyed the senior line. I am not willing to reject another surveyors corner for a small measurment error.
The fear that many have of reporting true measurements that differ from the record is in my opinion unfounded.
Good point and a practice I try to follow. In this case, I was convinced that the junior surveyor did not correctly survey the senior line. It was outside my comfort zone to leave as is. A couple of tenths closer and I would have left it and the calls the same. This particular case was 300 ft line with line of sight. No reason to have the junior pin almost a half a foot off line. Fairly recent survey…not transit and tape.
2 tenths is below the typical functional precision of a quarter acre tract (a fence is 6″ wide) so it doesn’t much matter what you do, either way.
In boundary cases the inquiry is into whether those in authority mutually established the monument, distance “off” is not considered a relavent value. Monuments are expected to be imperfect in location, that’s why we have volumes of case reporters full of decisions.
No argument there. If my client owned both lots and had the other divided, I’d go pin to pin.
The act of a licensed surveyor, acting in good faith, referring to the applicable deed, absent of fraud, setting a monument that meets applicable statutes, constitutes the establishment of a Legal property corner, which is something that lies on the ground and not in a computer or in the head of a future surveyor. A pincushions does not invalidate the first survey, it does the opposite, it causes a legal problem that did not exist previously.
We can not give merit to the notion of telling our client “the pin I set is not your property corner. The pin that some guy in the future sets near this pin will be your property corner whenever that is”
I know it is virtually impossible to avoid. However, I have come to regret setting all but maybe 2 of my own pincushions.
A boundary is a legal entity, it is not a mathematical or geometric entity. So you come to a line monument which is off some small amount, is it perfectly stable in location and how big is your 95% error ellipse, what direction is it oriented?
I came to a freshly set rebar on a section line, 2′ north (our Forest is south, private north). So I called the pre-1982 CE because I figured his client didn’t necessarily want to donate 2′ to the State. The issue arose because a mid-1960s civil engineering firm R/S on the west half of the mile was based in old less accurate record information but in his defense that wasn’t terribly clear on the face of the survey he used. So I called that one off. I surveyed from the section corner on the west (not done in the 1960s) to the quarter section corner to the section corner on the east (the 1960s engineer did Survey the east half of the line).
While that makes sense, what about the concept of reliance by the property owners?
Suppose none of the owners ever did anything that used the first pin, maybe never even saw it, and you come along and find the other guy set it at 101.02 (probably measured with a blunder chaining from only one side) to mark “half” of a lot you measured 101.02 + 99.05 = 200.07
Would you accept it?
Would you say it didn’t meet the statutes and replace it?
Would you say it met the statutes, but was still wrong and replace it?
Other?
.I can think of twicw where I set the the correct position, and explained on my plat that with vacant land and no improvements, equal acreage it would do no harm. One was an original pin out by 13 feet on a 100′ line. The landowner who ‘lost’ due to the correct position sued, and won. Case law. See CAMB v Morales Colorado. I still try to fix a subdivision if it does no harm, very tempting
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