Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Setting a PK nail on a busy road.
Just a few thoughts. Pre drill the hole. Cheap battery operated drills are available. They are very useful. Get a good masonry bit too. Or two.
If you are going to “wing it without traffic control”, consider doing it at 3 am, or Sunday morning (as others have said) but very early.
My kinda rule for winging it is to have a spotter, a second person, who is focused, paying attention, and covering you. I don’t fully enforce this on dirt roads, and very low traffic areas. But it’s what keeps you from messing up the plastic bumpers on modern cars, with your body!
N
FYI: In northern climates prone to snow, we have to recess nails below flush when setting them in the pavement, or else the snowplow will wipe it out on the first pass.
I have set a 1/2″ rebar and cap, at an odd offset, (r/w changed width nearby) and buried the rebar well. It’s a “reference rebar”.
Nobody has to get in the road, to get the coord. Plat is grid brgs.
N
- Posted by: @firestix
I need to reset a PK nail on a busy road. This is a very rural area and property lines extend to the CL of state roads in this county. Yes, it is both a rural AND a very busy road. There is a Manufacturing company nearby and this is the main thoroughfare for the area. I’ve picked up the other road property corners via 2 sessions of VRS @ 180 epochs at least 4 hours apart to obtain the 95% confidence level. The problem is, I about died doing it. People either see you and don’t care as they fly by at 65 mph on a 2 lane road … Or they don’t see you because they’re too busy looking at their phones. I’ve been trying to run the GNSS as much as possible, but is it time for me to just use the TS? Either way, my son or I are going to find ourselves in the middle of this dangerous road. Thoughts?
Agree with the above comments. Playing in traffic is risky, and best avoided. I do it a lot, and have signs, strobes, roadcones and a spotter. If sightlines are bad, or in busy intersections, I use flaggers.
If you are not equipped for such work, sub it out, or set offsets to monument the position.
Also, magnails in the road are temporary, PK nails in the road are laughably insufficient. At minimum, countersink a 6? magspike and washer.
Setting PKs in C/L was de rigueur back in the day – now, not so much. Set a Mag Nail today, and next month the pavement milling machine will chew it up. There’s no point.
Not if the city/county/state has a land surveyor on board who prepares an “endangered corner report” before the destruction and resets it after the work is finished.
Dang. Sucks to live in your neighborhood. Get out there and wake these people up. Help them to understand. Help them to realize the rewards of setting monument boxes while they are doing major projects. DOT projects have this requirement included in the construction contract. Many cities have been awakened. Quite a few counties near our area of service have grown to understand the importance of protecting the very survey monuments on which nearly everyone’s deed is based in one form or another.
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