A Tough Monument to Find

What, no dimple?

Loyal, post: 430567, member: 228 wrote: What, no dimple?

The post was leaning off plumb, so the center of the top would have been NG. I settled for the center of the base at ground level.

There is one tiny problem with setting concrete posts the size of fence posts as boundary markers. Can you divine what it might be?

The concrete thingy is about a foot and a half from the true corner at the center of the chainlink fence corner post.;);)

Holy Cow, post: 430574, member: 50 wrote: The concrete thingy is about a foot and a half from the true corner at the center of the chainlink fence corner post.;);)

Yup that concrete do-dad is just a guard stake. It's obvious the fence post is the corner because it's set in concrete. :p

You should have spray painted it Glo-Pink so you can find it easier next time.

Kent McMillan, post: 430569, member: 3 wrote: There is one tiny problem with setting concrete posts the size of fence posts as boundary markers. Can you divine what it might be?

I never do large boundary work, but IMHO whomever strung the barbed wire must have used a D8 for tensioning and yanked the monument off center.

FL/GA PLS., post: 430599, member: 379 wrote: Never do large boundary work, but IMHO whomever strung the barbed wire must have used a D8 for tensioning and yanked the monument off center.

In some soils with low bearing capacity, just the constant tension of normally strung wire will pull a corner post off plumb unless it is braced (which this one wasn't). I'd imagine that the concrete post is at least 48 inches into the ground. but the soil is a silty one.

Kent McMillan, post: 430568, member: 3 wrote: The post was leaning off plumb, so the center of the top would have been NG. I settled for the center of the base at ground level.

For those of us (me) who ask silly/stupid questions, what was your methodology in locating the center at the base of the monument assuming that you didn't disturb it?

FL/GA PLS., post: 430602, member: 379 wrote: For those of us (me) who ask silly/stupid questions, what was your methodology in locating the center at the base of the monument assuming that you didn't disturb it?

To locate the monument by the chain link fence post, I just set two spikes on line with the center of the base of the post, one 1.28 ft. distant from the center and one 8.58 ft. distant, located them and calculated the center's position. If anyone ever straightens the post, I'm sure that the center will be found to be in a slightly different position toward the chain link post, but the method I used is sufficient for my purpose, which was to organize the search for another marker about a mile away.

The first concrete post that I originally mentioned above was located from two points offset from the center of the base by 1.45 ft., one nominally West of the base and one North. The post was precast and its dimensions could be easily measured at its top, so the 1.45 ft. was really 1.00 ft. measured from the face of the post at its base plus 0.45 ft. for the distance from face to center.

FL/GA PLS., post: 430602, member: 379 wrote: For those of us (me) who ask silly/stupid questions, what was your methodology in locating the center at the base of the monument assuming that you didn't disturb it?

I wondered myself, but assumed there was call of a specific nature for the monolith.

Trust me, by the time he's finished Mr. McMillan will have figured out a way to get his own scent onto (or into...or upon) that chunk of aggregate and binder. 😉

Holy Cow, post: 430574, member: 50 wrote: The concrete thingy is about a foot and a half from the true corner at the center of the chainlink fence corner post.;);)

That may be - but there is room to set a new monument halfway between them where the judge would say the corner goes...

paden cash, post: 430606, member: 20 wrote: I wondered myself, but assumed there was call of a specific nature for the monolith.

Actually those concrete posts are interesting in that they were apparently set to replace substantial iron pipes that were set about ten years earlier, but without leaving a paper trail of the replacement. So part of the work was to locate a number of them to study their relationship to markers of more definite originality to fill in the gap in the paper trail from logical deduction.

Kent McMillan, post: 430608, member: 3 wrote: Actually those concrete posts are interesting in that they were apparently set to replace substantial iron pipes that were set about ten years earlier, but without leaving a paper trail of the replacement.

Out of curiosity did you find any evidence of the iron pipes or any paper trail associated with them?

FL/GA PLS., post: 430602, member: 379 wrote: For those of us (me) who ask silly/stupid questions, what was your methodology in locating the center at the base of the monument assuming that you didn't disturb it?

[SARCASM]Oh, bless your little pea pickin heart; it's quite simple how Kent located the center...

He jumps out of the Tundra; fires up his VRS RTK on the RTN; leans the pole just enough to get the antenna over the eye-balled center; hits the button and he's on his merry way.[/SARCASM]

Would have been much easier if that thistle would have been fully grown.

With tension of the fence and the digging of the hole for the CLFC, the concrete post did not stand a chance to stay in position without having any cross support in place.
Tall concrete posts are a common monument put in place where the land is subject to be filled in.

FL/GA PLS., post: 430617, member: 379 wrote: Out of curiosity did you find any evidence of the iron pipes or any paper trail associated with them?

To be clear, there was a survey made twenty years earlier (not ten as I mentioned above in passing) that placed iron pipes in the vicinity of where the 1930-vintage concrete posts presently stand. That survey was connected to other corners that do not have concrete posts on them, so by locating those corners and comparing the connections, it should be possible to say with some certainty whether there is any reason to doubt that the posts were true replacements of the original monuments or not, i.e. whether or not they are in the same positions.. There is, of course, a bit more to this one than that, but that is one of the the lines of inquiry related to the posts.

You guys in Texas sure seem preoccupied with setting fancy ROW markers.