Always
paden cash, post: 374777, member: 20 wrote: Oh c'mon...haven't you ever planted a sock or an old t-shirt in the woods?
PS - I do prefer tp..
Always carry imodium ad in your truck as well.
Whenever you set a traverse point, always use some tool, or your boot, and hammer the ground. This tightens and compacts the soil. holds position better. And, makes a depression, that makes it less prone to getting hit by mower, or if a car runs it over, and the soil is soft, then it shifts a bit.
It makes a better, and longer lasting point.
Most of my traverse points are 1" deep.
Same with GPS base stations.
On some points, I take the sledge hammer, and pound the ground, to compact the soil.
Just stabilizes it a little.
N
I had to look up Imodium A D.
Hmmm Pepto Bismol was as far along as we are educated!
Nate The Surveyor, post: 376293, member: 291 wrote: I had to look up Imodium A D...
here's a TMI story...
One winter there was so many of us that had the flu, out of three crews we were able to maybe keep one on the road. This one fella came to work still sick and weak, but it was payday and he wanted to show up. It was cold, gray, snowy and miserable. On our way out to the job I stopped at his house to pick him up. Nobody was talking in the van, we all had coveralls on and you could still see your breath even with the heater on. Suddenly this guy raises his head up, squints..and fires off a huge double snot-slinging sneeze...and then gets a blank look on his face.
Immediately the air in the van was fouled...almost as foul as his britches..
I didn't say a word, we were only three blocks from his house. I turned the van around and headed back to his house. I pulled up to the curb and he waddled out up the sidewalk and gave us a half assed wave with his head down.
He could've used some Imodium AD...
paden cash, post: 374673, member: 20 wrote: I once had two crews working on a rather large 1600 acre survey that "stair-stepped" all over the place and laid in 4 different sections. The field work took a couple of weeks and since most of the section lines were closed I schooled both crews about "reading the original notes" and keeping their eyes peeled.
We didn't find any "original" stone evidence at any of the corners and it bugged me a little...but I trusted my crews.
Came the couple of days that we setting pins and I decided to play "field marshal" and observe the proceedings. Sure enough, we were looking for suitable bearing trees in the vicinity of a quarter corner....and found that little booger poking its head up...about 25 links from where I had calc'd it. Shoot.
Had to redraw the survey and call back all the copies I had already circulated...a pain in the ass.
I once went on a boundary to set a couple of corners after the crew ran the traverse and located the corners. Bounded by deed, and all adjacent were bounded as well. Plat was out to client. While walking down the recently cut line to set the new rod I walk by a pipe just off the line a foot or two, sticking out of the ground two feet and painted white my calc hit within a foot or so of the pipe that my crew for some reason didn't see or located even though the walked right beside it. Needless to say walked all the lines that day and I had to correct the plat to reissue to the client. I was livid with the crew about missing something so obvious.
That crew was basically like as long as they get paid oh well. They are no longer with me.
On a side note my partner took that job from a Realtor with the understanding the job would be paid at closing, little did he know that there wasn't even a contract on the property and no closing was scheduled.
Lost $4000 on that one. I now handle all boundary contracts and let him stick to construction.
Once I borrowed a truck from a construction observer in our company, he has no tp, I broke into one of the clients sheds (they were gone ) found only a roll of blue shop towels.
Always keep an eye out for original monumentation where you don't think it should be.
A couple of months ago I was tasked with solving a R/W boundary based on a 1924 highway alignment. I found some field notes from a 1954 field book and generated a preliminary centerline alignment for the '24 R/W. I went searching at the end of the 1924 construction contract about 7500 feet away from where I was dealing with, hoping to find evidence of some sort whether a monument or paving joint since it was a concrete panel road, since overlaid with asphalt. I didn't find anything there but did notice an old, funny-looking small circular patch back-station a ways, and it appeared to reasonably fit my preliminary alignment since the striped centerline was diverging about two feet here (it fit rather well back in the area I was working). Hmmm... let's shoot it. It fell 100.39 feet back from the calculated end of the 1924 project and its offset was 0.08 feet.
I'll bet anything that it is in fact an original monument there and they somehow dropped a 100-foot chain when they originally laid out the road. Another, lesser possibility is that they opted to monument 100 feet back from the end of the project.
The only superior evidence is that which you haven't yet found.
Mike Lacey, post: 374847, member: 303 wrote: If someone wants to show you the line, let them, even if you know where it is. The addtional information, and history you receive can be invaluable.
Amen.
And when talking to a property owner, instead of saying "We need to search for survey markers on your property," it works a whole lot better to say, "We're looking for survey markers. Do you know where any of them are on your property?"
1. Walk around the truck before you drive it.
2. Before you leave a job ask whoever is with you if you have completed everything tasked to do, and retrieved all the equipment.
3. Immediately admit if you don't know something. I rarely remember anything specific about any job I have been on..... But my notes are exquisite!
4. Never lie about what you set and what you found.
5. Always be courteous and professional and never, Never, NEVER say anything bad about another surveyor to a non-surveyor.
Jon Collins, post: 376288, member: 11135 wrote:
Always carry imodium ad in your truck as well.
Dang. I spent the day in bed yesterday. Stomach virus. Rough. Where's that imodium?
Nate The Surveyor, post: 376378, member: 291 wrote: Dang. I spent the day in bed yesterday. Stomach virus. Rough. Where's that imodium?
Don't ever let the effects of the Imodium wear off when you are not near a toilet. Imodium can give you a false since of security. It will plug you up real good for a couple of days but when it wares off watch out! Spoken from experience. I use to spend my holidays in Baja Mexico and had many cases of Montezuma's Revenge. 🙂 Jp
Never relieve yourself in the vicinity of an electric fence.
We were out one frosty day in a river bottom that we had walked 2mi in along a RR to get to the beginning monument and shortly after arriving the head chainman darted into a thicket hunting for a spot above the water line.
About mid afternoon scouting ahead for our loop to close in where I ran across a rather foul set of long johns.
I retreated and when I met back with the crew, took one look at the head chainman and told them we can't go thru there and made a jog in course to get back to POB.
Been stocking pepto pills in the truck and my carry on bag ever since.
Know what you know, and know what you don't know.
Walk the entire perimeter of the property. You never know what you may find. I did this once, and found several old grave sites. That definitely went on my survey.
I have found evidence of non recorded surveys... pins, that were in the vicinity of the boundary, just by walking it.
N
Never assume a dog won't bite and never assume the neighbor is friendly...
Yesterday's experience. Simple lot and block job in a small town with few recorded surveys. First bar we find is a miracle. Start from there for next bar. Nothing. Head off at roughly a right angle from there and find a bar three feet further than expected. Continue from there to find a bar at the correct distance from the last one. Continue finding more bars in that block. Then we jumped two blocks south and one block west for the only other known bars for a double check. Guess what!? The first bar found does not agree with anything else in town that we can find. About 3.5 feet too far south and 1.5 feet to far east. Everything else is CLOSE. Lot of headscratching going on here.
The problem is that you tend to assume the very first thing you find is correct and anything found later that disagrees is probably wrong. Not this time.
Mr cow, in human development, this phenomenon is called "First Mention". The first time we do anything, we tend to judge all later experiences against the FIRST time. This can be good, and can be bad, but we humans tend to do just that.
I tend to think it is a linear progression. Part of the human process.
N
I never treat monumentation as listed above. I always tell my guys it's like being in a bar fight, you never know who you're going to get hit by...TRUST NOBODY! 😀