Here's a monument that we found yesterday as I mentioned in the county line thread below. I'm posting this as a separate item since one element of the monument is interesting, namely, why a stout concrete monument only 2.35 ft. tall with a 2 ft. square base and a 1 ft. square top is leaning more than 0.3 ft. out of plumb.
Monument at Common Corner of Hays, Travis, and Caldwell Counties
This sketch shows how I located the center of the 24" base (Pt.222) and the center of the bronze disc (Pt.199) in the top 2.35 ft. above it to measure the displacement.
Detail from Star*Net Plot of Network
I concluded that the monument had probably been undermined by ants on one side and had sunk as their tunnels collapsed. One corner of the base was still at grade.
That's A Lot of Work........
...........to go through when there's a perfectly good fence RIGHT THERE........
That's A Lot of Work........
> ...........to go through when there's a perfectly good fence RIGHT THERE........
Well, I didn't want to get to Wilhite's Barbecue in Creedmoor, Texas before noon. Sometimes, if you get there too early, some of the meat isn't ready. Lunch was amazing, by the way. Half a (large) chicken, perfectly smoked and cooked, with potato salad, beans, and iced tea for the excellent price of $7.50. So, since we had the extra time before lunch, I thought we'd go ahead and locate the actual county line monument. :>
In the Star*Net graphic, the monument base appears to be a parallelogram. Is it really out of square?
> In the Star*Net graphic, the monument base appears to be a parallelogram. Is it really out of square?
It's really square,
Kents bubble needs adjusting
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> In the Star*Net graphic, the monument base appears to be a parallelogram. Is it really out of square?
That's an artifact of the monitor that I grabbed the image from. The 24" base is actually nominally square (less than 0.02 ft. out of square).
Just curious. Is there any depth to that monument or is it just sitting on the surface? Your ant's comment would lead me to that conclusion.
> Just curious. Is there any depth to that monument or is it just sitting on the surface? Your ant's comment would lead me to that conclusion.
"One corner of the base was still at grade."
It sounds like it might have just been sitting there.
I think a nice scan at 1 mm resolution would tell you what happened!
> Just curious. Is there any depth to that monument or is it just sitting on the surface? Your ant's comment would lead me to that conclusion.
I'm certain that the monument did extend into the ground. The other, smaller monuments they set were at least three feet into the ground. What I'm calling the "base" of the monument is just where the formwork for the sides stopped and the pier into natural ground began. As for the depth that ant colonies extend, I wouldn't think that 48 inches would be unusual at all.
> "One corner of the base was still at grade."
>
> It sounds like it might have just been sitting there.
What I'm calling the "base" is where the formed sides of the monument meet the rough surface of the pier evidently cast against the sides of a hole dug into the ground below that point. It looks as if that base was approximately level, at grade, when the thing was constructed,
https://surveyorconnect.com/images/uploaded/201011190034534ce5c62de1bd0.jp g" alt="" />
I Should have known--TEXAS sized ants.;-)
If the monument is disturbed, maybe it needs counseling and possibly medication?
> In the Star*Net graphic, the monument base appears to be a parallelogram. Is it really out of square?
Couldn't that be a result of only one corner being stable? And a slope -vs- horizontal distance situation?
I'm not sure now as I think about it.
> If the monument is disturbed, maybe it needs counseling and possibly medication?
In this case, I did briefly consider what sort of effort might be needed to restore it to plumb again, but decided that it would be more work than I'd signed up for that day. The ties to the corners of the base gave a pretty good estimate of (+/-0.02 ft.) of where the punchmark on the tablet on the top would have ended up after about an hour of work.
> The ties to the corners of the base gave a pretty good estimate of (+/-0.02 ft.) of where the punchmark on the tablet on the top would have ended up after about an hour of work.
But that is a Texas 0.02', isn't that like 2 ft?
🙂
> But that is a Texas 0.02', isn't that like 2 ft?
Yes, that is 0.02 Texas Survey Feet. The basic unit is the same as the US Survey Foot, but is apparently able to be measured much more exactly than in other places where +/-0.02 ft. = +/-0.2 ft.
That seems like a lot of extra work to do just to find 0.02'
> > In the Star*Net graphic, the monument base appears to be a parallelogram. Is it really out of square?
>
> Couldn't that be a result of only one corner being stable? And a slope -vs- horizontal distance situation?
>
> I'm not sure now as I think about it.
The maximum difference in level between adjacent corners was 0.26 ft. over 2.00 ft. So the plan projection of the outline of a perfectly square base would be quite close to square.
