The licensing board may have a fight on their hands before too long.
I don't think this is something I'd want the legislature to start monkeying around with.
Iowa Code 542B.2:
5. a. The practice of "land surveying" includes providing
professional services such as consultation, investigation, testimony,
evaluation, planning, mapping, assembling, and interpreting reliable
scientific measurements and information relative to the location of
property lines or boundaries, and the utilization, development, and
interpretation of these facts into an orderly survey, plat, or map.
The practice of land surveying includes, but is not limited to, the
following:
(1) Locating, relocating, establishing, reestablishing, setting,
or resetting of permanent monumentation for any property line or
boundary of any tract or parcel of land. Setting permanent monuments
constitutes an improvement to real property.
If you are not sure where your lot corners are, then you should probably talk to a land surveyor rather than the city building/zoning inspector.
I have a feeling that SLSI (our state society) will stay on top of this.
It sounds like someone needs to educate the mayor. I don't agree with his assement that the law is there to "drum up buisness". I'm sure if he understood the finer points of what we do, and the huge liability the city is taking by locating corners, he would change his mind. How many of us can tell a story where we find something we thought was a corner, and it turned out to be an old part of a fence or some other piece of junk.
Seems that the mayor does not have a clue to the liability that he is opening the city up to. The law is pretty clear and the city is providing survey services when they are not qualified to do so.
honestly this is just the type of fight our profession needs. some dumb ass mayor needs to get schooled by a judge and made an example out of. some fresh ink reinforcing the fact that land surveying is regulated by law and those laws are valid and necessary can only do good things for our cause.
I suppose I'm counter here as I mostly agree with the city. Uncovering a corner marker in place is not locating a corner in the sense that it is not there and needs to be replaced. If landowners can't use the corner markers placed previously by a survey to identify where their boundaries are then why place them at all? That's what the corner markers are far is for landowners use to identify their boundaries. If all the city does is find existing markers in place then they are not locating (surveying) corners just identifying them for the intended use. If the corner is missing, can't be found or apparently disturbed then it's time to use a surveyor.
Most of the states descriptions of what a surveyor does is way to comprehensive. Yes surveyors do that stuff but it is all not reserved for surveyors only. You could interpret it to mean you needed a land surveyors license to measure and cut a 2 x 4. They should cut it way back to where the law and boundaries is concerned, jettison all the rest as there is no need for the regulation and protection of the public.
I think that the thing is, an unliscenced person tells someone that, the thing (whatever it is) is thier property corner. Based on what? Unless you're talking about a newer subdivision there aren't going to be any caps with numbers (around here anyway). And even then, that surveyor should be called. Sounds like boundary determination to me. I like the part in the original thread about a variance. So who's gonna pay for that process, the hold up, and who are they gonna call to show how it really is, maybe a surveyor.
My 0.04
It all boils down to............
Who do you sue if the answer is wrong?
I think that it all boils down to that the city employees are out digging up and finding irons that probably have flagging on them (if they have been under the topsoil/sod) with a rag tape or chain of some type and might know how to read a plat. What if they dig up a PC/PT that is only 3' from the actual corner and all the neighbors have been mowing that iron because the water meter or the telephone pedestal knocked out the actual corner iron (I actually saw that last year). The employees are probably not using any surveying equipment to check the geometry of the subject lot.
The employees from the city probably are OK 90% of the time, because the surveyor or engineer probably did do a decent job of setting the original corners. But what about that other 10% (or whatever)?. That's where I have a problem with this.
> I suppose I'm counter here as I mostly agree with the city. Uncovering a corner marker in place is not locating a corner in the sense that it is not there and needs to be replaced. If landowners can't use the corner markers placed previously by a survey to identify where their boundaries are then why place them at all? That's what the corner markers are far is for landowners use to identify their boundaries. If all the city does is find existing markers in place then they are not locating (surveying) corners just identifying them for the intended use. If the corner is missing, can't be found or apparently disturbed then it's time to use a surveyor.
A piece of pipe in the ground is not a "corner" unless and until someone authorized by law declares that it is in fact a corner and not a goat stake, horse shoe pit stake, etc. No one from the city has any business finding "corners". They can spend all day finding stuff that might or might not be a corner. Screw up once or twice and the liability that will pile onto the heads of the tax payers of the city would have paid for many many many surveys.
Larry P
L. R., you're missing the point
The point is that no City employee can emphatically declare any old ferrous monument to be the "the corner". That would be akin to you lookin at your malfunctioning AC unit and, without ever having taken a course on AC units or ever having worked with a certified AC repairman, declare, "The problem is in the thingamafuzz", except worse, because they are violating state surveying law when the City employees do that.
They are just not qualified to "locate" a property corner. How long have you been in surveying? How long did it take you to become a person possessing the necessary education and skills to be considered an "expert", at least as far as the stat of Utah is concerned?
How long have these guys who work for Bettendorf been under the direct supervision of a registered land surveyor? How many classes have they taken related to land surveying?
How many boundary surveys have they actually performed? Can they even spell "encroachment"?
Maybe those guys should start designing utility lines, too. They are about as qualified to do one as the other. After all, they only have to make sure that stuff flows downhill, right?
> I suppose I'm counter here as I mostly agree with the city. Uncovering a corner marker in place is not locating a corner in the sense that it is not there and needs to be replaced. If landowners can't use the corner markers placed previously by a survey to identify where their boundaries are then why place them at all? That's what the corner markers are far is for landowners use to identify their boundaries. If all the city does is find existing markers in place then they are not locating (surveying) corners just identifying them for the intended use. If the corner is missing, can't be found or apparently disturbed then it's time to use a surveyor.
>
> Most of the states descriptions of what a surveyor does is way to comprehensive. Yes surveyors do that stuff but it is all not reserved for surveyors only. You could interpret it to mean you needed a land surveyors license to measure and cut a 2 x 4. They should cut it way back to where the law and boundaries is concerned, jettison all the rest as there is no need for the regulation and protection of the public.
A field monument cannot be considered the property corner unless supported by a "survey". Simply finding a monument is just that, finding it. Surveyors find them and others, then draft a survey that proves or disproves the field monument(s) as the property corner.
L. R., you're missing the point
I'd need to go back to the original newspaper article but I think it stated that the city was only using survey markers with PLS numbers on them (clearly survey markers).
So what is a landowner to do. Do they need to call a surveyor every time they need to locate their boundary even if it's clearly monumneted. Why mark it at all if the markers can only be used by a surveyor? What would be the point?
Surveyors need to get over themselves, we are not the only ones that can read the text on a survey marker.
In my experience many times surveyors won't respect the marker of another surveyor (doesn't measure exactly to their math). So boundaries are rarely stable (move every time its surveyed). So why mark then at all? Every time you need to "locate" the boundary call a surveyor and be prepared to move all your improvements. I'd suppose that might be "missing the point."
"until someone authorized by law declares that it is in fact a corner"
I wasn't aware that surveyors had been authorized by statute to to adjudicate boundaries. My bad, must have missed that surveyors in fact are Terminus. From my view only the landowners have domain over their boundaries and no one else has been authorized to establish their boundaries.
It all boils down to............
I'd say from my experience that 99% of the time nobody sues anyone!
> A field monument cannot be considered the property corner unless supported by a "survey". Simply finding a monument is just that, finding it. Surveyors find them and others, then draft a survey that proves or disproves the field monument(s) as the property corner.
>
I think we seem to be forgetting that, 1) there already is a survey plat on record, 2) the survey monuments were required to be placed, 3) the landowner has a right to rely upon the markers, and 4) recovering the markers that have already been placed is not the "practice of surveying."
There are many persons who rely upon survey monuments to indicate boundary locations other than landowners. A building inspector is just one of them.
JBS
I just had one yesterday were the iron pipe at the back corner had been moved 3 feet by the neighbor (I think) when he put up a shed. It looked fine. We don't cap the corners here so it would have been easy to assume it was OK. The lines are all brushed up so just eyeballing wouldn't do anything to warn one that the corner even looked funny. Without the survey, this pipe would have caused all kinds of grief. The folks were putting up a pool and had to hold it close to the lot lines. The lot had a previous survey from 1988.
Years back we had this same problem in a nearby village. The guys were using a locator to find all sorts of iron and then telling the homeowners that the surveys were wrong. We finally managed to explain things to the village and got it stopped, but it wasn't easy.
With that logic, why bother to ever re-survey a once surveyed parcel...
“A piece of pipe in the ground is not a "corner" unless and until someone authorized by law declares that it is in fact a corner…”
While that may be true for your corners, mine are expected to be relied on. I want the homeowner, builder, contractor, fence builder, utility company, power company, city (well, you get the idea) to locate/find my pins and use them. I would be a rich man I had to go out and bless them every time someone wanted to use them for their intended purpose. Based on your statement I wonder how you find time to post with all that running around.
Jack
I actually always mis-spell enchroachment. Thats why I never use the word on my surveys 😉
