First, people in South Florida must have it pretty good because the problems that arise are absolutely ridiculous. Second, their resolutions are equally as ridiculous. Two neighbors, catty-corner to each other were arguing about a certain tree on the property line, which happens all around the country I am sure. The lady to the north seemed to legitimately believe that there were "Avatars", the ones from the movie, living the tree and she would hate to see it go. Our client wanted us to stake the property line so he could remove the "Avatars" from the yard. After a couple hours worth of work we established the line, set a corner, and put some stakes on line. Shortly thereafter the tree with the avatars disappeared and the very next day we were doing a fence permit survey for the lady who thought she owned the avatar tree. We returned to the previous client who ordered the original survey to do some more work. Our client put his own iron rods in flush with the grass about .20 and .35 onto his property from the original corners both of which were iron rods, which we didn't realize until we had located the improvements and moved to the rear of the property. Here's how it happened. Setup on one rod, sighted the other and distances checks within .01, okay, continue we are on the correct point. Setup on another point in the back, sight the same corner and miss the backsight by .50. Now I'm worried, turn the check angle to the building and hit right on the money. The sight was good for line, happens chance, and the distance was bad. .50 to the east was the original corner. It just happened that he put his own reference rods right next to ours, and keep in mind that no other surveying had been done on our clients property, and another surveyor used them to do the lot survey to the west. What a headache. Needless to say it took some head scratching to figure out what was going on and when we realized where he had set his own version of the corner, we dug and found each of our original corners. If these new rods were there upon our original survey, they would have most definitely have been found and to find several new rods was quite the unwelcome surprise. Original survey showed our client where his corners were and he decided that through his headache with his neighbor he would pound some extra rods next to his others to further protect his compound of .3 acres, what a knucklehead and what a problem for future surveyors.....
Don't you cap your rods? That should have alerted you that somebody was messing around, when you find rods without caps.
I have seen that happen. Makes you want to do some things that just might infuriate the client, but they need to be done anyway.
Sad to report, idiots are not unique to Florida.
It is common that clients, neighbors and other surveyors are among that group as I find original monuments with an outlying assortment of user rods, concrete creations and other forms of pipes and metal objects within a small span of reach from each other.
Welcome to the world of goat stakes to choose from.
I have learned when finding anything that is not the original monument to tie it in, pull it up and continue my search.
Recently with this process I found three monuments of rebar and rod variety withing a half foot to a foot from each other and none was the original monument and all had a different color of ribbon and were from decades old to very recent and representing a location established in 1972.
I had in my hand a 6mo old survey of the lot next door to the west and did not find any of the monuments the surveyor from 2hrs away had declared he had found or set, OMG.
Insert "primal scream" here....
Don't you cap your rods? That should have alerted you that somebody was messing around, when you find rods without caps.
We do cap our rods, however we do not set capped rods if there is already one there. Where we had set one, we capped it. It was not in question even though it also had a fresh iron rod right next to it, with a pink flag that was not ours. I wanted to leave a note on the extra vehicle in the driveway. A. Harris, we ran into that very same problem except the survey was done in March of 2015, and it's just now June. I found points in the seawall 3' away from where the other surveyor called off finding "bent IRs".
I recently tried to set a corner point and it landed on a water valve cover. The client asked if I'd put an iron bar in somewhere nearby so he had a reference to the corner. I would not and explained why. I referred him to his rear corner where he had installed a window weight near way back in the mid twentieth century. I found his reference mark and after carefully removing it, I found his original corner pin (bar, rod or whatever colloquial term you may have in your part of the world). I told him that his window weight was nice and all, but it is no substitute for his actual corner marker which I pointed to about a foot deep. I know he probably reused the window weight at the valve cover as soon as I left but that's the next guy's problem and if I'm the next guy I already know about the reference point guy.
If a corner fell in a water valve, I would certainly set an offset, if requested by the client. But I am I am in a recording state, so there is a mechanism for someone to know what that offset is...
When I first started out, so many years ago, our crew was tasked with checking r/w monuments another one of our crews had set around a large retail complex. The monuments had been set prior to the completion the parking and landscaping and we were really just verifying that they were still there. As it turns out they were, but they were out of position a couple of tenths here and there. The monument were caped and up against the back of walk. Now my crew chief, Norm, was an incredible field survey and the best possible mentor a fresh young punk like myself could ask for but he was one of the most gruff guys I have ever known. After resetting about the 5th monument we found out he was about the strangle the other crew who fortunately were not on site. After about the 10th monument I found one leaning over a new irrigation line. Apparently the landscapers had placed the ditch witch up against the walk to cut their trench and just put our monuments back as the removed them. They actually did a great job considering. When I replaced the final monument at 1600 on a Friday afternoon the monument ruptured one of the main irrigation lines creating a little version of Old Faithful. Norm looked at me and the new water feature and told me to box it up, it was the absent landscapers' problem now. When we got back on site the following Monday there was quite a hole.
Bill93, post: 322324, member: 87 wrote: Don't you cap your rods? That should have alerted you that somebody was messing around, when you find rods without caps.
We have had to set caps on rods here in Alabama since '84, but the cheap yellow caps (especially the 5/8") come off really easy. It's not uncommon to find bare flagged rebars around here.
John Putnam, post: 322486, member: 1188 wrote: ... Apparently the landscapers had placed the ditch witch up against the walk to cut their trench and just put our monuments back as the removed them. ....
Back in Canada, near the beginning of my career.... it was typical, due to the recording laws and procedures, to set subdivision lot monuments before the site was cleared and roads/utilities built and reset those that got destroyed afterwards. Of course that resetting was the gravy for the surveyor and a big cost which the developer never wanted to pay. Most of the time few, if any, survived. But sometimes enough survived to make it possible to stake out the foundations.
I was sent out to stake a foundation in such a recently built subdivision. There were monuments with wood guard posts at every corner. A few here and there were up in "mushrooms" 5 feet above the general lay of the land.
Long story short - long story -the ones in the mushrooms seemed to fit okay while the ones neatly behind the curb line all seemed to be this way and that way a couple of "decs" more or less.
Of course, the excavators had pulled the rods and guards from the mushrooms, cleared the mushroom away, and reset the rods and guards about were they had been. Leaving them looking like perfect originals. If they had finished the job we would have been none the wiser.
So when you find monuments that look like they have been there since the day of the original subdivision but don't match the dimensions just keep that story in mind.
