Coordinates are a great aid in corner searching, the problem is when the coordinates replace the monuments.
I don't think we are. The law is nowhere near a point where the courts will hold a coordinate over a monument. The "not recovered this survey" surveyors are rolling the dice. It will come back to bite most of them.
It is not that difficult to locate the center of a pole.
You simply shoot the center of the pole at its outside edge and add 1/2 the diameter of the pole at that point.
Same for trees, fence corners, and all standing objects and also monuments that lie under cross braces or other objects that do not allow occupation of the desired point being measured.
I can remember conversations about perhaps picking a certain corner or bolt or directional side of an object.
Best to always mention what part of the object being referenced the measurement is being made to, such as, "facing base of lightpole" or "center of lightpole".
0.02
Currently, in Texas, that difference in measurement is considered sloppy and unacceptable work, even though it is being done every day by many RTK users.
I recently found two newly set monuments called to be 1200.00 ft to actually measure 1200.67 ft with a direct TS shot between them and they had not been disturbed by a new post or any other outside reason for movement.
You seem to be against the method; when the real problem is abusers of the method.
EVERYTHING has a negative side; if we can eliminate as much of the negativity as we can, the method becomes more viable.
I would hope none of us are against good surveying practice.
There has always been a disconnect between the taught theories of land surveying and the actual application of the art in the field. I think what sticks in my craw (and others) is a blind reliance on published references or notes. But when a corner is restored it should be verified. Whether it's restored by coordinates with a jillion dollars worth of GPS equipment or a corner ref sheet with a worn out cloth tape; it needs to be verified. Not taking the time to look up an old survey or two that was tied to a now obliterated monument for a check or two is just poor practice whether it's 1920 or 2020.
In the old chain & transit days I can remember dreaming about some contraption that would allow a surveyor to "just walk up and set a pin" without setting up a transit or chaining or clearing line or anything. I guess those days are nearly upon us...we just need to adhere to traditional and proper procedures that have been around a long time. 😉
I would hope none of us are against good surveying practice.?ÿ
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That's what testing to a minimum standard is for...;^)
I think it's more about ignorance; blindly following the easy path, just because it's easy; writing it off (doing your due diligence) as just a part of doing business.
I've seen guys that I consider good surveyors; guys that have been licensed for a long time and hold jobs high up in the government (city) that reject monuments (1/16 corners) that have been there a long time, just because they don't match; a by the book calculation. When it was set along time ago, by his predecessor and accepted by an adjoining plat.?ÿ
Corner records in Washington are few and far between; which leads to "that" kind of controversy. I miss that part of working in Nebraska; they kept GOOD corner records! And just about every plat was pinned. They weren't capping them, when I left; but it sure was nice finding all the pins + a couple to check too. Section Corners and Quarter Corners (GLO corners) were referenced (ties were set/checked) every time you used one to survey your project. And if you needed to set a GLO corner, you had to hire the County Surveyor or be deputized by them to complete the job.
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The good old days...
Corners are monumented for the benefit of OWNERS. Until the average joe public can rely on a coordinate it is USELESS as high order evidence and must remain at the bottom of the order of calls.
Hit the nail on the head.
Corners are monumented for the benefit of OWNERS. Until the average joe public can rely on a coordinate it is USELESS as high order evidence and must remain at the bottom of the order of calls.
Monuments of course are on top, but coordinates could eventually rise to the level of bearings and distances.?ÿ Land owners can't do much with bearings, often not even able to read them, and are poor at measuring distances. So coordinates aren't much less useful to owners, and with care can be very useful to surveyors.
As somebody who used to process field data all the time & who also had access to publicly recorded surveys here in NC, I can see just about everyone??s side in this debate. I do feel that very reckless use of technology has severe drawbacks as people become way too complacent on just trying to go with computed points - especially a field crew eager to get wrapped up for the day. Plus it??s just not honoring the monumented boundary or what any of the landowners actually own.?ÿ
But I??ve also see too where if a field crew chief or even the surveyor is using his or her sound, professional judgment & is properly trained in the use of GPS or a total station then it can yield marvelous results for those having to import & sift through the field data. When things actually fall together fairly nicely & it??s not because someone forced it then it gives you a sense of pride in the work done.
side note, I can empathize with Holy Cow on them poorly shooting or noting a witness post/pole or say something as simple as a two-legged sign & not even accounting for the center of the actual structure or it??s various legs or bases. Same with items like transformers or utility vaults with just a single point (sometimes not even at the centroid of the object). It can definitely bite you in the @$$ later on.
Had a licensed surveyor once stake a dozen catch basins on a commercial site that were drawn by an engineer from another firm at almost double their actual size due to the drawings scale being so small yet they were conventionally sized 2.17?? by 3?? interior dimensioned CB??s for smaller 15? & 18? RCP pipe. We were very fortunate to have caught it after only laying a few joints of pipe as it placed the CB??s too far into the parking lot & the city won??t accept boxes with walls cobbled back at funny angles (oversized boxes require flat top slabs with ??chimney? inlets on top). We were also fortunate enough to still have the surveyor there to ask him to stake the EOP/edge of the curb line so we could have a reference line up for the front inside walls of the CB??s & from there adjust for what the centers of the boxes actually needed to be?ÿ
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EDIT: guys... topics like this with all of your wisdom & decades of experience from each of you make it a treat to read through. For what it??s worth I truly appreciate posts like these as they provide teachable moments
Yes, teachable moments.............for all.?ÿ We learn best when we hear strong arguments going more than one direction.
Some valid points, but we aren't there yet. In the meantime we have a large percentage of surveyors treating boundary surveys as a math pursuit. They are folliwed by owners using cell phone apps and etrex units to build fences and other improvements based on coordinates of all flavors.
Boundary surveying is an evidence based profession. If you begin at the monument and the surrounding evidence the relative unimportance of numbers quickly becomes apparent. When you apply math to reestablish a corner you will move it 99 times out of a 100.
We absolutely should be able to express location and dimensions very well in this day and age. Let time and the law elevate those numbers if and when it becomes appropriate.
In the forest we chop out a face on nearby trees, paint with tree paint and measure with reflectorless. Then we scratch information onto an aluminum 4"x6" bearing tree tag and nail it in the face with 4-8d galvanized nails, left up a half inch to inch because trees grow.
trees grow and move (not across the ground but they sometimes lean more than they did before).
ties decades old are usually not exactly correct anymore even when they set a nail and tag (sometimes the tree has swallowed the tag but the old flagging is still sticking out.
Most of us draw up very nice looking plats with lots of details and extra digits after the decimal in order to make our work appear far superior to what it is in reality.?ÿ Descriptions declare measurements to the nearest 0.01 feet and arcsecond.?ÿ We all know that is fiction but we do it anyway.?ÿ Why??ÿ If we go out next week with the same gear and attempt to duplicate every step of the field work precisely as before the numbers kicked out of the data collector will not all be identical to the ones from this week.?ÿ So do we pretend we made errors in our first round of field work??ÿ No.?ÿ But, if we go out three months later for a different client and shoot in the exact same monuments, some of us have no qualms of creating a pretty plat that suggests our initial plat contained errors (the layman sees different numbers from those on the first plat) and may even write a revised description.?ÿ Encountered a plat for a proposed subdivision with lot lines shown to be running at bearings that had readings for seconds to five figures to the right of the decimal (14.12345 seconds)?ÿ That's a major fiction all to itself, right there.?ÿ Especially with lot lines of about 150 feet.?ÿ Reporting the nearest second is folly, let alone the nearest 100 thousandth of a second.
Corner ties fall victim to the same frailties.?ÿ As Dave pointed out, some things we think of as stable really aren't quite that stable.?ÿ The method/gear we use to determine a certain tie distance can further alter the numbers, as shown by leaning the GPS receiver against the pole at a random height and actually shooting a point that is something like 0.33 feet shorter/longer than reported on the corner report.?ÿ I have discovered power poles that already had a nail in them removed and then reset a very short distance away.?ÿ That nail in the SW face may now be in the SE face and two feet further from the monument being tied.?ÿ Coordinates are fiction.?ÿ A tie to a building may be incorrect due to multipath issues that are not considered when selecting a reference object.?ÿ
Monuments themselves are not nearly as stable as we prefer to think.?ÿ I found one of my own recently that was about nine inches from where it was put.?ÿ This was perplexing.?ÿ Then the adjoiner rode up on his golf cart and bragged about how he put the bar back after pulling it, drilling a post hole centered on where the bar had been, setting the post and adding some concrete to secure it for the future.?ÿ He put it back at the edge of the concrete, because it must be valuable or we wouldn't have set it 18 years ago, about a week before he moved it.?ÿ Trying to match an eighteen year old coordinate would have had us on a step ladder precariously attempting to keep things plumb on the top of a fence post, if the coordinate was of any use to begin with. (Psst.?ÿ Which way is "northing"?)
We traversed around a 15 or so acre mountain top tract, surveyed in 1962. They set the corners 3 times because they changed their mind twice about how to subdivide the section.
all monuments fit the Record of Survey within a few tenths except one 3 feet off but it fit the BTs. I found the calculations, bad angle from their traverse point to monument. Left that one as established for decades.
found another 7 feet off, their calculations look good, BTs gone, can see the lane down through the trees where someone ran the yarder cable. Reset in correct location because don't think Knute Nelson set it where we found it and it was only a few inches in the ground.
I'm an old timer I guess you can say. I've seen a lot of monuments come and go on roadways. I've seen a lot of time and effort spent in the roadway on preserving that supposed original spot never really knowing for sure. We know the standard of practice is to more carefully measure between points of local control then to ref ties. It's time to settle on an alternative to having control in unsafe and often disturbed surfaces. We could do it if we put our minds to it. I support road authorities that do not permit surveyors on roadways. People have died doing this.?ÿ