Don’t you just love fence company’s!!!

45 or so years ago we had just bought our first home.  The lot behind ours was "offset" a little, meaning our corner was on his line but not his corner.  I came home one day and found they had installed a wooden fence and set one of the posts directly on that corner.  I found the pin on the ground, on my side.  I had surveyed the lot myself and all the control was in place, so "reset" the pin with a 60d nail in the top of the post with about 6 feet of fluorescent pink flagging tied to it.

Andy

Yes, fence installers and landscapers destroy a lot of boundary monuments. Power companies have gotten better, but they used to purposely place poles or boxes on boundary corners. 

Most  fence companies i dealt with alway held the fence line 6" into the property. 

I find it more unnerving, when the fence company pulls my pins, sets their post there and then puts my pins back in against their post.

Or drilling the hole so close thinking they are not disturbing the survey marker!

It's always a tell when the monument is imbedded in the concrete surrounding the corner post.  

It took two days of drilling to get over 20 pins set in a commercial lot across the street from the Brass Ass.  On our return, the fence company was very proud that they get the fence right on the line.  The fence guy handed me an armful of pins with flagging and caps.

@tom-bushelman Did you hand him a bill in return?

Posted by: @matt3the0surveyor2

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Does anyone else always have issues like this?

.... forgive them; for they know not what they do. .... 

It is we, the surveyors, who should be shouldering our share of the blame here. We know homeowners, landscapers, and fencing contractors are not going respect our corner monuments as they should be. So how about we be the smart ones by setting, and documenting, some "permanent" control from which future surveyors may more easily reset destroyed corners?     

For the property owner that fence is a far more substantial monument than that pitiful little iron rod. Only other surveyors respect that corner iron.  

I see people using wood hubs for control all the time. Around here wood hubs are completely rotted away in a couple of years - if you can find them at all. MAG nails in sidewalk cracks? 60d spikes? Please.  And if your client wants to build a fence, stake for a fence.       

Not just fence companies, utilities do the same thing. Just remember that the guys wielding the shovels usually aren't the sharpest crayons in the box. My favorite one was in a subdivision that I'd already done work in a couple of years earlier, had tied down every pin along a 1/4 mile of a street, nearly all were in, original and in good condition. Came back couple of years later to do another small job and found every single pin along that entire stretch casually tossed off to the side and replaced with a GCI cable tv pedestal. Called them up to complain and they told me that I'd have to take it up with their contractors because they weren't responsible. Okay, fine. Ended up putting a mag nail through the top of their pedestal to mark the corner I'd been sent out to locate and wrote 'property corner' on all 4 sides of their pedestal in big letters with my sharpie. They're darn lucky I didn't set a 32" rebar.

Did a survey on a single lot.  Set and flagged all four corners.  By chance, the owner of the next property to the north being several lots called two weeks later to request a survey, primarily for the far north line.  He had no idea of my prior job.  I show up for the new job and notice a new gas line had been run over to the little house from the first job.  One of those overgrown chainsaw ditch digger machines about four inches wide had ripped out the new property corner monument that marked the SE corner of my new survey.

Years ago on a previous incarnation of this very site we had a very active poster who went by Hub Northing.  He was a fence builder who looked down on land surveyors and enjoyed harassing us.  Last we knew, he was in prison in Indiana on a murder-related conviction.

In Oregon, platted corners are now protected by a one-foot utility exclusion zone (ORS 92.044(7)).

Had something like that with utilities as well. They would not run their lines in until we had set the actual corners, not just lath to let them know where to go. Then they came through on a 12' wide easement, right down the lot line. Worst part was that they knew that they were clobbering the corners because they would have one guy behind the ditch witch waiting for the pipe to come flying out. He would then keep his eye on the spot and put the pipe right back where he thought it used to be. Boss had some choice words for him that day.

I just did a boundary retracement for a guy who wanted to put up a fence a few days ago.  I told him if anyone ever told him to put the fence a half a foot or foot inside the property line to ignore them because that's stupid as hell.  I warned him about utility companies blowing out pins and walking away too.  It didn't really seem to sink in until I said you know, these things are worth about 4 grand because that's what a surveyor is gonna charge you to put them back.  That got his attention

Posted by: @bstrand

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It didn't really seem to sink in until I said you know, these things are worth about 4 grand because that's what a surveyor is gonna charge you to put them back.  That got his attention

It might be a good idea to include an estimate for restaking along with each proposal for a boundary.

@norman-oklahoma I sort of have that.  In my estimates I give 2 prices, one for if I find all of the pins and then another for if I need to set one and record a survey.  Hopefully they would get the idea from that but maybe that's not obvious enough.

Posted by: @john-putnam

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In Oregon, platted corners are now protected by a one-foot utility exclusion zone (ORS 92.044(7)).

And it partly works.  I still see utilities too close in brand new subdivisions.  Do you think it also works the other way?  That you can't create a new lot corner within one foot of an existing utility?  

@protracted I think that issue would be addressed in the pre-plat phase.  Most, if not all of the jurisdictions require you show utilities on the preliminary plat.

A few times, I've run across fencing companies that know what boundary monuments are and they respected/protected them. Not often, but occasionally. 

I once went out to tie section corners in Midland, Tx and saw a beautiful brand new barbed wire fence with another surveyor's freshly flagged and capped monuments used as tensioners in the H-corner.

(Not the same corner)