?ÿ
It wont be recorded and no one will ever notice till the building changes ownership and a new EC is required.?ÿ Or if it floods and FEMA does an audit.?ÿ
Permit information isn't recorded but it is public. That includes the EC. The same is true of any information used in community rating. Very few pieces of paper are private these days, you just need to know where to look...
- I've got two of these. One is a garage built with no permit maybe touching the Floodway boundary. How's an accurate boundary determined? Stay dry is the best I've found so far. Elevation I determined is 0.4 below the BF. County requires an additional 2 foot unless you do a LOMA and have the building removed from the Floodway. My competitor removed a structure totally inside the Floodway. I called him up and asked "What's your magic?" He told me they found a benchmark 3 miles away that is 2 feet higher than the rest and used that. I found the nearby benchmark's elevations to be inconsistent so I used OPUS.
- What do you use for a basis of elevation?
@spledeus All the more reason to file a lien if they are late paying your bills. Puts the pressure on them to know you won't tolerate being messed with. Also, the Mass. lien law has a limited time frame in which you can file, so it would be wise to get familiar with the requirements before you need to kick things in that direction.
@skeeter1996 Level loop from a static BM with two OPUS solutions on the loop along with a series of RTK checks.?ÿ We tossed the static BM since we are subsiding enough to account for the 0.12' discrepancy with the OPUS solutions and the OPUS is the higher anyhow making it the safer choice.?ÿ If I am wrong I am not too low.
The problem is that getting and EC "right" does not equal getting your client out of the insurance. That is how your client sees it, but getting an EC "right" means that FEMA is able to correctly assess the risk for that particular property or structure.?ÿ
If a surveyor hunts for a benchmark that tells them what their client wants and they hold it in spite of overwhelming evidence, then they have moved from being a surveyor into something different. They are now an advocate. That may violate our professional canon (IMHO). Perhaps they should sit for the bar, not for the LS?
Our professional duty is to the public, no?
@dmyhill?ÿ
Well I see the point as the Flood Elevation System is so flawed that no accurate accessment of the relationship of the actual ground elevation to the Base Flood Elevation can be made. FEMA states that their BFE elevations are accurate to .27 cm. In a High Flood potential area to 1.47 cm. In a Medium Flood potential area. State and County agencies are enforcing Flood Elevations to 0.1 ft. The data used simply doesn't support that amount of precision. Add the element that NGS benchmarks also do not support that decree of accuracy. I've been told by "experts" that it doesn't get any better than OPUS. Occasionally you can get an OPUS derived elevation to match a NGS benchmark, but not often.?ÿ
The point that one one competitor's using a benchmark more favorable to his client is not that he's being unethical, it's that the whole FEMA Flood Plain system is so flawed it should not be used for 0.1 foot accuracy and shouldn't be used as such. It was meant for Insurance Companies to provide a system for determining insurance rates.
100% agree. The precision should be rounded to the nearest foot, and the BFE should take that into account. Additionally, the insurance costs should reasonably cover maintenance of physical benchmarks local to the areas which are being studied.?ÿ
Not having physical monuments and all the rest make it seem like a paperwork maze where if you find your way out you do not pay as much in flood insurance. That isn't the true goal of the system, but like so much government help, that is what happens.
Yet, we are still not advocates for our clients, we are finders of fact, and if in our professional opinion the structure is below BFE, we shouldn't sign off on it just because we can find alternative facts. IMHO.
@skeeter1996?ÿ ?ÿ I feel like it's my duty to re-rebuff the same inverse accuracies you have repeatedly posted on this chain. I have only been doing Elevation Certificates for 44 years and only do about two a week, but still, I have never witnessed the order of discrepancies that you state as commonplace. Yes, they've had mapping errors, flood boundary mislabeling and mistakes in fieldwork, BUT, for the most part, NGS benchmark are very accurate, Base Flood elevations are accurate and OPUS benchmarks (not OPUS values) are not so much. Apples are great, peanut are tasty, Oranges are delicious and raisins are yummy, but when mixed together, yuk. You can not mix up different numbers, data, accuracies, datums, classifications, elevations, heights, and precisions; each apply to their own and are not global.
You need to figure out how to use the vary things you have been railing against for about a month to prepare evidence, reports and forms that will assist your client and resolve the very problems they may have created.?ÿ
@oldpacer You need to read FEMA's Estimate of Vertical Values. "For the most part" is a pretty vague term.
FEMA Elevation Certificates haven't been around for 44 years. And it rains in Indianapolis. I would guess you've never validated any elevation work you've done. How could of you with your Dumpy Level. I certainly don't consider you a reliable source of information.
@dmyhill My frustration is that there is no reliable "facts". The FEMA FIRM maps do not state their basis of elevation and there is no way to duplicate their Flood boundaries, other than tracing them. How are Surveyors suppose to find the facts when the data is so badly flawed.
@dmyhill Question. What is overwhelming evidence? Dated photos of Flood events? What else it's kind of hard to get an elevation off a photograph. ? I've been getting elevations from 2 or 3 NGS benchmarks plus an OPUS processed observation. I've yet to find any overwhelming evidence. The more evidence I gather, the more muddled it gets.
@skeeter1996?ÿ ?ÿWOW Skeet, you just don't get it. You have received a lot of good advice on how to resolve your situation, but all you can dwell on is how bad BFE's are, and how bad NGS is.?ÿ
Did my first Elevation Certificate in 1977. I always validate my elevations. I have never used a dumpy level. What have I said that has been unreliable? I have worked for Federal Agencies, Corporations and Mom & Pops; I may not be a good Surveyor, but I have done a lot, seen more and have solved identical problems as yours, many times.?ÿ What I like about this site is how much you can learn by reading others people ideas about surveying. I wish I had the communicable skills to convey my ideas in a way that would help you.
