Survey filed this summer. I direct your attention to the CL/CL intersection point:
That's a "Ramsey Point", documented on a 1916 map by the then City Surveyor. It is actually a brass pin in aluminum in concrete in a monument box well below street level. First rule of surveying in Portland is you find one of those, you hold it. And you certainly don't call it .03' off.
BTW, Survey 40933 is even more laughably perplexing.
Yikes
> That's a "Ramsey Point", documented on a 1916 map by the then City Surveyor. It is actually a brass pin in aluminum in concrete in a monument box well below street level. First rule of surveying in Portland is you find one of those, you hold it. And you certainly don't call it .03' off.
Question: Do the City Surveyor's monuments ever get displaced by utility construction in the right-of-way? That is not entirely unknown in Austin.
I assume that the situation here is that there is no means to disprove the location of the monument in question aside from its relationship to other monuments set by the same City Surveyor (and possibly adopted by the City Council as marking the true centerline of the public right-of-way).
what an odd looking survey map.. Is that fairly standard in your area?
I once recorded a rather extensive survey memorializing some Right of Way issues. When the final plots were made I missed some references to monuments called off line to the hundredth. It makes you feel rather dumb. If this map had my name on it I would probably move. I might consider changing my name...
I kind of like that all of those bearings are exact north (00'00") and exact 45° bearings. Good distances too. The only one thing "off" is off by 0.025' (taking the mean of the two of course). It's kind of surprising that the building is a 0.5' encroachment, I would have expected it to be out by, like, 0.493 or something. This guy knows how to measure.
Since taking over the Borough of State College surveyor position I have put in a request to upgrade control. I have come to the conclusion that the prior surveyor who was here 30+ years used to go off of old property pins that were tied into USGS monuments. Over time those pins heaved and when I did my first survey here I told him I was an avg of .7 off vertically and horizontally and he told me that's pretty close...
There are two Promark 2's in the basement here and I am thinking of when we have construction around town to ask the contractor to help make monuments for me to sit on and reestablish good control. I feel 30 years from now whoever takes this job from me will like me for that.
Any ideas on what to get and how to do it? I've never used Promark 2's before. The construction company I came from I was running GR-3 and GR-5's for control. Any help is appreciated since when we hand over our survey/design projects to contractors I don't want them establishing anything with GPS over something I've done from not having perfect control set.
Seems like a rant but it's Friday and in a college town I'm ready to go home and be stress free.
> Question: Do the City Surveyor's monuments ever get displaced by utility construction in the right-of-way? That is not entirely unknown in Austin.
Many have been destroyed over the years. But they are pretty stout and 1-2 feet below street level typically. I have withheld the balance of this survey to protect the guilty but trust me, they didn't tie enough to prove it was disturbed. I acknowledge that it is possible, I have not observed a case in which it has happened.
yes but
Please notice the surveyor's note. "Sheared off"? To me that indicated some type of distress to the monument. SOOOO the surveyor decided to report what they found and it appears to be a disturbed monument.....
> what an odd looking survey map.. Is that fairly standard in your area?
The look of the map is typical.
> what an odd looking survey map.. Is that fairly standard in your area?
What's odd about it? Looks like a fairly standard ACAD plat from my area. I mean everybody has their little tweaks and such, but it looks like what most of the AE firms would generate. Except for the centerline/baseline B&D's. We don't have centerline control anywhere that I operate. But, I do know what it looks like (in the field and on a plat).
yes but
> Please notice the surveyor's note. "Sheared off"? To me that indicated some type of distress to the monument. SOOOO the surveyor decided to report what they found and it appears to be a disturbed monument.....
These Ramsey Points are 1/8" (maybe 3/16") brass studs that are slightly proud of the aluminum. To the uninitiated they may appear "sheared off". They are not. They are the same all over what was urban Portland in the early 1900's.
yes but
Looks like NW 4th street is due north.
yes but
> Looks like NW 4th street is due north.
And the intersecting street is due west. And the distances are all exactly per the 1850ish plat. This survey is the gift that keeps on giving.
> I kind of like that all of those bearings are exact north (00'00") and exact 45° bearings. Good distances too. The only one thing "off" is off by 0.025' (taking the mean of the two of course). It's kind of surprising that the building is a 0.5' encroachment, I would have expected it to be out by, like, 0.493 or something. This guy knows how to measure.
Spot on. That's a pet peeve of mine. Either it's NORTH or it's not.
Well, except for the note about a building encroachment it looks like a vacant parcel
I assume the dashed lne is a 5' witness line?
No measured calls except for the minuscule "out" reference to the centerline point.
Maybe if I saw the whole map it would make more sense
The remainder of the map shows many monument ties, nearly all with fallings. The surveyor has held 2 other Ramsey Points 2 blocks north and 2 blocks to the east and to the west, run plat distances and cardinal directions.
The dashed line is indeed an offset to the property line. This is downtown with zero offset building construction. It is typical to set marks in the sidewalk (historically brass screws in lead, recently 30mm Bernsten brass plugs) on either 4 or 5 foot offsets.
> Any ideas on what to get and how to do it?
Uh... well....yes, as a matter of fact, I do have some thoughts. Perhaps over the weekend I can write them down.
yes but
That was my second observation prompting a WTF(!?!) reaction. He calls the old CL mon off by some little smidge, but reports a block with perfect right angles and perfect dimensions.
[sarcasm]He found that one perfect block that's been hiding from all the other surveyors for so long.[/sarcasm]
I see this all the time, a favorite local surveyor puts a bearing and distance from the corners he recovers to what he calls - “The true point of the corner” on many plats. I have seen distances of 0.01 and 0.02 several times. He does this even if they are original subdivision corners. He doesn’t have the sac to set any corners at true positions though.
He gets most business in town including government because his rep is “fast and cheap”. I have consistently found large errors on projects where I have recovered the work. The problem is that surveying problems are mostly in the future, long after the initial project is paid for and forgotten.
