Saw a survey today for a tract that surrounded a tract we cut out about two years ago.?ÿ Nearly all monuments are one-half inch rebar.?ÿ A couple are railroad spikes set 50 years ago.?ÿ All work by both surveyors is GPS.?ÿ Minor potential for any movement of the monuments.
All distances measured common to both surveys differ from 0.05 feet to 0.17 feet.?ÿ One number under 200 feet had a delta of 0.15 while a half mile only differed by 0.07.?ÿ These are wide-open locations.?ÿ No dense cover of any kind.?ÿ In every case the new survey has shorter distances on every dimension.
Meanwhile, all section corners report "Source Unknown".?ÿ A short journey to the courthouse would provide source data for every corner plus the survey we conducted about two years ago.?ÿ Some data is available through the state archives.?ÿ "Source unknown" is an easy way to say "We don't really care enough to do the work we should do."
I work in certain areas so often I spent some time placing permanent control.?ÿ It's handy and keeps me out of some busy streets.
Not long ago I received a work order to prepare a slew of additional 5' side lot line easement in a recently completed subdivision.?ÿ A filed plat with pins in place and all-weather pavement is a real luxury for me so the job looked like a cake walk.?ÿ In a couple of hours I had driven all over an 80 acre addition, located fifty something property pins and about as many stakes that the co-op engineer had set.?ÿ Not a tree or even 5 feet of grade distance on the whole site.
When I put it all up on the screen (with a properly oriented plat) I was appalled at how far off some of the pins had 'wandered'.?ÿ The section line control was within hundredths, a real non-issue.?ÿ By the time I was 300 yards from the section line the recently placed pins were approaching a half a foot in any willy-nilly direction.?ÿ The rear property line some 2300' from the section line differed by a little over a foot.?ÿ The slop concerned me so much I returned to the site and checked everything from some other control.?ÿ It corroborated my original data.?ÿ I guess the surveyor that filed the plat had little concern about the quality of his work.
I had seen his crew out there working earlier and they seemed to have decent GPS equipment.?ÿ All I could think was "c'mon man!" ... ?ÿ
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There was a local doctor who, years ago, owned a bunch of rough overgrown property with some dirt roads winding through it. He decided he wanted to sell off tracts and mark the corners himself, then have it surveyed, at least that's the story I got. ?ÿHis marking method was to drive along the dirt roads in his pickup and throw out a 4-5 ft. long concrete post where he wanted a corner. ?ÿDidn't set em, just threw them out. When he'd sell a tract, he'd get it surveyed, but didn't want to pay somebody to dig holes, so as you can imagine, there's quite a bit of variation in the lines around there. ?ÿ
There was a rural developer around here about thirty years ago that would set lath along the fence line by the road with the odometer in his car. I think he finally retired (or expired)...but I'm sure his work is still being argued somewhere!
0.17' to over a foot in old surveys may be customary in rural boundaries over half mile lines in rough terrain.?ÿ I'd hold the monuments found and not pincushion the line because "I'm a better measurer" guy.?ÿ Once set an exterior?ÿ straight line is controlled by monuments of record is set by the record survey, not math, so they hold.?ÿ Be aware junior subdivision lines may be junior concerning the jig-jogs of the prior survey is properly monumented.?ÿ OTOH if the subdivision boundary is off by dozens or hundreds of feet it's time to reject monuments and correct the record.
I'll step back and say side lot line monuments on an exterior subdivision boundary if set are only witness?ÿ corners which indicate where the lot line intersects the subdivision boundary, which is a senior line.?ÿ You can't claim property beyond that that which was sold by the divider, and you can lose property because your lot wasn't within the subdivision.?ÿ Buyer beware, get 'er surveyed, and buy Title Insurance is always my advice.
Strangely this subject is about?ÿ finding no?ÿ record?ÿ subdivision monuments and then have to go thousands of feet to GLO monuments, to extrapolate subdivision corners where the northern tier is 100's of feet into the SW1/4 of the NW 1/4 and theoretically does not exist.?ÿ Time to question the Courts, not our venue; we establish facts, not equitable solutions.?ÿ Praise the Lord this is a a rare occurrence so we land surveyors aren't involved except in measurement and record determination of valid found monuments.?ÿ
There was a rural developer around here about thirty years ago that would set lath along the fence line by the road with the odometer in his car.?ÿ
My uncle did that to split Grandma's 80 acres with Dad, who was too sick to get involved so said OK.?ÿ My measurements say uncle shorted himself 23 ft at one end of his new fence and maybe took a few at the other.?ÿ Not too bad for watching the 0.2 halfway over toward 0.3 in each direction. The angle is easily seen on Google earth.
Deeds for adjacent properties, having metes-only descriptions, do not agree now by somewhat significant amounts.?ÿ Oh, those poor people in the GIS office attempting to describe the little gaps that must end up at a delinquent tax sale someday.?ÿ Meanwhile, the rest of the world assumes surveyors are all idiots.
A similar event happened another time, but the errors were far greater.?ÿ We had surveyed a nice rectangular tract being something like 200 feet by 300 feet.?ÿ Several years later the following survey for a surrounding tract reported numbers more like 201.8 by 301.5.?ÿ This clearly indicated we were extremely poor surveyors.?ÿ What had actually happened was that our client had pulled our bars, set large corner posts at those points, built fences along all lines and drove our bars back into the ground somewhere "near" each corner post.?ÿ The second surveyor merely shot the bars he found without realizing how they had been disturbed and in no way represented the true boundary.?ÿ How do you spell doofus?
