Client has a Record of Survey conducted in 1996, bounding his land. Request is to post the boundary for fence construction. Field crew reports 2 of the 6 monument set in the 1996 Record of Survey are missing. Additional information assume the State is Oregon and corner recovery matches well with record Survey. The question is how to proceed?
My personal prospective is missing monuments within a Record of Survey and or a plat are only obliterated and the corner remains witnessed by the remaining monuments not withstanding original resolution issues. My surveyors should be able complete the posting without re-establishing permanent monuments and re-recording a survey has the singular differences of date and survey cap number.
bridger48, post: 352894, member: 6251 wrote: Client has a Record of Survey conducted in 1996, bounding his land. Request is to post the boundary for fence construction. Field crew reports 2 of the 6 monument set in the 1996 Record of Survey are missing. Additional information assume the State is Oregon and corner recovery matches well with record Survey. The question is how to proceed?
My personal prospective is missing monuments within a Record of Survey and or a plat are only obliterated and the corner remains witnessed by the remaining monuments not withstanding original resolution issues. My surveyors should be able complete the posting without re-establishing permanent monuments and re-recording a survey has the singular differences of date and survey cap number.
Where I am you would need to monument the corners, don't know about there
No biggy. Say you have both ends of a straight line but are missing a line monument somewhere in between. Wham, bam, set whatever you want along that line and roll on.
If this is an odd corner missing, then I have a bit of a concern. I would most likely document everything and treat it like any other survey where a corner is missing. By possibly making your own errors you have the opportunity to really mess up someone else's property.
The choice is yours whether to decide and accept another's survey as fact and are willing accept the liability as your own.
I've done it before and everything was in harmony with all the neighboring lands.
Then there were those occasions when my gut feeling made me take another path that proved a different solution.
good luck B-)
Does your client want a line to build a fence too or a full blown property survey to build a fence too. I would lay our the cost of each and let him decide. If he wants a full blown survey then set monuments and record your survey. If he wants a fence line laid out I don't beleave a recorded survey is needed. Either way I would run between the 2 monuments on either side of the 2 that are missing and Least Square between them.
bridger48, post: 352894, member: 6251 wrote: Client has a Record of Survey conducted in 1996, bounding his land. Request is to post the boundary for fence construction. Field crew reports 2 of the 6 monument set in the 1996 Record of Survey are missing. Additional information assume the State is Oregon and corner recovery matches well with record Survey. The question is how to proceed?
My personal prospective is missing monuments within a Record of Survey and or a plat are only obliterated and the corner remains witnessed by the remaining monuments not withstanding original resolution issues. My surveyors should be able complete the posting without re-establishing permanent monuments and re-recording a survey has the singular differences of date and survey cap number.
That would require setting of monuments and recordation of a Record of Survey map here...
Staking a fence line is considered a boundary survey, as one must determine the boundary location.
johnbo, post: 352917, member: 8695 wrote: Does your client want a line to build a fence too or a full blown property survey to build a fence too. I would lay our the cost of each and let him decide. If he wants a full blown survey then set monuments and record your survey. If he wants a fence line laid out I don't beleave a recorded survey is needed. Either way I would run between the 2 monuments on either side of the 2 that are missing and Least Square between them.
johnbo, in considering the "just want a line to build a fence to" statement you made, are you assuming the client is not intending to build the fence on the property line and its just a fence of convenience? I'm just trying to understand what you are stating here with this recommendation.
Thanks
Jim in AZ, post: 352919, member: 249 wrote: That would require setting of monuments and recordation of a Record of Survey map here...
Staking a fence line is considered a boundary survey, as one must determine the boundary location.
The boundary was previously determined, by a licensed surveyor, placed into the public record. The fact two corners destroyed or pulled perhaps by a couple of exuberant youth should not that easily undo one's work. While any number of states hold the requirement to replace the missing monuments, we are quickly coming to a place where monuments are no the 'all' they might have been with older technologies. I have yet to see a compelling and rational argument for re-recording within a subdivision, provided a defined standard of care for monument replacement is available.
But you are establishing a boundary line where none can be found today because key monuments are missing. Just grabbing some calc'ed positions and running isn't good enough. In my case that would call for a survey plat. Maybe surveyor #1 made a blunder and the monument is still there, just not where you workers think it is supposed to be. How large of a radius did they seriously explore before making the determination that it is missing?
bridger48, post: 352928, member: 6251 wrote: we are quickly coming to a place where monuments are no the 'all' they might have been with older technologies.
What?!? If the ability to consistently repeat measurements within a specified error budget were the measure of importance of monuments to boundaries, you might be somewhat correct. But that doesn't even factor in to why monuments are at the top of the evidentiary hierarchy for boundaries, always have been and always will be.
That surveyors have errors in their measurements and that mistakes in measurements (or in reporting measurements) make it onto record maps and into record descriptions a bit more than rarely is one reason why courts have placed more weight on physical monuments than on measurements. That a surveyor can employ methods and use equipment that can enable us to minimize errors and mistakes to the point of being negligible can be a valid part of an argument why monuments aren't as important as they used to be. But that argument presupposes that monuments are primarily for surveyors.
While monuments are used by surveyors to base later work on, that use is a secondary purpose. The primary beneficiaries of monuments placed by surveyors are the landowners whose boundaries those monuments mark. The primary purpose of a monument is so that the landowner can walk out onto his property to the monument location, see it, and have a tangible thing to refer to that indicates a property corner or a point on the property line.
Bearings and distances on a map or in an incomprehensible (for most people) paragraph on their deed are completely abstract and cannot be accurately envisioned on the ground by themselves. that's why land owners engage the services of land surveyors - to make the abstract tangible and readily useful.
Recent interpretations in my state (CA) of the term "establishment" and of "monument" would be such that by setting stakes for the fence intended to enable fence construction along, or parallel to and in reference to an otherwise unmonumented boundary line is (re)establishing that line on the ground and that your stakes effectively monument your re-establishment of the line. Given no material discrepancies or other RS requirement triggers, in a case like you describe, a Corner Record would be required.
I have set line stakes between existing monuments after measuring between several monuments to ensure that the ones at the ends of the line I was staking reasonably matched record as compared to other nearby monuments. But I would not set those line stakes unless the record monuments were present at both ends of the line and those mons checked out. If one or more were missing, then I need to re-establish those missing locations, which is more than merely calculating the coordinates from the mons I found and based on record dimensions.
IMO, if your client wants the lines marked along those lines that have a monument missing at one end or the other, then the scope of the project just went up. Those field conditions are not your responsibility, they simply are what they are and you had no way of knowing prior to fieldwork. But what you do after discovering the field conditions is your responsibility. That decision shouldn't be made based on what is expedient or on what you might need to charge your client to fulfill your responsibilities.
One well resolved corner is sufficient even when obliterated by removal of the corner monument, as the corner location is referenced by a mathematical network of remaining monuments. Only independent corners can be lost and that is a discussion beyond this one. The replacement of a resolved missing corner monument should to come from the land owner's need not, a State administrative mandate.
Consider a moment two surveyors standing before a Judge. Both surveyors are experienced, licensed and have placed the same deed corner in differing locations. What the judge knows is one or both of the corners are wrong. This is just in case you think a license grants some power over another license. It takes more than two opinions to prove a point and that statement maybe too simplified in our business. Of course we could all agree I am right.÷¼
Best practice is to replace the monuments and file the appropriate record as required.
We owe it to future generations if not ourselves.
If not the Surveyor, then who?
In Oregon it is the establishment (or restablishment) of a boundary monument, and not the determination of a boundary, which triggers the ROS filing requirement (ORS 209.250). As long as you call this work a fence line layout and not a boundary survey, you are not likely to run into trouble. Set offsets to the line and don't put anything at the corners.
Lots of outfits in the Portland set hubs or lath at property corners and since they are (maybe) not "permanent monuments" they skate past the ROS requirement. It has come before the board and, so far, people have mostly got away with it. Those that did get busted did so because the position they established, or the method they used to establish it, was substandard. So get the line right. It doesn't matter if that old survey was done and certified by a PLS. If it has an error in it you will be wrong. It is sometimes appropriate to use dimensions from an old survey to determine boundaries - typically as a last resort - but you run a great risk if you over rely on them and ignore other evidence.
bridger48, post: 352955, member: 6251 wrote: One well resolved corner is sufficient even when obliterated by removal of the corner monument, as the corner location is referenced by a mathematical network of remaining monuments.
Again, that's only looking at it from the mathematical view and your confidence in your measurements. The monument is to mark, for the landowners and their successors, your re-establishment of the boundary.
bridger48, post: 352955, member: 6251 wrote: Only independent corners can be lost and that is a discussion beyond this one.
Not sure where you get that from. I'll look forward to having that discussion sometime.
bridger48, post: 352955, member: 6251 wrote: The replacement of a resolved missing corner monument should to come from the land owner's need not, a State administrative mandate.
You seem to be assuming that the mandate is just on some whim of some state administrator for the purpose of imposing more needless responsibility on you to produce a document for that, or some other administrator's staff to check and file. The purpose for the state mandate, in those states where it exists, is to ensure that an appropriately licensed person does re-establish the lines and corners for something like a landowner wanting to place a fence along the property line, and then to have a record of that re-establishment on file. It's not to impose unjustified greater costs on the landowner, but to protect both the landowner and his adjoiners. It also serves to protect you.
Sometime down the road, the neighbor is suspect of where your client builds his fence, so he has a survey done. Let's say that for whatever reason, the fence isn't along the property line, but veers off into the neighbor's parcel. Your client sees the surveyor setting lath on his side of the fence and comes running out, stomping and cussing that he had a surveyor stake it. "Oh yeah, who?" asks the surveyor. "I don't remember, Binger, Badger, ...". "Could it have been Bridger?" "Yeah, that's the one! He staked it and said it's right, so git off'n my propitty now!"
That surveyor is thinking "Dang that Bridger. I know he usually does good work, but he hardly ever files a map, like here, so I don't know if he did it right, screwed it up, or even if he staked anything at all."
If you do have something filed, then the other surveyor can see that you seemed to have properly determined the corner position and that you report having replaced the monument. In the field, a couple passes of the wand, kick a little dirt off the top and there it is, a rebar with a bright yellow cap that says "Bridger48, LS". With that, the surveyor and his client are assured that however the fence got to where it is, it wasn't by following your stakes. You're in the clear. You have a record of properly conducted work that protects you, the neighbor, and would have protected your client if he had followed your stakes.
bridger48, post: 352955, member: 6251 wrote: Consider a moment two surveyors standing before a Judge. Both surveyors are experienced, licensed and have placed the same deed corner in differing locations. What the judge knows is one or both of the corners are wrong. This is just in case you think a license grants some power over another license. It takes more than two opinions to prove a point and that statement maybe too simplified in our business.
No, it takes one well-reasoned, well-explained, and well-documented opinion to prove a point over an opinion that is lacking in one of those attributes. The license doesn't confer any more authority over that of any other license. The diligence in performing and documenting the work, and the ability to explain it well does confer greater credibility though, which in front of that judge, will have the same effect as you having a license of minimum competence and me having some uber-license for boundary establishment.
bridger48, post: 352955, member: 6251 wrote: Of course we could all agree I am right.÷¼
Yeah, we could do that. But I prefer a good debate.:-D
Mark Mayer, post: 352959, member: 424 wrote: In Oregon it is the establishment (or restablishment) of a boundary monument, and not the determination of a boundary, which triggers the ROS filing requirement (ORS 209.250). As long as you call this work a fence line layout and not a boundary survey, you are not likely to run into trouble. Set offsets to the line and don't put anything at the corners.
Lots of outfits in the Portland set hubs or lath at property corners and since they are (maybe) not "permanent monuments" they skate past the ROS requirement. It has come before the board and, so far, people have mostly got away with it.
That used to be how a good percentage of the practicing surveyors used to interpret the requirement many years back. I'm not sure if our Board ever enforced it that way. Several years ago, the Board sent out a letter responding to questions about boundary establishment relative to the RS requirement. Our statute cites the establishment or re-establishment of lines or points, and does not limit it to the setting of new monuments, and the Board read that broadly enough (and appropriately so, IMO) to prevent surveyors from skirting the filing requirements by setting "temporary" or "approximate" corners marked by a wood stake or with something perceived to be equally lacking in durability, or by claiming to be just staking for a fenceline.
But if your statutes allow it or OSBEELS interprets the statute to allow it, then the surveyor has more latitude to decide just how far his professional responsibility has to take him.
Mark Mayer, post: 352959, member: 424 wrote: Those that did get busted did so because the position they established, or the method they used to establish it, was substandard. So get the line right. It doesn't matter if that old survey was done and certified by a PLS. If it has an error in it you will be wrong. It is sometimes appropriate to use dimensions from an old survey to determine boundaries - typically as a last resort - but you run a great risk if you over rely on them and ignore other evidence.
Good advice.
Incompetence will not be corrected by the establishment or re-establishment of a corner monument. In Oregon the abhorrence of leaving the field without covering every naked corner with a rod and cap has created a feast of over indulgence, where the main course is the Pin Cushion with narratives well reasoned, uber-licensed, stamped and recorded, as given me indigestion. Gentlemen, all that we do does not have to end with iron and hammer.
Washington in the 90's revisited their monumentation requirement and adjusted the administrative code to allow for re-monumentation in existing Plats with out the additional requirement of a recordation. They did apply a standard of care and an absolute positional deviation standard.
As a younger surveyor I fought against the relaxation of the monumentation rule. Though the years I have a better understanding of how the Surveyor needs to serve the Public. All lands need be surveyed properly once for the public record. Subsequent surveys should honor the record as much as possible and an unless a blunder, a patent or latent ambiguity has been over looked, (correction survey needs recorded). I come to believe the public is not being served well with a new recordation of the same lands every decade or two, showing only better precision and another layer of monuments. In short fencing does not need a record of survey just to keep the kids ball or chickens out the neighbors yard.
Then why have surveyors in the first place? Simply let anyone claim whatever they are big enough to claim and leave it at that.
bridger48, post: 352980, member: 6251 wrote: Washington in the 90's revisited their monumentation requirement and adjusted the administrative code to allow for re-monumentation in existing Plats with out the additional requirement of a recordation. They did apply a standard of care and an absolute positional deviation standard.
I think you are mistaken about that. Review the text of RCW 58.09.090. A missing monument is a discrepancy in the record which triggers the ROS requirement in Washington. This section was amended in 2010 to remove confusion that the previous language had caused.
Sounds like a broken system,,,,,,,
If monuments aren't getting set because it's too much of a burden on the landowners (expense) then something needs to be fixed.
It's a $5 fee for a corner record here and a bit of drafting.
If I file an ROS it's $50.
There isn't any review for those.
You need to fix a broken system, after all it's the monuments landowners rely on.
If I can't walk out and SEE and TOUCH my boundaries (monuments) then what's the point of surveying.
Mark Mayer, post: 352993, member: 424 wrote: I think you are mistaken about that. Review the text of RCW 58.09.090. A missing monument is a discrepancy in the record which triggers the ROS requirement in Washington. This section was amended in 2010 to remove confusion that the previous language had caused.
I was referencing to portion of:
"58.09.090
When record of survey not required.
(1) A record of survey is not required of any survey:
(a) When it has been made by a public officer in his or her official capacity and a reproducible copy thereof has been filed with the county engineer of the county in which the land is located. A map so filed shall be indexed and kept available for public inspection. A record of survey shall not be required of a survey made by the United States bureau of land management. A state agency conducting surveys to carry out the program of the agency shall not be required to use a land surveyor as defined by this chapter;
(b) When it is of a preliminary nature;
(c) When a map is in preparation for recording or shall have been recorded in the county under any local subdivision or platting law or ordinance;
(d) When it is a retracement or resurvey of boundaries of platted lots, tracts, or parcels shown on a filed or recorded and surveyed subdivision plat or filed or recorded and surveyed short subdivision plat in which monuments have been set to mark all corners of the block or street centerline intersections, provided that no discrepancy is found as compared to said recorded information or information revealed on other subsequent public survey map records, such as a record of survey or city or county engineer's map. If a discrepancy is found, that discrepancy must be clearly shown on the face of the required new record of survey. For purposes of this exemption, the term discrepancy shall include:
(i) A nonexisting or displaced original or replacement monument from which the parcel is defined and which nonexistence or displacement has not been previously revealed in the public record;
(ii) A departure from proportionate measure solutions which has not been revealed in the public record;
(iii) The presence of any physical evidence of encroachment or overlap by occupation or improvement; or
(iv) Differences in linear and/or angular measurement between all controlling monuments that would indicate differences in spatial relationship between said controlling monuments in excess of 0.50 feet when compared with all locations of public record: That is, if these measurements agree with any previously existing public record plat or map within the stated tolerance, a discrepancy will not be deemed to exist under this subsection.
(2) Surveys exempted by foregoing subsections of this section shall require filing of a record of corner information pursuant to RCW 58.09.040(2)."
You are correct in by the resetting of any boundary iron in WA, you will have to do something, either ROS or an 'record of corner information' (LCR) if is in previous monumented platting. As I indicated before, years ago I was a ROS guy or get someone else. I guess the years have given me a picture that is not all black and white, there are corners that do not rise to the level of a ROS.
