Get your final product perfect before it leaves your office in any form

My city has a rule, which is predicated on the county recorders rule. No graytone or colors on the exhibit maps. No photos, aerial or otherwise. No text smaller than 8pt. Probably 8 out of 10 submissions fail on that front. 

Basis of Bearings is a pet peeve of mine. I have never in my life done a boundary survey by running out record bearings relative to some base line.  For me, stating that the survey is done on the relevant grid system related to NAD83 should be sufficient.   

It was somewhere around 1993 when I sat in on a lecture by Knud Hermanson from Maine.  He provided a host of visuals depicting critical elements of a properly performed boundary survey.  Each example showed all structures, sidewalks, easements, etc.  This is generally not shown on run of the mill surveys in Kansas by agreement with the client, so noted on the plat.  Knud blew my mind.  He showed an example of where the rural style mailbox was on the opposite side of the road from the tract surveyed.  He then gave a long-winded explanation on encroachments.  Never in my life had I thought about the placement of the mail box being worthy of being shown, let alone considering whether or not that might be an encroachment.

Do what you must to keep your critical jurisdiction happy.

Thank you to Divine Bovine for your sage advice. I am certainly but not proudly guilty of a few of your mentioned oversights in my past (hopefully all past). So there, you got me.... I am “fessing up”. 😱 

I don’t know if I can completely agree with Norman’s position regarding BOBs.  Albeit I personally prefer to work in State Plane, if I am retracing a survey or other map that I am going to record, I will typically rotate my map to their BOB before recording. That being said, I have on occasion depending on circumstances, reported a retraced map with my grid BOB bearings and then added or labeled a statement similar to:  “Said line bears: yadda, yadda, yadda" on said recorded map,-page- file etc., or the opposite as well, referring back to grid. 

Speaking of “pet peeves”  and “anal-retention”, I despise the use of the terminology and word “Lots” on a Parcel Map.  They are PARCELS. The future parcels can and should be described as: ‘Parcel 1 of yadda, yadda, yadda, map’. I have too frequently had to instead describe “Lot 1” of yadda, yadda, parcel map, because the description in my opinion needs to be consistent with the with the name the described area was created with.

Have a GREAT weekend y'all! 

Thank you for your advice. I always wait a day or two to proofread the map before publishing.

If there is a list of comments that are for sure going to require some corrections to be made, I will add in typos and such that I would not mention if everything else is clean.  The latest example: Jully  That is not going to change anything about the survey, but, I have some clients who have made it clear they appreciate helping them to turn out the best plat possible.

An appointed County Surveyor in a distant county from the counties where I serve as survey reviewer has interpreted the statutes to say he is the ONLY person who can determine the true location of a section corner in that county.  Thus, one can't just go out and do what they do everywhere else.  He must be involved, in the field, to approve the location selected by the company surveyor.  Simply sending him your final plat will not work.

Another common error struck again this week.  There are three nearly-identical tracts but the stated areas are slightly different.  The area shown for Tract 1 is the area shown in the description of Tract 2 or 3.  Then the area shown for either of the others is what it says somewhere else.  Occasionally, the size differential is very evident but not caught.

Oops 

Posted by: @norman-oklahoma

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Basis of Bearings is a pet peeve of mine. I have never in my life done a boundary survey by running out record bearings relative to some base line.  For me, stating that the survey is done on the relevant grid system related to NAD83 should be sufficient. 

I respectfully disagree. Physical monuments with a stated basis for the boundaries shown on a map are critical for the cadaster, IMHO. Really, bearings on lines denote the angle between the two lines. It sometimes seems that the reason for bearings on lines is to make it easier for real estate lawyers to read legal descriptions, or (heaven help us) they write one.

Posted by: @dmyhill

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I respectfully disagree.

I think that you are agreeing with me more than disagreeing. I didn't say that bearings were not important.

I just wish surveyors would run a closure on the boundary before submitting a plat for review. Just this morning, another subdivision where the boundary does not close by 5 feet.

Also, about 20% of surveyors in my area spell separate with 3 e's.

@kscott 

In the largest city in my home county there is a subdivision that was surveyed by the City Engineer in the 1960's.  The subdivision boundary does not close.  The largest block does not close.  None of the lots in that block close.  It was the last block to see development.  I was the first surveyor to survey a lot or two in that block.  All lots had been sold but no one had built a house or made any other form of improvement.  The City Engineer had been dead for many years.  The City had built concrete streets with curbs on all sides.  The City had installed utilities along what they assumed was the central line between all lots with utility easements on either side shown on the Plat.  I had to "reinvent the wheel".  What a nightmare.  Fortunately, I surveyed enough lots with my solution before any other surveyor came along.  He found my surveys and followed my lead.  Most houses in that block today would sell for around $500,000.

Another issue for those in PLSSia to watch for.  When you are working in say Section 15, label all of your government corners as : Southwest Corner, Section 15 or whichever corner it happens to be.  Do not label it as being the comapable corner of a different section, i.e., Northeast Corner, 21.  Keep them all as something of Section 15.  Otherwise, you are apt to mislabel the corner by mixing the sections, such as a case I found today that said; Northwest Corner, Northeast Quarter, Section 22 (South Quarter Corner).  The survey was in Section 15 and the corner shown was it's south quarter corner.  Inserting something about the adjacent section adds confusion where there should be none.

Today's error may have come about by the field guy coding the monument as found to be a North Quarter because he was following the references for finding that corner of the section to the south.  The draftsman did not realize he was adding apples and oranges in his label.

There are situaions, especially along standard parallels where it is appropriate t identify and label monuments found that are corners of the adjacent section, where the above goal should not be applied.

@norman-oklahoma I worked for 67 years, in surveying for 62 years, a registrant for 58 years - and never once did I actually use the stated basis of bearings tied to two monuments.

Last night I reviewed 2 surveys from 1 company- they don’t do too many surveys in this county. I didn’t recognize the name of the draftsman- /submitter -on one 18/24 of reviewable items from my ARM checklist needed to be addressed-the other 16/24. Obviously there was no internal QA/QC done prior to submittal.

Had another bad one show up today.  I sent a message back advising them to VERY SLOWLY correct the descriptions of Tracts 2 and 3.  They had created three tracts out of the entirety of the southeast quarter of a section.  I would have simply called them: 1)  The north half of the southeast quarter  2)  The southwest quarter of the southeast quarter  and 3)  The southeast quarter of the southeast quarter.

Nope.  Apparently, someone involved in the big picture decided that each tract must be described by metes and bounds.  That's OK, but, you must then over-describe the thing using phrases such as: thence along the north line of said quarter to the northwest corner of the northwest quarter of said quarter a distance of somany feet, thence....  The trick is to remember which line of what quarter-quarter you are following.  Also, be wary of using "said" a dozen times and half of them are incorrect.  The word quarter appeared where they intended to say quarter-quarter, and vice versa.  Pretend you are a first grader attempting to pronounce new words by running your finger along the text to help focus.  The descriptions are only six inches from the drawing, for Pete's sake.

Posted by: @holy-cow

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Pretend you are a first grader attempting to pronounce new words by running your finger along the text to help focus. 

Back in the day descriptions were typed into a blank space on a deed form. It was often necessary to cram a lot of words into a too small space, so niceties like spacing of individual phrase was dispensed with. In time it became normal practice to cram everything into a tight block even when it was unnecessary to do so. These days - at least around here - most descriptions are written in separate documents and attached to deeds as "Exhibit A", with a practically unlimited amount of room available. But the old practice of cramming the text into a tight block persists. I like to put a paragraph break between each phrase. Everytime the word "thence" is used it begins a new line, with spacing between it and the preceeding line. Makes the whole thing much easier for the proof reader, and the user, to follow.

For the record, I f'ing hate it when legals are written in all caps.  There is no reason. It does not make it easier to read. If it was, books would be published that way. There would be no reason to have lower case letters. 

Over the last 25 or 30 years it has become de rigueur to include an Exhibit B sketch with every legal description. A nice idea, but as time goes by I see the sketches packing in more and more useless details that often times only serve to confuse. Keep your sketches clean and simple. If the information adds to comprehension of the written words, use it. Any extraneous details should be omitted. 

Some interesting points you bring up, hc. I try to not get complacent with checking my plats. The larger projects with multiple iterations can get tiresome completely checking the whole thing over and not just what was contained in the last redlining. But, I've been burned by not doing so, for one reason or another.

I have grown to accept the fact that it is nearly impossible for the typical surveyor to catch absolutely everything that could be wrong on their work product.  Having someone who doesn't know what SHOULD be there in the first place is necessary.  It seems that every week some new example appears in someone else's product.  One from this week stated that the parent tract was three common lots plus the vacated alley north of said lots.  Then the parent tract was split into a north tract and a south tract of equal area.  What the drawing showed, however, was three common lots and the SOUTH HALF of the vacated alley north of said lots.  Words are important.  Use them correctly.