Handling inaccuracy and the positions of existing monuments

Thanks for the reminder. We do need to pass this type of thinking along to those on their way up.

The fundamental principles of our profession can never be improved upon or replaced no matter how much our technology grows.

I agree 100% and am afraid that some of this wisdom is going to be lost. As we see more and more one man companies I am concerned that wisdom is being lost when they retire. I have NO PROBLEM with solo practitioners, I admire the effort and dedication it takes to do it all. Those of us who came up with a transit and chain (yeah, me too) acquired knowledge from crew chiefs as well as the boss in the office. I am a firm supporter of required education for licensure, but who is going to pass along all the "lore" that goes along with surveying? If the whole survey world goes to solo crews and/or solo companies who is going to train the following generation?
Rant off.
Andy

rhetoric is important.
I say that original monuments or accepted existing monuments all have the exact same error..........0.
In space they are perfect,,,,,the measurements between them will have errors, but that doesn't effect the position of the monument.
Once the idea is flipped it becomes powerful and leads (In my opinion) to better practice.
The presumption is that the monument is correct; the burden of proof to change the location is on the one claiming differently.

Doesn't mean you accept everything.

We have a "situation" here in MA where Land Court Plans are always 100% correct. If I do a survey and find Land Court bounds out by less than 0.15' I am supposed to call them "good." This creates a problem where I am not able to change the bearings and distances to match the bounds that may slightly out of position.

It also creates that situation where we have to have to "boundary's" of lots for building purposes. You don't want to violate the setbacks because of that slight error that isn't being reported.

I have gone around and around with the Court surveyors over this, to no avail. Recently I did have an agreement where the bounds set by the town defined the layout, and not the land court plan. It was a slight and miserable victory!

So, what's on the Land Court plan rules, right or wrong, and you better not change any bearings or distances.

I like to hold monuments and change the bearings and distances to match what is on the ground!

Same issue in areas that still have a Torrens system. The description cannot be changed without court action. The bearings and distances in the deed are not changeable unless the judge ok's it.

I have tried many times to educate the Title people that my bearings and distances may vary from the the deed, but the deed still adequately describes the property surveyed. There really is no need to prepare a new description and record it. as I or any other good surveyor would be able to find all the corners from the existing description.

The statement has been made here before have 10 different surveys survey the same property and most likely you will get 10 different distances and bearings shown on the survey. But the corner monuments are all there and have never moved.

[USER=155]@foggyidea[/USER]

Why not accept having "DEED CALL EAST 400 FT" and under that "MEASURED N 89å¡58'50" E, 400.37FT".
That is fairly accepted everywhere for the surveyor to show their true findings and maintain the record.
Perhaps there should be two separate set of books to record at the Clerk's office, one for actual surveys and another for Land Court Plans.

If more surveyors would yield to existing monuments, that would cut back on pin cushion corners.

My 2 cents.

paden cash, post: 394977, member: 20 wrote: The other day I had a crew bring in a bunch of data from a large commercial area developed in the early '70s. As one might imagine the existing property corner locations didn't fit the recorded plat worth a hoot. Something in the neighborhood of almost 4 tenths in three or four hundred feet. Not surprising for the time. But I noticed something else about the existing geometry; a good deal of the pins lined up very well although the distances between them was sloppy. It was apparent to me we were looking at an area that had been laid out with a chain (and bite me, I will probably always call it a chain) and transit.

My PC had done something he always does when searching for pins; he calculated a position by using the record plat and began his search at those "staked out" locations. Not a bad practice I don't guess, but I had to correct him on his terminology. As we discussed what he had located he kept referring to the existing pins as "being off" by this or that distance.

"By the time I got to the end, they were all off a half a foot" he said.

I remember the very same conversation over 40 years ago with a wise old surveyor, except I was the PC. We had just started working with electronic distance measurements...in a world that had been laid out without, and never knew of, such accuracy. A lot of us back then felt it was our duty to "fix" the world. "The plat says it should be 1321.64' to this point, and it measures only 1321.15'...we need to reset a 'correct' point..."

Thankfully I worked for a surveyor that understood the matrix within which we work. He carefully explained to all of us the sanctity of an existing pin and its positional relationship with the other pins, good or bad. I remember he told me, "You are always going to run into inaccuracies. How you deal with inaccuracy is what makes you a surveyor and not the simple fact you've merely located them."

What makes a good survey is the true and accurate mapping and recordation of what's been done and what is existing on a project. What makes a good surveyor is the decisions made working within those parameters. I passed this on to my guys. Those pins might not be where YOU would have set them today...but they ARE where they were set yesterday.

I think I passed on something important. I hope my guys remember it as long as I have.

Well, the trick is in proving the found evidence ARE where they were set yesterday. I don't think the complained of surveyors misunderstand this concept, they just don't know how to do it. Anyone can get the concept or rule. Carrying it out is complicated. It has more to do with investigative technique and law than it does with measurement. That's why some of us get the big bucks. Speaking of which, hunting season is starting, what the heck I doing here. My point being; it is not just a judgement call, or an art. It is the science of law; different than the science of measurement.

[QUOTE
The statement has been made here before have 10 different surveys survey the same property and most likely you will get 10 different distances and bearings shown on the survey. But the corner monuments are all there and have never moved.

No, if 10 different surveyors survey the same property you will get 13 different results.

Let me get this, so if a survey was done in 1800s by someone who calls himself a surveyor but really was just a helper who was tasked to bury the monuments. Not even sure if you had schools offering surveying degrees then. So the surveyor laid out the lot corners using transit & tape which will have its errors. The helper then comes back the next day and digs a hole and buries the monuments. The act of digging a hole will introduce another set of errors. After several years of erosion, rain, soil settling, earthquake, floods, and what have you, a surveyor now comes using a GPS/robot and finds the monuments erroneous, he has to follow the erroneous original survey?That sounds ridiculous.

FrancisH, post: 395131, member: 10211 wrote: Let me get this, so if a survey was done in 1800s by someone who calls himself a surveyor but really was just a helper who was tasked to bury the monuments. Not even sure if you had schools offering surveying degrees then. So the surveyor laid out the lot corners using transit & tape which will have its errors. The helper then comes back the next day and digs a hole and buries the monuments. The act of digging a hole will introduce another set of errors. After several years of erosion, rain, soil settling, earthquake, floods, and what have you, a surveyor now comes using a GPS/robot and finds the monuments erroneous, he has to follow the erroneous original survey?That sounds ridiculous.

The act of digging the hole does not introduce any errors. The monument is the true point not the measument.

Monuments are set for the land owners. Hundreds of years of case law say they have a right to rely on them. If you belive the monument has moved from its original position you have a very heavy burden to prove that. Not matching record measuments is not enough.

FrancisH, post: 395131, member: 10211 wrote: Let me get this, so if a survey was done in 1800s by someone who calls himself a surveyor but really was just a helper who was tasked to bury the monuments. Not even sure if you had schools offering surveying degrees then. So the surveyor laid out the lot corners using transit & tape which will have its errors. The helper then comes back the next day and digs a hole and buries the monuments. The act of digging a hole will introduce another set of errors. After several years of erosion, rain, soil settling, earthquake, floods, and what have you, a surveyor now comes using a GPS/robot and finds the monuments erroneous, he has to follow the erroneous original survey?That sounds ridiculous.

The science of measurement says there was error in the original survey, the science of law says there was not. The first science controls if a bridge falls down, the second if neighborly relations break down.

foggyidea, post: 395046, member: 155 wrote: We have a "situation" here in MA where Land Court Plans are always 100% correct. If I do a survey and find Land Court bounds out by less than 0.15' I am supposed to call them "good." This creates a problem where I am not able to change the bearings and distances to match the bounds that may slightly out of position.

It also creates that situation where we have to have to "boundary's" of lots for building purposes. You don't want to violate the setbacks because of that slight error that isn't being reported.

I have gone around and around with the Court surveyors over this, to no avail. Recently I did have an agreement where the bounds set by the town defined the layout, and not the land court plan. It was a slight and miserable victory!

So, what's on the Land Court plan rules, right or wrong, and you better not change any bearings or distances.

I like to hold monuments and change the bearings and distances to match what is on the ground!

From 43 US code 752 (1805 establishing the PLSS)

Second. The boundary lines, actually run and marked in the surveys returned by the Secretary of the Interior or such agency as he may designate, shall be established as the proper boundary lines of the sections, or subdivisions, for which they were intended, and the length of such lines as returned, shall be held and considered as the true length thereof. And the boundary lines which have not been actually run and marked shall be ascertained, by running straight lines from the established corners to the opposite corresponding corners; but in those portions of the fractional townships where no such opposite corresponding corners have been or can be fixed, the boundary lines shall be ascertained by running from the established corners due north and south or east and west lines, as the case may be, to the watercourse, Indian boundary line, or other external boundary of such fractional township.

Third. Each section or subdivision of section, the contents whereof have been returned by the Secretary of the Interior or such agency as he may designate, shall be held and considered as containing the exact quantity expressed in such return; and the half sections and quarter sections, the contents whereof shall not have been thus returned, shall be held and considered as containing the one-half or the one-fourth part, respectively, of the returned contents of the section of which they may make part.

In other words, once a parcel comes to patent, the areas and dimensions can't be altered.

A PLSS example but probably it's the same type of legal thinking the land court uses.
It's tough for a surveyor to swallow that you go measure a 80 acre parcel and find 79.52 acres in the two 40's. It's still an eighty acre parcel by law.

FrancisH, post: 395131, member: 10211 wrote: Let me get this, so if a survey was done in 1800s by someone who calls himself a surveyor but really was just a helper who was tasked to bury the monuments. Not even sure if you had schools offering surveying degrees then. So the surveyor laid out the lot corners using transit & tape which will have its errors. The helper then comes back the next day and digs a hole and buries the monuments. The act of digging a hole will introduce another set of errors. After several years of erosion, rain, soil settling, earthquake, floods, and what have you, a surveyor now comes using a GPS/robot and finds the monuments erroneous, he has to follow the erroneous original survey?That sounds ridiculous.

Yes, you hold it, a monument from the 1800's I do a happy dance and move on, and I expect to see some "error" in the measurements.
But the monument is king unless you find a very good reason to reject it. The burden is on the rejector not the acceptor.

MightyMoe, post: 395161, member: 700 wrote: From 43 US code 752 (1805 establishing the PLSS)

Second. The boundary lines, actually run and marked in the surveys returned by the Secretary of the Interior or such agency as he may designate, shall be established as the proper boundary lines of the sections, or subdivisions, for which they were intended, and the length of such lines as returned, shall be held and considered as the true length thereof. And the boundary lines which have not been actually run and marked shall be ascertained, by running straight lines from the established corners to the opposite corresponding corners; but in those portions of the fractional townships where no such opposite corresponding corners have been or can be fixed, the boundary lines shall be ascertained by running from the established corners due north and south or east and west lines, as the case may be, to the watercourse, Indian boundary line, or other external boundary of such fractional township.

Third. Each section or subdivision of section, the contents whereof have been returned by the Secretary of the Interior or such agency as he may designate, shall be held and considered as containing the exact quantity expressed in such return; and the half sections and quarter sections, the contents whereof shall not have been thus returned, shall be held and considered as containing the one-half or the one-fourth part, respectively, of the returned contents of the section of which they may make part.

In other words, once a parcel comes to patent, the areas and dimensions can't be altered.

A PLSS example but probably it's the same type of legal thinking the land court uses.
It's tough for a surveyor to swallow that you go measure a 80 acre parcel and find 79.52 acres in the two 40's. It's still an eighty acre parcel by law.

The measurements only hold until it is resurved, then the new measurements become the official measurments. The areas hold uless the new survey relots the section, then the new areas hold. But all this only applies to the federal government. They will use the official area even if they know the true area is different. If you, as a non BLM surveyor, survey a section and find it is only 500 aceras, you are not bound by the official area. You likely will end up in court if you report that section as 640 acres.

The BLM will not change areas during a resurvey for patented lands.

You likely will end up in court if you report that section as 640 acres.

I would like to see a case where say a 1 acre lot surveyed in 1800s, re-measured yesterday with GPS to an area of just say 0.50 acre be sold to a buyer in good-faith for cost for 1 acre only to find that his 1 acre constructed barn could not fit in his 1 acre lot.

Better get that GPS readjusted because it is more likely wrong than the guy in the 1880's.