Francis how many sq meters is a very large survey in Singapore.
FrancisH, post: 396912, member: 10211 wrote: the deed itself i a record of what was originally surveyed? the surveyor did not build the wall therefore he has nothing to do with its erroneous position.the wall should follow the deed or the 4 corners established by the surveyor.
This statement is 100% contrary to three and a half century's of survey practice and established boundary law in the U.S. (the oldest recorded court case in Maryland provincial courts was from 1658 and involved land boundaries)
- The deed is one piece of written evidence of what was originally surveyed
- What was originally surveyed exist on the ground not in the writings
- Surveyors have no status to establish boundaries in the U.S.; boundaries are established by a contract between the grantor and grantee. Period. Surveyors only facilitate the making contract or recreate the conditions created by the contract.
- The presumption at law is that the ancient wall, being on the ground itself (where the boundaries actually are) memorializes either: a) the location of ephemeral original survey markers which have now vanished over time, or b) the expressed intent of the parties to the original contact that was intended to be represented by the deed.
FrancisH, post: 396906, member: 10211 wrote: I believe you are not aware of ASEAN cross-border professional practices? I would suggest you read up on it before using any foul language to disguise your ignorance.
Agreed. On the other hand, to level the playing field, I suggest you read:
- Evidence and Procedure for Boundary Locations - Brown, Wilson, et al.
- Boundary Control and Legal Principles - Brown, Wilson et al.
- Clark on Surveying and Boundaries (Both a current edition and a second or third edition)
- Boundaries and Adjacent Properties, Skelton
- Interpreting Land Records, Wilson
- Forensic Procedures foo Boundary and Title Investigation, Wilson
- The boundary section of one of the two established secondary source american legal encyclopedias; either American Jurisprudence or Corpus Juris Secumdum.
- A modest sized selection (20-30 cases) of primary source case law on boundary retracement.
This, followed by twenty years or so of relevant experience in retracing boundaries in the states, would provide you with a knowledge base on the matters being discussed that would allow you to knowledgeably interject in the conversation at hand. What say we take the matter back up in late October of 2036?
-Best Regards
.
Big fish small pond. Your whole city-state would fit between my farm and the gas station at the highway crossroads. All of that is empty here. Less than one person per square mile, whereas there must be over 10K people per square mile in Singapore?
Your whole city is like one medium-size housing development here, with one set of government-issued rules to mark the lines. We do have areas where the rules are similar to what you are working with, where the parcels were all cut out of a larger irregular piece and then the smaller interior lots are all "simultaneously conveyed", meaning no lot has any historical seniority over the others, and all the monuments and lines generally match the original plan. That style of survey laws (platting with simultaneous conveyance) is only one layer in our system, and only applies in cities. Simultaneously conveyed plats are for the convenience of the surveyor, the courts, the municipalities, and the real estate process. However those rules only apply to about 1% of our land mass.
We have an entirely different government, entirely different history, entirely different set of laws with many more layers. You can call that our "excuses" however it is what we have inherited and we individual surveyors do not have the authority to change it. Complain all you like. American surveyors only provide an opinion. We are advocates for the truth -- what evidence we find, what we personally measure -- not advocates for the client, and not advocates for the government as your esteemed position appears to be. Once we have recorded that opinion, it is up to the landowner to get the changes made in court if they want anything changed.
I could go on, and this thread has elicited some thoughtful writing from many of us. It's for "those to whom these may present" because bluster and trying to make us wrong at every turn makes you seem not very teachable. Ten years ago I was just like you, and ready to fix all those crooked lines.
Singapore has a really cool Formula 1 race for those that don't know! Raced at night, with very cool lighting, looks surreal, like a video game. Jp
The town nearest my house is 150+/- square miles in area, the city nearest to me is 350+/- square miles in area. The county I live in is 900 square miles in area. I am not going to take time to convert that to meters. As half bubble says, maintaining lots and blocks (or townships and ranges) being cut from a relatively small parcel at a fairly recent date, it would not be a trouble to maintain the relationship of monument to distance, as the room for error due to mountains, deflection of angle, or even temperature corrections on the tape are over such a smaller area. I do not know, but I suspect the block monuments are closer than a mile from each other too, making it much easier to check into several corners and get the numbers that look good on paper. I do know I don't do town lots, as I don't care for them, but trying to measure to the nearest mm when my range pole tip I am currently using is 6 mm across and I am measuring to a pile of rocks that was set to the nearest 33 1/3", I view Mr Francis' discussion as rather narrow minded and unaccepting of the fact that he is indeed working in quite a small pond, that has it's own set of rules that works quite well for that puddle, but just won't work in our lake.
I get it...finally. I think I understand the situation. The Indonesia Land Surveyor is like a technician. They are laying out 3d locations. It's like the NGS here. It's more math and/or geodesy to them. I suspect they don't need to consider boundary laws. You want this deed laid out on the ground, you call a surveyor - here's the math. There is no argument (except for meeting precision standards).
The US Land surveyor is licensed in each state. They have a more technical understanding of deeds, laws, and legal implications of historical landmarks, points of beginning, calls to monuments, secondary monuments, writing legal descriptions, State Standards etc. You/we are trying to discuss boundary law with a first-order-leveling technician or, maybe, an Engineer [edit: or a GIS Technician! I could see having these types of arguments with a GIS Tech]. They are speaking simple basic math. "1+1=2: how can you people not get that?"
In fact, when I first started surveying I had the same thoughts, as I suspect most of us did. We thought "hey I like outdoors, and I'm pretty good at math, I think I would like this". I've had friends taking calculus in college say "no problem, I could work circles around the PLS exam". I helped my dad surveying when I was in high school, but I thought that back them as well.
Tom Adams, post: 396964, member: 7285 wrote: I get it...finally. I think I understand the situation. The Indonesia Land Surveyor is like a technician. They are laying out 3d locations. It's like the NGS here. It's more math and/or geodesy to them. I suspect they don't need to consider boundary laws. You want this deed laid out on the ground, you call a surveyor - here's the math. There is no argument (except for meeting precision standards).
Tom, I think you are on to this one.
And, it seems to me that many of us went through that stage, too.
So, it's hard to be too hard on him...
Say, do you like your coffee black, or with cream?
N
Francis, it seems that you are under the mis-impression that we don't rewrite deeds, or help our clients to resolve boundary issues.
It is true that long held boundary law mandates that monuments are supreme over measurements and acreages.
It is not true that we never change or up-date a description, however, it is always up to the landowner if they wish to actually file and include an up-dated description into the record as a corrective deed.
I just finished two surveys that needed an up-date because of the ambiguity imbedded in both deeds.
One stated the parcel was 20 acres and it turned out to be 60, the other showed 32 acres on the GIS and it turned out to contain only 26 acres. The 32 acre parcel had no numbers in the description beyond Section, Township, Range, and 1/41/4, only the GIS incorrectly showed an area the deed declared no area. The 20 acre parcel had some ties and some distances but they all turned out to be erroneous and I ignored them, the correct procedure for both surveys was to protect the elements in the description that controlled the parcel on the ground.
This included monuments and existing senior parcels.
We survey for the public and our survey is for our client and the adjoiners.
As an aside, isn't moving monuments from where they have always stood into a neighbors property an act of taking land?
I will share a best practice that is very good when work with older measure and different inaccuracies of alignment (bearing, angles, azimuth) and distance terrestrial measure.
1. Enter land description (plat, deed m&b) measurements into weighted least squares adjustment (WLSA) and weight bearings and distances for measurement accuracy for bearing & distances based on significant figures of measure, what your estimate is for the equipment of the era (was it a compass, transit, theodolite or total station for alignment; was it chain, steel tape, edm or total station for distances); and also any knowledge of how surveyor work accuracy if you have retraced him before. Run adjustment of record measure and analyze. Any record measure blunders will quickly be identified and isolated.
2. Seed a good geodetic coordinate if you have one from prior work, and you are going to use GNSS for recovery. Rerun adjustment and you have now great "look for" coordinates if your going to use GNSS..
3. Go to field, do your recovery and measurement of located controlling points,
4. Add to the WLSA your measurements (GNSS or terrestrial) with proper weighting for centering, sighting, angles, distances if terrestrial or centering and GNSS measure. Disable record measure and adjust your measurements so you QC all is good with your survey.
5. Enable record measure and run together an analyze. You will quickly see how record alignment and distances fit. Something like a long or short chain or lack of slope correction, tension, or temperature correction will show. Angles you first weighted at 10" might show as 20 or 30. After this you have a reasonable basis to re-weight the original measure.
6. Rerun WLSA with new weighting. If you have missing corner markings, this adjustment may be your basis of best location of original corner points. There are some variables here, and you need to finalize your decisions based on legal principals and your professional decision.
The beauty of using a WLSA is that it adjusts all measurements the least (consequently the name of WLSA) and you can rely on your higher accuracies of your work, while really fine tuning the original measure to provide the most likely location of missing corners based on the original land description measure. I have used WLSA with only record measure to isolate multiple blunders in the original land parcel dimensions. WLSA--- POW several dimensions adjust hugely such as wrong bearing quadrant, distance drafted 10' off and so on.
Try it, you might like it. I do. Its been a long time since I have surveyed on my State license, but I started doing this in the 80s when WLSA packages such as StarNet, GeoLab (my favorite) and Columbus came available.
Hey, @ FrancisH,
What did you think of the Car Talk guys, the Tappet brothers?
🙂
N
The Wackenreuder map having been identified as the map referred to, that map is found to be entitled on its face a map of the town ÛÏas laid out by Saulsberry Haley.Û These words are the equivalent of ÛÏas surveyed by Haley,Û and include a reference to the monuments erected by Haley. Thus the deed is to be construed as referring to the monuments, and if the evidence established the points where the monuments had been erected by Haley, such points should have controlled in determining the location of Block 6. The Court below ignored the evidence tending to show the location of the Haley stakes, and decided the case on the theory that the demanded premises were to be ascertained by running the courses and distances from the initial point of Haley's survey, without regard to the monuments by him erected. This was a violation of the wellknown *500 principles applicable to the mode of ascertaining the true position of lands described in deeds of conveyance. Penry v. Richards, 52 Cal. 496, 499 (1877)
Even if it had been made in advance it would have been utterly impracticable, and would not have controlled the actual survey, although they were shown to be incorrect. No absolutely accurate survey ever was or ever will be made. In order to build cities and towns there must be some finality as to the location of blocks and streets. Under such an ordinance, if valid, there could be none. All lines would be forever subject to be revised and corrected, or changed by new surveys not really more accurate, but only for the time deemed so. Orena v. City of Santa Barbara, 91 Cal. 621, 630 (1891)
I see a lot of whining babies instead of professional surveyors here.
Very interesting points and arguments.
1. Big Pond vs. Small Pond
2. 400 years vs. 50 years of experience
3. Weighted Least Square Adjustment
4. Survey is a public service
5. PLSS is here to stay
-Very interesting indeed.
-The gist of the debate here is that your land survey system (monuments & deeds) do not match.
-You say its because it was made 400 years ago using outdated instruments. Farmers & their sons made the survey.
-IT'S THE LAW
well my dear whining babies, you see, the purpose of any law is to establish harmony in the land.
-how can there be harmony when you have someone who paid for 10 acres actually only gets 9 acres of fenced land?
-how can there be harmony when you have someone who is supposed to be the expert in determining land boundaries
does nothing because he blames a dead surveyor who did the survey 400 years ago.?
all of the laws that you mentioned that were followed since before you were born were created by your congress were based
on expert opinions of your esteemed surveyors at that time. this is how law making works. a lawmaker would consult the
public,land owners,claimants,trespassers and the surveyors' association to get their input before a law is crafted.
as a surveyor, as a professional organization, you all know what the problems are with regards to boundary recording system.
you admit that there are discrepancies in monumented & recorded boundaries all of these 400 years. reasons are not longer
important because they are caused by factors that are no longer relevant in the present day. blame it on technology,
non government supervision, lack of qualified surveyors,etc.
QUESTION:
IN ALL THESE 400 YEARS, since the implementation of the PLSS, What have you as a US Surveyor/Surveyor Association
done to improve and correct the system?
I mean aside from crying like babies and blaming George Washington for being a lousy surveyor?
I'm not too sure that calling us names (whether or not you use cuss words, and profanity is not very relevant), will provide you with any continuing education. For what it is worth, My dad used to work with Curtis Brown, and he was a world class cusser. So, just as conditions INSIDE the laboratory, and conditions OUTSIDE the Laboratory differ, and procedures are adapted to suit the conditions, even so, we are OUTSIDE, and you are INSIDE, and giving us flack, for not doing it your way.
And, now, you are taunting calling names. Ok... but you will only become more hardened into your lack of understanding, not enlarge your professional capacities.
You are limiting your market.
We, on the other hand, can handle both.
Good Day, Mate!
Nate
And, now, you are taunting calling names. Ok... but you will only become more hardened into your lack of understanding, not enlarge your professional capacities.
You are limiting your market.
We, on the other hand, can handle both.
did you even try to answer my question? I guess not. Couldn't answer it huh? Just as I thought.
there are 2 types of surveyors in all the countries that I had had the pleasure to work in all of my years as a surveyor.
Type 1 - the "old timers", you know those types, the ones that boast among themselves and to the new graduate surveyors that they have been through thick & thin, mountains, caves, deserts, rivers, all using their steel tape, transit & theodolite. They will hold on to their steel tape until the day they retire even if a prismless is available in the office. They will say, the steel tape is actually more accurate than a prismless because the steel tape is used to calibrate the prismless. In reality they are afraid to use the prismless because they can't learn new technology.
Type 2 - the "new tech guy", you know those types, those that bring to the field a full laptop, data controller, GPS, weather proof notebooks. Those that download the survey data and analyze why a traverse loop would not close, or why the GPS returned a float solution. You call them the softie because he will find the easiest way to finish the job and get back to the office as soon as possible.
I think you belong to Type 1, those that want to hold on to an antiquated system even though they know that there is always a better way of doing things. The only reason that I can think of is because they are lazy to learn a new system even though the new system would be more reliable. They are afraid that the new system would make them irrelevant because who would need an "old timer" when everything can be solved by new technology in lesser time.
You call those that see the problems and solutions are "button pushers" & "technicians" when in reality you are worse than technicians. the technicians only have to collect data and return these to the office for the "Professional Surveyors" to analyze the data. Yet those "professional surveyors" can't even see what the problems are in their profession. It took a "technican" as you called me to point out the problem. When I did that, what did you call me?
Inexperienced, small fish in a big pond? I am laughing that the Big Fish has been swimming in a dirty pond all these 400 years .he can't even clean up his own dirty pond all these 400 years and every year, he adds to its filth instead of cleaning it. i'm the small fish swimming in a small pond, yes, but a clean,clear pond.
in all those 400 years, as present day surveyor, have you made any headway to correct your antiquated system? or will the surveyor in 2116 be still blaming the 2016 surveyors with all their "Further Research Into Local History" clause?
So in the system in singapore all the millions of miles of fence in the US would have to be re laid every time a more accurate measuring system is introduced?
I don't know how may miles of fence there are but I am just trying to emphasize how much fence is on what everyone assumes to be the property line in the US
You are limiting your market.
We, on the other hand, can handle both.
Yeah, you are enlarging your market all right. All those boundary surveys that you did where you actually just said "I think this is the boundary but don't take my word for it" or "You need to do further research on local history" or "I found a cap over yonder there which is either a cap made by a surveyor or some kid nailed his soda pop bottle cap while he was playing carpenter with his father"....
Yes, you are right, you will continually survey the same parcel of land in perpetuity with those "survey findings".
Francis H.:
Please provide us with a reference for a recent Singapore 20 story (or more), apartment or office building that was torn down and re-built because it was constructed erroneously .5 meters (or .05 meters, or .005 meters---you pick the number), over the line drawn between two of these inviolable monuments you have there? Give us a good recent example of this...perhaps something close to Marina Bay. Thanks in advance.
Please provide us with a reference for a recent Singapore 20 story (or more), apartment or office building that was torn down and re-built because it was constructed erroneously .5 meters (or .05 meters, or .005 meters---you pick the number), over the line drawn between two of these inviolable monuments you have there? Give us a good recent example of this...perhaps something close to Marina Bay. Thanks in advance.
This is one case that we I have been following for several years before its final decision several years ago. Please read slowly this High Court decision
With regards to encroahments - we follow 3 cm rule. Is that too small for your "old timers" to comprehend?
http://www.sla.gov.sg/Portals/0/Circulars/att/LS/csc-S/e/CS-Cir-1-2006.pdf
FrancisH
In those immortal words by Richard Snaut
"You are a dippity idiot"
FrancisH
In those immortal words by Richard Snaut
"You are a dippity idiot"
well an idiot that can do his job as against an idiot that blames other people for their incompetency .
