Dave Karoly, post: 399851, member: 94 wrote: This is to illustrate the point of Mulford's quote:
One day Ed Norton came home from his job working in the sewers to find new stakes 10' into his lot. His neighbor, Ralph, had commissioned Francis H to survey his lot. Ralph's wife, Alice was not directly involved but later she had to bring Ralph to his senses after threats of being sent to the moon were ignored.
Sketch is incorrect the distance of the retacement should show 100.000' no 100'.....
I believe what makes this thread is we all have experience with people that are completely stuck on the measurements, the complete focus on the numbers and are oblivious to the bigger picture of how the fabric of land tenure is held together in this country. We can all agree that our system is not perfect. Just like democracy is not perfect, it's just better than the rest. Perfection is reserved for higher powers than us mortals. Old laws retain their validity for the simple reason they work and have been tested and found true. Beyond the irritation, whether Francis is a troll or not is a bit irrelevant to the thread, the attitude the measurements should be elevated above all other evidence is the fools errand and we all owe Francis a tip of the hat for his keeping this fabulous thread alive and drawing out the comments and information that will serve others well in understanding the why measurements are not the ultimate governing factor in our work. I do hope that this thread will be preserved because I believe there are many out there who could benefit from a better understanding of why the fixation on the numbers nearly always leads to conflicts as we run up against those inherent imperfections in our system.
Such a simple world it is in the eyes of one FrancisH.
Carry on.
Tom Adams, post: 399863, member: 7285 wrote: What if a guy is indeed a retired land surveyor who you (we) are telling has been surveying wrong all of his life. You think you are going to get him to agree? I, have been feeding the troll but have run out of goodies.
Tom, FrancisH may very well be a retired surveyor who worked for 40+ years in a country with a far different land tenure system than the U,S. Just be thankful he didn't decide to move to Colorado and take up pin cushion farming. 🙂
His omphaloskeptic musings about which land tenure system is "best" aside, it is good to remind myself that our system does have its warts. Our Cadastral fabric certainly has many puckers, frays and tears. For me, figuring out how to properly deal with those issues is one reason why I remain a land surveyor. I would have been bored silly many decades ago if land surveying was nothing more than measuring with the occasional pulling and resetting of original monuments I found to be in error.
I'm just having a little fun with FrancisH's ignorance of our system.
Something I would like to point out here that we as surveyors sometimes forget: we really don't have a "set of rules" to which we may adhere. We have precedence and procedures. We have case law. We have crazy ideas that have been in our heads because the old man we worked for 40 years ago told us.
And the cadaster was set up in so many different ways regionally.
And...we have 50 States. 50 different sets of statutes and even more case laws.
There is no book with a title "How To Perform A United States Land Survey".
Some people unfamiliar with all this adversity, like some kimchi-munching commie troll that can't see past his own nose, cannot comprehend our profession without printed instructions. And none exist in one collective spot. As I stated about twenty pages ago; it's like arguing the color of the sky with Ray Charles...he sees what he 'sees', and nothing else. He cannot open his mind because he relies only upon what he perceives in a very predictable amoebic fashion.
[USER=9850]@Gene Kooper[/USER]
Had to look up omphaloskeptic....now I remember you using that before. The funniest thing about the people who argue the Math vs. the fence-line surveying is that each side says things like "if that was all there was too it we would all be technicians". It's hard to convince people that it isn't "one or the other".
I just had an epiphany; I know what the problem is!
I started surveying in Nebraska and measuring was easy. You can stand at the initial point of the sixth principal meridian and see for miles and miles in all directions. Vast stretches of flat land; early surveyors measured the circumference of their wagon wheel; tied a rag or piece of rope to it and counted the revolutions. These guys were pretty darn accurate. My boss always told me; always be as accurate as possible, but never more accurate than that. That's what early Nebraska surveyors did.
15 years later I moved to the state of Washington; this state is full of HUGE obstacles. the Puget Sound; the Columbia Gorge; the Cascade Mountains. To achieve any semblance of accuracy; they needed to make tedious, calculated measurements with the rudimentary tools of their day. I stood on the Willamette Stone and looked up the steep slope to the north and said: You want me to go to Spokane from here!? 66 feet at a time?!
Our buddy, Frances, lives in a reasonably flat, isolated environment; where the early surveyors had better equipment and less obstacles. It was easy and Frances finds very little error, and when he does; it's an easy fix. He wouldn't know what to do with some of the errors he's going to find out here.
Fix it?! Who's got the time and money for that?
Dougie
Fran
is
H
you are the first person I have flipped the ignore switch on
I did that because noting relevant to my purpose in being here was happening in this thread.
Everyone of the registered members here have basically told who they are when they wish to pass on valuable and instructive advice and criticism alike.
And when doing so have made sense of their pleas and that ain't happening here.
FrancisH is the Borg and noting will change the wrong he is spewing.
Had he anything to present in terms of how the Singapore system was created and how it is implemented may help.
I really doubt that is where he actually is.
goodbye thread of useless info..........
32 pages long.
The horse has long been dead and decomposed.
'Nuff said.
So this is were the laziness of US surveyors come into play. Assuming that it's part of a larger subdivision plat, common sense would come into play and say that since the left & right lots have 100' widths then maybe just maybe the middle lot should also have a 100' width. Maybe just maybe you should start to measure other corners west,east of the client's lot and try to find if there is a lot with a 110' width. Because if you found this lot with the 110' width then this would explain where the error started. Your laziness in expanding your survey to find the source of the error on the ground is main cause of your stubbornness. You keep on blaming the previous surveyors but don't realize that you will be part of the 'previous surveyors' who could not correct a blunder in surveying.
You say that finding that 10' error would cause everyone to move 10'? WRONG!!
It would mean that whoever got 110' width would have to pay the guy he got it from. The guy in the middle would get compensation for the missing 10' from the guy with the 110' width. That is the purpose why you survey to find the correct boundary. Sure the guy would want to litigate, it's his right. But I am sure that the court would then say that it's not practical to move everyone 10' to the correct position. Final decision would be to have the aggrieved party be paid by the gaining party. And have all the deeds corrected to reflect their ground position.
If he wants to gain that extra 10' then he could litigate all those lots affected and if he wins then all boundaries would have to move 10'. Whatever his decision is, that is not your concern as a 'professional surveyor'. That's up to the judge. Your job is to find where that missing 10' went.
Our buddy, Frances, lives in a reasonably flat, isolated environment; where the early surveyors had better equipment and less obstacles. It was easy and Frances finds very little error, and when he does; it's an easy fix. He wouldn't know what to do with some of the errors he's going to find out here.
Fix it?! Who's got the time and money for that?
Again all I hear are excuses, excuses, excuses. The terrain is tough, the equipment is inadequate, the horses were tired.
You think the USA is a special territory? Russia, China, Canada, Australia all have similar terrain. But guess what? They have a modern cadastral system.
Expenses? Guess what again, all cadastral system are expensive but these are paid off by the increase in property taxes and confidence lot owners have in their purchase. Buyers are guaranteed that what they buy is correct on both paper & ground. Business are confident that their buildings are correctly built on their lot and will not be sued because of some vagueness in it's location and description.
Francis,
It's a pity that you have a sense of anarchy about land ownership here in the United States. If your source for this impression is this forum, there is a bias built in - the posters here share experiences with the anomalies in their practice. The vast majority of our collective surveying is pretty mundane, and there is not much to learn from posting about the routine surveys.
Rest assured, the cadastre here is in good hands. A lot of what we deal with is in retracing those who are not so enlightened. And there are sufficient means to rectify those situations when they arise.
To me it doesn't matter if your plat says 432' and others say 431 and 434. If all the surveyors come out and point to the corner and point to the same spot, then it's correct.
Would you rather them all have the same distance but point to three different spots?
Who would the owner think is the real unprofessional?
I've been sitting this one out, but I have to speak up now and congratulate Francis on being the WORLDS BEST EXPERT MEASURER. He knows more about measuring accurately than anyone who has ever, or ever will live. CONGRATULATIONS FRANCIS! Unfortunately you haven't the faintest understanding of surveying, or of U.S. Survey law. So - you're about 5% of the way to being a Professional Surveyor here.
Unfortunately you haven't the faintest understanding of surveying, or of U.S. Survey law. So - you're about 5% of the way to being a Professional Surveyor here.
So let me see now, I am 5% to being a pro surveyor? And you guys are 100% pro surveyors? And with your 100% pro experiences, you can't even find the missing 10'?
Not a single one of you raised the question from the sketch to ask why would a middle lot have only 90' width when adjoining lots have 100'.
That would be the first red flag for a 'pro surveyor'.
To me it doesn't matter if your plat says 432' and others say 431 and 434. If all the surveyors come out and point to the corner and point to the same spot, then it's correct.
What you just said is what I would expect a lawyer or real estate agent to say but not from a 'professional surveyor'.
A professional surveyor would lose sleep trying to figure out WHY there are 3 distances to describe a single line.
P
FrancisH, post: 399936, member: 10211 wrote: So let me see now, I am 5% to being a pro surveyor? And you guys are 100% pro surveyors? And with your 100% pro experiences, you can't even find the missing 10'?
WOW!
You really are CLUELESS!
Haven't you figured it out yet?
The problem is NOT the accurate (but somewhat imprecise) measurements performed by the Original Surveyor 100 (or more) years ago, it is (and continues to be), the fools who write "legal descriptions" based on EXACT numbers, and the deed staking pseudo-surveyors (button pushing morons), who take the "easy-button" route of just plugging the numbers in the ground.
Loyal
Jim in AZ, post: 399935, member: 249 wrote: I've been sitting this one out, but I have to speak up now and congratulate Francis on being the WORLDS BEST EXPERT MEASURER. He knows more about measuring accurately than anyone who has ever, or ever will live. CONGRATULATIONS FRANCIS!
Objection, assumes facts not in evidence. FrancisH has only pontificated that he is an expert measurer. Until I see proof, I will only grant to him the credential of WANTING to be the world's best at expert measurin'.
You really are CLUELESS!
Haven't you figured it out yet?
The problem is NOT the accurate (but somewhat imprecise) measurements performed by the Original Surveyor 100 (or more) years ago, it is (and continues to be), the fools who write "legal descriptions" based on EXACT numbers, and the deed staking pseudo-surveyors (button pushing morons), who take the "easy-button" route of just plugging the numbers in the ground.
it's you who is CLUELESS, the guy who wrote the description meant it to reflect what he thinks is reflected on the ground.
WHY would someone write a description to NOT reflect what's on the ground?
so now you are not only blaming the incompetent PLSS surveyor who did the survey 200 years ago, you are now blaming the poor guy who wrote what the surveyor measured in the field.
most of who are the same person who did the survey - the SURVEYOR himself.
BLAME BLAME BLAME is all I heard from you so called "ProFEEsional Surveyors"
Here's your prize FrancisH. You've earned it.
Actually, I want to thank FrancisH, because he represents the little voice, way down inside, that we all have to occasionally stuff a stopper into the mouth of.
He is the personification of this little illegitimate offspring, of a wayward surveying thought.
We all have to learn to ignore this little guy, and do the right thing.
Thanks, Francis, for bringing this to mind.
We all have to remember to turn this voice off.
N
