He thought he'd outsmart me I guess

Yeah I had a young fella come out waving his "plat" at me last week after i determined his fencephalitis os way over the line. His plat was actually his security deed and he promptly proceeded to lecture me about the latitudes and longitudes in the description.

He told me several times that he was a critical systems contractor for the federal government. I guess that fact made him knowledgeable on everything.

He refused to believe me about those latlongs being bearing until I showed him a survey of his property that he did not have.

I still had to show him the bearings in my Suunto.?ÿ?ÿ

for some reason this jogged a funny memory from 15 or 20 years ago:

drive out to do a boundary/title on a 10 acre lot in a new subdivision.?ÿ only a handful of owners had built houses at that point- including the guy next door to our survey.?ÿ and when we arrive it's almost like he's waiting for us, walks up before i've even turned the van off, smiling and all okily-dokily ned flanders-style happy.?ÿ tells us he's the neighbor and if there's anything we need to feel free and come knock on his door.?ÿ now i'm admittedly way too cynical, but i was immediately suspicious- just wasn't quite sure of what yet.

so we headed to the back to look for some corners (i always like heading to the back first to get an idea of what it's gonna take- keeping in mind this was well before i'd ever touched GPS- to run back there and i also like to operate by go farthest afoot and working back toward home).?ÿ the path back along ned's line had been cut, as the fence guys had just finished- like within a day or three- hanging the wire on about 700' of ned's brand new pipe-post fencing.?ÿ find the back corners easy breezy, walk back out up the other side line, through decidedly less passable brush, and find the first?ÿ front corner.?ÿ spent a little time bird-dogging adjoiners out in this mostly open field that just happened to have streets and a few transformers and water meters scattered about.?ÿ as you'd expect- or as i did, anyways- it was fish in a barrel.?ÿ had WAY more monumentation than necessary for this little title survey in about 20 minutes.?ÿ funny thing happens when i start pacing back toward the van- which i'd parked near where i assumed ours and ned's common corner to be- the distance was off.?ÿ by a good bit.?ÿ i still had 18 or 20 feet to go...?ÿ i mean, i ain't the world's BEST pacer, but i'm usually good for being within a couple of feet over 500' on flat, open ground like this.?ÿ "WTF?" i thought, everything else has seemingly fit like a glove so far.?ÿ and i'm standing right in line with ned's nice new 700' fence.?ÿ and i look over and i can see, a few hundred feet away, ned standing in his garage watching us.?ÿ so then i whip out the plat again and see that there's a PC in our front line, oh, about 18 feet and change east of ned's SE lot corner.?ÿ and i'd noticed when we pulled up, but hadn't given it much thought until now, the big 4-500 pound rock sitting along the r.o.w. line on ned's lot, about 20 feet further up, the rock that looked like the single rock that all the dirt guys, utility guys, and road guys had left behind out of this 600+ acre subdivision.

so about the time i get to the rock with a couple of laths and the 0 end of the tape so paul and i can start taping this thing in from various spots, ned is there to meet me- with two glasses of lemonade (i swear) and- whattya know- a copy of his survey.?ÿ and he's still in full okily-dokily mode.?ÿ and so "what are you fellas doin' there? just a big ol' hunk of hill country limestone.?ÿ do you guys usually measure rocks??ÿ because our surveyor didn't- it's not on our survey."?ÿ which... of course it isn't.?ÿ and at this point i know damn well what's going on.

30 minutes or so later, after two of us leaning on a rock bar and nearly herniating multiple portions of our anatomies, we'd managed to slide that rock far enough to uncover- voila!- a rod with a cap that matched every other single rod we'd found , with about a foot of flagging tied to it.?ÿ ned had spent that half hour, i could see, back in his garage doing a fair bit of pacing himself, and seemed like he was on the phone a good bit of the time too.?ÿ?ÿ

the next few hours of shooting that job were highly enjoyable.?ÿ ned left us alone for the most part (turns out he was on the phone with my boss for a good bit of it- which ended up being the case for a couple of weeks subsequent too, as he tried to figure out how to not eat the cost of moving 700' feet of fence that was put in based upon his DIY surveying skills).

part that still gets me, even though it wouldn't have done him any better in the long run: is why he didn't just yank that rod instead of having a refrigerator-sized hunk of limestone hauled in and dumped on top of it.?ÿ he must have feared the wrath of the toothless texas board more than he trusted the ability of the average surveyor to figure out a 20' bust.

What was Ned's survey plat??ÿ DIY (incompetent or fraudulent) or real and misinterpreted (intentionally or not)?

it was fine.?ÿ done by a reputable local RPLS, exactly as it should have been.?ÿ i don't recall ned ever admitting anything (of course it wasn't my company and i don't recall being THAT interested in how it shook out as much as making sure my job was done properly and taking on the next jobs in line- we were really busy at the time).?ÿ my guess is that, for whatever reason, the flagging on the PC must have been just a little bit brighter or something the day he decided to start building his fence.?ÿ and, obviously, he didn't bother to pull out a tape measure.

don't get me wrong- i DIY all kinds of things.?ÿ and i learn from my share of mistakes doing so.?ÿ but over the course of the 2+ decades i've been doing this, the most reliable source of major screw ups i've run into are from people who are serving as their own surveyor/engineer/GC, often for the very first time.?ÿ (client at the old company, for instance:?ÿ super nice guy, building an empire of high-dollar car washes.?ÿ own GC.?ÿ flooded one site where he set pond grades with an iphone app.?ÿ another site dug his own WW connection and managed to run it uphill to the manhole...)

@flyin-solo, yeah the 12'-13' deal. ?ÿA lot survey over a decade back. Was digging up lot corners and road control when I noticed our front lot corner wasn't lining up well with the side fence and adjoining house side-setback. Had enough PCs, PTs, on our block, across the street and the next block down to see something went wrong here. It appeared someone had built the house and fence using the PC about twelve feet away. The house didn't cross the sideline but it was a close fit by eye.

When we got to that point, looking at the sideline, the nicest kindest elderly woman slowly ambled out of her front door to investigate. She was helpful enough to bring her survey (1960 - PE stamp) that showed someone had mistaken the PC for a lot corner.

Wasn't until afterwards that it dawned on me that the kind old lady was fairly quick to retrieve a sixty year old survey, and considering there are two distinct properties, side by side, over the course of sixty years this question/issue had to have surfaced at least once in the past.?ÿ

Hard to protect people from themselves.?ÿ When marking lot corners for construction I put 3' stakes on the actual lot corners and 18" stakes on PCs, PTs, etc.?ÿ It doesn't eliminate mistakes but it gives my contractors a visual reminder that they might be pulling to wrong point.

I hate subdivisions where there are PCs or PTs close to Lot corners.?ÿ I especially dislike the situation where the rear corners of back to back lots are offset by some amount such that only a surveyor can tell for sure whats what once a few pins get taken out.?ÿ I'm working on two subdivisions that are this way and I can't do a thing about it due to the designs.?ÿ The trend is for lots that barely meet the minimum requirements for size and shape, leaving me no room for tweaks that would eliminate some of the close corners.?ÿ

I have a 1958 plat that shows 0.9 ft between one set of back corners.?ÿ Sheesh.?ÿ The lot sizes weren't so critical they couldn't have used a single corner.?ÿ They even screwed up the dimensions so bad you can't easily tell which is which WITH the plat, since adding up the two sides of the line over several lots doesn't match by some significant amount.

I don't put sticks on pc or pt corners at all. I dig them down about a foot, and leave the holes open with plenty of flagging on them. The city inspector can drive through and see that they are there for the final approval of the plat, but by the time anyone is building a house they are covered up and unlikely to be found except by people who know where to look, and therefore what they are. If the state would let me, I wouldn't set them at all. They're a waste of rebar, seeing how there is a monument in a case at the centerline of the road at the pc & pt of each curve.?ÿ

Posted by: David Baalman

I don't put sticks on pc or pt corners at all. I dig them down about a foot, and leave the holes open with plenty of flagging on them. The city inspector can drive through and see that they are there for the final approval of the plat, but by the time anyone is building a house they are covered up and unlikely to be found except by people who know where to look, and therefore what they are. If the state would let me, I wouldn't set them at all. They're a waste of rebar, seeing how there is a monument in a case at the centerline of the road at the pc & pt of each curve.?ÿ

Oh it would be so great to have monuments in the centerline but we can't even get people to cap their rebar and it's in the requirements to do so. But there is no consequences if you dont.

Seems to be no penalty here for taking a client's money and providing no service (based on stories I hear from clients who hire my competiton and then come to me to actually get the job done), but by golly if you are caught setting a rebar with no cap they'll hang you. Be careful what you wish for I guess.?ÿ

Now imagine meeting with 2 attorneys that have the same lack of knowledge and trying to explain "you changed all the coordinates on the lines" (basis if bearings). Then being told how you need to survey the lines correctly ( it was a legal description) and they were going to tell you how to do it properly because "they" are professionals. I guess my 40+ years of experience and 2 state licenses are worthless.?ÿHad I know I was being duped all these years I would have stayed at the?ÿmobile home plant working

?ÿ

?ÿI offer to give a seminar on basic surveying to their firm, of which I am currently working with 4 other attorneys on other projects with,?ÿbut instead?ÿthey contact your boss?ÿand accuse you of ?ÿ"talking down to them", because they are professionals and you aren't. So the next meeting, I take?ÿ1 other "non professional" in with me and even with the good surveyor-bad surveyor routine, we still don't gain any ground, but now someone else can see my side of the story. Frustrating......