How do you protect your corners?

Set 2 pins, one on top of the other. It usually slips off, and goes along side, after it is 6" or 10" down. You can always find it with mr Schonestedt. Then, drive a steel fence post beside it.

If I feel the need I excavate a foot and a half or more and then set a pin. After backfill I set the "dummy" pin at the surface. in case somebody "accidentally" moves it.

This happened just a few weeks ago. I had a funny feeling one of the neighbors was going to try something funny. We dug a good hole and set 1" drift pins (from curb & gutter forms) about 18" deep. We set a pretty rebar at the surface. After a day the rebar wound up back where the neighbor "thought" it should go and the client called me frustrated.

I met the client out there and showed him the "real" hole, but didn't uncover it in case we were being watched. He waited until the fence contractor showed up to uncover the pin. The screwy neighbor has been quiet so far.....

I also have gone so far as to have a conversation with a few members of our State Board about this practice. Someone thought that a deeper pin with no cap might be a violation of statutes. My thoughts were that it was no different than the frangible monument mounts that are sold commercially that leave a magnet or rebar at depth if the top cap is broken off. Two of the three agreed with me as long as the deeper monument was described as a 'witness point' on my survey.

paden cash, post: 351118, member: 20 wrote: I also have gone so far as to have a conversation with a few members of our State Board about this practice. Someone thought that a deeper pin with no cap might be a violation of statutes.

Isn't the Gold Standard above the Red River the sort of corner monuments that Red Plains Surveying of Oklahoma City sets? Just asking.

I've found it useful to record more witness points to the monuments than find their way to the drawing and property descriptions.

The same goes for the hubs I use for traverse. Never can tie in too many points of reference. When you can prove the location of your working points, you can then prove the location of missing monuments.

Some of the first trees cut are the ones with "X" and other markings made and painted on them.

Those big yellow machines can erase most all evidence known of and some never known to exist or at least disrupt and scatter the evidence to where it can not be located with certainty.

I like to take a brick, rock or concrete block and bury it and drill a hole to place the monument thru.

0.02

Here in Arkansas, it is perfectly acceptable practice, to place a spit of tobacco juice, (well aimed) on the corner. This, with a 1" x 2" (for the more pedantic, that is 1-1/2" x 3/4", nominal size) with official surveyors flagging. (it's the flagging that makes it official) but the tobacco juice, that makes it permanent.

So glad to be of help here...

N

A relative of mine protected his lot corners a little too well. He proudly drove the pipes down 6 feet. ~shaking my head~

I reestablished a section corner from bearing trees. It's in a skid trail. I dug an 18" deep hole and drove a capped rebar stamped for the corner into the hole. Then I set an aluminum monument on top of that and filled the hole so that the aluminum monument is sticking up but if it gets taken out by the yellow machines the subsurface monument is still there. All of this is on the Corner Record filed with the County Surveyor.

Unfortunately the section corner is inside the holdings of the largest timber land owner in California so it's not anyone's boundary corner.

Nate The Surveyor, post: 351140, member: 291 wrote: Here in Arkansas, it is perfectly acceptable practice, to place a spit of tobacco juice, (well aimed) on the corner. This, with a 1" x 2" (for the more pedantic, that is 1-1/2" x 3/4", nominal size) with official surveyors flagging. (it's the flagging that makes it official) but the tobacco juice, that makes it permanent. So glad to be of help here...N

I understand according to Texas survey rulz you have to state the 'brand' of chew...although we all know it's probably Beech Nut.

paden cash, post: 351174, member: 20 wrote: I understand according to Texas survey rulz you have to state the 'brand' of chew...although we all know it's probably Beech Nut.

You know that's not a bad idea. Years later you could hire a chewing tobacco expert to identify the brand and DNA extraction would identify the Surveyor.

I guess everybody here rents....

Limiting the discussion to only those bars that mark property corners of property that I own. OK?

Almost all are a common 1/2" iron bar 24" in length with the top at or slightly below surface level. Nothing else. A few are railroad spikes in pavement. Approximately half of them are in the middle of county roads, set with the top a couple of inches below surface level. A number of them happen to be pretty close to an existing hedge post (osage orange/bois d'arc/bodarc). All inside city limits are the standard 1/2" bar with no specific protection.

About 25 years ago a fellow surveyor discovered a center of section stone that had not been seen in roughly 100 years. He flagged it up for the whole world to see. A year or two later he returned and it was GONE! It happened to be in an area that had been used as a garden for decades. His guess was that the landowner decided to eliminate that hazard to his plowing effort.

Mine are at the intersection of the fences.

The corners I set are protected by depositing a copy of my survey with the county clerk where the survey was performed in accordance with my state laws. If/when these corners are disturbed or removed they can always be replaced by using the record and an appropriate retracement.

The best protected corner is one that is silently driven below the surface of the earth, documented accordingly and left to be found by future surveyors.

Here in suburban NY, when a surveyor is seen people come running out of their house to make sure you 'aren't stealing their land' or to 'see what you are building/doing' and causes needless friction and tension.

In my head I know exactly where the corners of my 60'x120' lot are and if someone was to start building an encroachment, they would find out from me politely.

Needless to say, I never set any markers at my corners.

I like Nate's method, except I don't chew. Maybe his dog can "mark" the corners.

In places where I suspect they will disappear (and after 20 years doing this, we just have a sense about that) I pound in a 1" pipe, and then pound a 3/4 " rebar inside of that. I then take another 3/4 rebar and countersink the first one so the top of it ends up at the bottom of the pipe. The pipe can then be pulled, and the sneaky rebar is still there, unsuspected by Mr. Adjoiner. I do put that on the survey as a note.

If it has to be surface marked, a 7' steel T post driven in 4 or 5 feet will hang around for a while. It takes some determination to pull them.

I figure if we can't outsmart homeowners, we don't deserve our licenses.

When I obtain licensure and start setting my own monuments, I have a few ideas:

* Use magnesium bars and caps for those who like to trim the monuments with a lawn mower;
* Coat the bars/caps with micro-encapsulated poison ivy extract just in case someone likes to pull 'em out;
* Other brainstorm ideas as needed.

On a more serious note, I like the idea of setting two buried reference mon's nearby- at least for some of them. Or perhaps set a witness below the visible one.

the original post asked: "how would a surveyor protect their own corner" ?

my home is on a residential lot that has block walls, a photo of the monument serves very well... the block wall is a reference.

my rural acreage has untagged rebars. for the ones near the front I dragged BFR over next to them. the two back monuments are on the edge of the bluff and nearly inaccessible, they have a 2 foot tall chunk of PVC pipe on top.
a few years go the nearby highway was being rebuilt, the State surveyors asked permission to set a geodetic control point and two RPs. I said OK, but tie in my boundary monuments and provide the data to me, they were glad to do that and also included several miles of control data in both directions as a bonus.

my other properties are less important to me, I just retain the surveys that were prepared for the purchase (they include geodetic ties as SOP).

Funny how it seemed to morph into a generalization, or maybe it was just me...

McCracker, post: 351296, member: 9299 wrote: I guess everybody here rents....

nope, reading comprehension issues.

now we have a short list of who Not to hire to survey our own properties 🙂