How wide is a Property Line?

Then people would just argue over the edge of the line

> Wouldn't it make life a little easier if Property Lines were determined to have a width, of say 0.10'?
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>
> Or maybe even 1' !!!
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> Dtp

This was bought before on the old forum. There is a mention in one of the older editions of Brown stating that a property line is 1/8 of an inch wide.

Ralph

> ...There is a mention in one of the older editions of Brown stating that a property line is 1/8 of an inch wide.

Was there an explanation of this 1/8" wide line? Where did they come up with that bull? A line, by definition, has no width.

> > ...There is a mention in one of the older editions of Brown stating that a property line is 1/8 of an inch wide.
>
> Was there an explanation of this 1/8" wide line? Where did they come up with that bull? A line, by definition, has no width.

Where did you get that from?

Ralph

Geometry. If it had width, it would be a plane.

as surveyors we have all see the "from this point to that point" descriptions.

therefore, my answer would be...as wide as a point is

how wide is a point? not very wide. we were taught in mathematics that between any two points there are an infinite number of points.

another question...is it really a line? not really. it is a line segment defined by the two end points. a line, by math definitions, has no end.

mor coffee, please.o.O

Maybe it shouldn't say no width. The proper definition of a line is a geometric figure that is infinitely thin and infinitely long.

> as surveyors we have all see the "from this point to that point" descriptions.
>
> therefore, my answer would be...as wide as a point is
>
> how wide is a point? not very wide. we were taught in mathematics that between any two points there are an infinite number of points.
>
> another question...is it really a line? not really. it is a line segment defined by the two end points. a line, by math definitions, has no end.
>
> mor coffee, please.o.O

:good: I like that answer Frank.
Because if it has no width it doesn't exist. It's more a philosophical question than it is a mathematical one. I believe Deral had also read that quote I used above. I can't seem to find it again. It could also have been Ben Buckner, I can't remember.

This has been debated at length for quite some time and there are various schools of thought on this. I choose keep an open mind, listen to others and not to re-act and regurgitate.
There are plenty of posts and opinions on this by people who are probably more knowledgeable than me, on the old forum.

Here's one of them.

Here's Euclid, per ASIII
And as to the location of a line that has no breadth, it falls between the plane of two points

Here's what JB Stahl wrote about it back in the day (6 years ago, I'll save him the trouble of re-typing it)

I was out of the office doing some research yesterday and missed the post regarding Property Line Width. I just read Ralph Perez's 8:15 PM post containing a quotation from the "new" edition of "Boundary Control and Legal Principles, fifth ed." (I refuse to even refer to it as "Brown's" as the diatribe you quoted is not and should never be attributed to Brown.) I thought the quotation was worthy of some discussion.That particular paragraph and the vast majority of paragraphs included in the same "new" chapter in the "new" version is the worst contrived invention of any author I've read in the history of the surveying profession. It makes my blood boil at the very reading of it. I have instructed my students to subject that paragraph along with many others to their black magic marker. Let's dissect that paragraph and see if we can even figure out what it means."Once a boundary line is created in the field, or on paper,..." Boundary lines aren't "created" in the field. Survey monuments are established which have no meaning until relied upon by the landowners to establish the "boundary.""...common law and statute law permit it to be modified, changed or altered." If they are unrelied upon monuments, "common law and statute law" have no application to whether they can be "modified, changed or altered." They're just a bunch of meaningless rebars, sticks and stones that have never been used to "establish" a boundary."When a line is thus changed, altered or modified,..." This is referring to the "boundary line created in the field" which has been "permitted to be altered?" "[A]according to law, it becomes a property line..." So, the act of moving (altering) the monuments created in the field now is supposed to create a "property line?" I thought that a conveyance between two parties, a grantor and a grantee, creates "property lines." Try reconciling the statement with one from the preceding, unquoted, paragraph that states, "In theory, a boundary line remains fixed forever...""Because Surveyors can create boundary lines..." Surveyors don't create boundary lines. They run lines under the direction of the landowners and establish meaningless monuments to define the lines as run. No "boundary" is created. The landowner still owns the entire parcel. He can still perambulate the "boundary" and can choose to not rely upon it in any future conveyance. The landowner can have that survey line run, re-run, moved or destroyed. It's his land. No "boundary" is created until the landowner chooses to create a "boundary" by relying upon the monuments to convey the property on one side to another party. The "conveyance" creates the "boundary," not "surveyors.""[A]nd because property lines are a result of law,..." Property lines are the result of the division of property by conveyance from one party to another. The conveyance itself is "allowed by" the law and may be considered to be "controlled by" the law, but it's a stretch of the author's imagination to say that "'property lines' are a 'result' of the law.""[O]nly the courts can certify or "sanctify" property lines or boundaries." I have never in 30 years of surveying, studying, reviewing court cases, reading survey journals and textbooks, and testifying in court, seen any court "certify" or "sanctify" a "property line" or "boundary." Certainly the court is the last venture in the appeal process when settling disputes between neighbors. The court simply settles the dispute by choosing the boundary position based upon the evidence and applying the same rules and regulations as the surveyor is expected to follow."Surveyors in the United States have not been given the authority to determine legal property lines." Surveyors in the United States are the only profession possessing the necessary skills, knowledge, techniques, abilities, and education to locate "property lines." No attorney or judge can walk onto the land and make a "property line" determination. Only a surveyor can do that. No judge can adjudicate a "property line" without first retaining the services of the land surveyor to make the necessary observations and gather the necessary evidence. The land surveyor then determines the property line location by applying the legal principles to the facts derived and expresses his professional opinion regarding its location. It's up to the court to weigh the surveyor's opinion against their own application of the legal principles in light of the facts presented and confirm or overrule the surveyor's opinion with one of their own formulation.I have never seen the court distinguish the two terms other than to define a "boundary" as potentially a "barrier" to livestock or trespass. I have also never seen a court proceeding where the landowners were asking the court to determine where their "boundary" was. They want to know one thing. Where is my PROPERTY LINE?!!Yet, we are faced with this diatribe contained in a widely respected, professional treatise that has gained its due respect and recognition as one of the foremost authoritative texts in our profession. The diatribe contained in the "new" edition contains no citation to any court case, no legal foundation for the definitions given, and we are confronted with the caveat that:

JBStahl, PLS, CFedS

Ralph

What if one edge has been established by the owners but the other has been retraced by a surveyor? Couldn't the line be thicker or thinner then? We all know that a point has a diameter of two bits, but lines are a different story. I hope Brown explained this line width in more detail:)

I'm guessing Euclid.

> Was there an explanation of this 1/8" wide line? Where did they come up with that bull? A line, by definition, has no width.

The rules of significant digits are that the last decimal you state is uncertain. As in if you say a distance is 100.00 feet, what you are implying is that it's somewhere between 99.99' and 100.01'. And if you say its 100.0 feet, you are implying that the dimension is between 99.9' and 100.1'. So you might say that the property line you dimension to the hundreth is 0.02' wide, the property line you only feel comfortable dimensioning to the tenth is 0.2' wide and so on.

OR, more rigorous statisticians might apply a root mean square, and say SQRT (0.01²)+ (0.01²)=.014 ft, or roughly 1/8".

Don't you get tired of people asking "where is the property line" after you've set stakes along the line? Then they want to know is it on the face of the stake, or down the middle? Or the neighbor says "I don't want those stakes to be on my property at all!!!"

Of course the stakes aren't exactly straight so you have to explain that the property line is in the middle of the stake as it enters the ground, etc.......

Perhaps the width of a property line could be considered to be the same width as the monuments which mark its ends.

>How wide is a Property Line?

The width varies.

In the case where two parties agree to place an 8" wide concrete block wall centered on a surveyed line, the width of that one line, is the width of the wall. If it's a chainlink fence that is agreed upon to center on the surveyed line, it's the width of the fences posts.

> How wide is a Property Line?

Doesn't it depend upon the scale of the drawing?

I'm just askin'...................B-)

> >How wide is a Property Line?
>
> The width varies.
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> In the case where two parties agree to place an 8" wide concrete block wall centered on a surveyed line, the width of that one line, is the width of the wall. If it's a chainlink fence that is agreed upon to center on the surveyed line, it's the width of the fences posts.

:good:

In CT, I've there are some instances where the physical manifestation of the line is about 3 feet width.

> In CT, I've there are some instances where the physical manifestation of the line is about 3 feet width.

sometimes even wider.B-)

That is a good point.

I usually use a heavier lineweight on boundaries on the map.