asking for a friend.
Say you did a bunch of work in an old 50's hub and tack subdivision and the control recovered (unoriginal rebar set by who knows who or when), was rather screwed up, as in nothing fits the plat very well, or at all really. Then let's say your client goes in and does a lot of digging and as careful as they are, maybe some of those pins end up disturbed, as in laying horizontal on the surface. Now my friend is asked to go in and reset those corners, in their 'original' locations I'd assume, of course with their license number splashed across the caps. Would anyone have any suggestions or advice that I could pass along before they assume ownership of a portion of this cluster duck, short of pounding the plastic caps on with a 10 lb. sledge hammer??ÿ
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Tell your friend I've been there, done that and got a closet full of the t-shirts.?ÿ If I were were friend I would be compelled to attempt a comprehensive survey of the original boundary of the entire plat and then move on from there.?ÿ Sometimes you need to depend on existing evidence and sometimes you have to ignore it.?ÿ But don't get off in there and flip-flop.?ÿ ?ÿ
What was wrong then is still wrong now.?ÿ And I get a lot of flack sometimes surveying with that mentality.?ÿ But by gawd I never rely on control that isn't control.?ÿ I pay as much attention to it as was paid to it when it was set.?ÿ Tell your friend to listen to his inner voice.?ÿ I think your friend knows what to do.
And yes, it is a shame when the ground is so hard the plastic caps get deformed in the process of setting the pin.?ÿ I hate it when that happens.
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I hope whatever you recommend your friend to do it doesn??t cost a friendship. He??ll be right until proven wrong.
Not only smash the caps but make every bar lean in a different direction from the next closer one.
I remember one survey I did years ago back in the days we used good EDMs but GPS had, alas, not yet come into our sweaty little fists.
A developer (and I use the word loosely) had subdivided a 40 ac. "qtr-qtr" into eight 5 acre tracts.?ÿ These tracts were 660' (mol) n and s by 330' or so e and w.?ÿ The geometry was two tiers of four five ac. tracts if you can picture it.?ÿ On paper it looked like a viable subdivision.?ÿ?ÿ
The boundary of the qtr-qtr was undisputed with monumented corners that were mostly accessible and fairly easy to "visually" verify with optical equipment.?ÿ But the interior of the 40 ac. was rough, wooly and wooded.?ÿ Prior to being subdivided an aerial east-west power line had been installed that cut the tract in half, more or less.?ÿ The only real improvements the developer performed was cutting a dozer trail along the pole line.?ÿ This cut the 40 acres in "half" and provided access to all eight of the 5 acre tracts. Although it was not a recorded plat, a surveyor had prepared for the developer eight descriptions and set the 5 common corners along this primitive road running east and west through the middle of the 40 acres.
Due to timber and steep grade it was impossible to "see" down this road.?ÿ The two exterior corners on this line were in place and found to in accurate positions.?ÿ Interestingly these corners fell around 5' south of the power poles on each end.
I had to run a traverse along this road to verify the corners of one of the interior lots I had been hired to survey.?ÿ They all "looked" good and were in predictable locations; adjacent to and about five feet south of the pole line.
Once I had brought my field work in to the office and had it up on the CRT it was apparent how crazy things looked.?ÿ Some of the pins were almost 10 feet off line with e-w distances between them almost as bad.
It was then I realized no one had really ever "surveyed" this line, but had relied upon the power poles as control in setting the interior pins.?ÿ The power pole line was really nowhere near straight and their spacing was just as unpredictable.
With my traverse points in place I was able to reset all the common corners along this line in their 'correct' location.?ÿ Even though there were "existing" pins that had been set initially, I was forced to totally reject them.?ÿ This was a huge leap for me at the time and I fretted over it. This was when I realized "what was originally wrong was still wrong".?ÿ
Disregarding a previously set pin is difficult for surveyors.?ÿ But sometimes it's warranted.?ÿ I will stand by my decisions on that survey to this day.
I'm sure having the chance to fix them before they've been relied upon always helps too.
If he's located them previously, and determined to hold them, then just re-set where they were.?ÿ
If he didn't like them before, then now that they're gone, he could play dumb, and set them where he thinks they ought've been set.?ÿ But that's your, I mean his call, obviously.
it is a shame when the ground is so hard the plastic caps get deformed in the process of setting the pin.
Try the Morasse caps with the hole in the center. You mount the cap on the rebar before you pound it in. The hammed never touches the cap. I've used them for close to 40 years and they never fade in my high altitude, high UV climate.
Paden's goal was to obliterate the lettering on the caps.?ÿ Must use the cheap plastic ones to do that.
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At least, that is what Paden was suggesting.
Perpetuating goat stakes that may or may not have been relied upon by property owners as their corners, may or may not be good faith perpetuations of original hubs, I'd advise my friend that if they value our friendship, don't rely on my advice but instead rely on what the property owners have done using those pins. If the property owners built a fence to the goat stake, that's a good indication that they've accepted it and there is little to be done about it unless they enjoy kicking wet turds. My old mentor use to say 'Remember the mission', which I'm fairly certain at no point involved trying to reconstruct silk purses out of sow ears.
Hypothetically speaking of course.?ÿ
I would tell him to say that the laws have changed since then and there were thing you did then, that you don??t do now. With GNSS it easy to resurvey the subdivision from the exterior boundary in and see what happens. If that makes things work (and I have found that in most cases it does), set new correct lot boundaries along with new block corners on each side.
Say you did a bunch of work in an old 50's hub and tack subdivision
Then let's say your client goes in and does a lot of digging
Now my friend is asked to go in and reset those corners, in their 'original' locations
That sounds an awful lot like your friend has surveyed the property and shown their client where to clear to begin the building process and now their client wants knocked out corner markers (as previously shown by your friend) replaced.?ÿ Hopefully your friend was confident enough in the "...work in an old 50's hub and tack subdivision..." that they first did to be able to reset the corners and do whatever filing and paperwork might be required.?ÿ Otherwise, how did the client know where to clear to begin with?
That is one of the reasons I'm insistent on always providing a drawing even if I find four original corners of a simple lot with not much difference from record angles and distances - the client has a paper trail that points back to what I have told them are the corners.?ÿ It also helps if they ignore what I have told them!
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In that instance, I believe you are following Greenleaf's principles.
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"Greenleaf stated at the outset that the purpose of the tool was to 'ascertain the intent of the parties'. Intent is a key issue in interpreting descriptions, whether in metes and bounds or plan form.8 To repeat, wherever intention is clear and unambiguous, the description is taken to specifically demonstrate intention; where ambiguity arises, whether patent or latent, intention is drawn from the evidence, with the guidance of the hierarchy."
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pp.14, 16
https://www.aols.org/site_files/content/pages/about/media/ops-magazine/2017spring.pdf
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Things get "fun" when intent and evidence on the ground do not match.
