Lot line insurance policy pays off

LOVE it!!

I sometimes SCORE a rebar, with a hacksaw, or file, so it will break easily. Pound it. Or, drive one down 4" below the surface, then set one for the client to fine... HA HA, there it is!!!

N

JB, post: 381046, member: 346 wrote: I staked a lot line in a subdivision for a new fence. This was some time ago.
I got a call from the owner and he was upset that a new neighbor had a survey made which showed his fence over the lot line. The kind of call that turns your stomach. I gather up my data and head out to see what's up.
I get oriented on the old lot corners, check into some house corners and my old control nails. Everything checks. Except the fence. Expensive fence too.
I'm showing owner and he's talking lawsuits and all sorts of evil that's about to befall me.
Then I explain to him that I need to check my line stakes. He seems shocked that I can check stakes which are long gone.
I begin to explain to him that an old party chief of mine showed me how to do it. "Cover your butt whenever you can" was PC's lesson.
"You see, when I set a wooden stake on the lot line, it's getting set on TOP of a Maghub nail, a very identifiable nail, which I located and can now re-stake". "Let's see what we can find".
Staked out the first one and after just a little gentle digging we hit pink. Flagging that is. And there's the nail. Hardly worse for wear. I show him the dc shot which is just a couple hundredths out. He's beginning to understand. We found the whole line of nails and at some of them you could even see the outline of the stake hole. Now he's getting downright sheepish. I'm almost embarrassed for the guy, but getting a bit pissed too.
I'm 99.8% positive he moved my original stakes and he knows I know.
His bill went out in today's mail and I'm looking forward to a peaceful night's sleep.
Thanks Old Party Chief, wherever you are...you saved my day.

How do you set a nail and then drive a stake down on top of it?

I am glad to have worked under and with a couple of old PCs that shared valuable information like that.

I also learned to set random points in the near vicinity to record as offsets to the boundary.

:beer:

Rich., post: 381055, member: 10450 wrote: How do you set a nail and then drive a stake down on top of it?

I set the Maghub on line (as I'm working around the lot if I can) and record it's location. Then I go back and set the pointy end of the wooden stake directly on top of the nail and pound the stake. The nail just gets driven straight down by the stake.

Aha. That's a fantastic idea. I wish the locators would locate mag nails though....

Rich., post: 381080, member: 10450 wrote: Aha. That's a fantastic idea. I wish the locators would locate mag nails though....

5/8" x 6" rebar are great hidden witness markers and readily ID'd with my locator. BTW my locator detects mag hubs and mag nails, but their sonic return sounds an awful lot like buried woven wire.

Steve

That is a beautiful story. Be prepared to file a hefty lein on his property when he delays payment.

Rich., post: 381080, member: 10450 wrote: Aha. That's a fantastic idea. I wish the locators would locate mag nails though....

There are other types of detectors that work better in some situations than the standard "pipe finder".

Ever get in the situation where there are many hot rocks and every one sounds like a buried pipe?

Most prospecting detectors have the ability to identify these hot rocks based upon their conductivity.
On my detector the hot rocks come in with a target ID of either 04 or 99. Most iron has an ID # of around 23 so it is very easy to ignore the hot rocks.

This type of detector is also very useful to find the missing stamped brass tag that is usually laying buried in the duff next to the unmarked pipe.

Rich., post: 381080, member: 10450 wrote: Aha. That's a fantastic idea. I wish the locators would locate mag nails though....

Buy a 10 pack roll of magnets from harbor freight and drop them under the hub. They will sing. Works on construction sites too! When the contractor back scrapes all your hubs out then claims you staked the erroneously built catch basin or light standard wrong. Jp

JB, post: 381075, member: 346 wrote: I set the Maghub on line (as I'm working around the lot if I can) and record it's location. Then I go back and set the pointy end of the wooden stake directly on top of the nail and pound the stake. The nail just gets driven straight down by the stake.

I do a slight variation on this theme: I set the mag nail on line under the surface and then set a lath along side it, also on line.

Depending on where the new deed corner falls, I will sometimes set an unmarked pin on the corner and then put a shorter "pull-up" pin on line a few inches away. I usually either do not find those or find them chunked across an encroaching fence. I hide my setup mag-hub nails, also. I have had people dig those up an throw them over the fence, thinking they were corner markers.
Some of them are shocked when I can use my magic box on a stick and a "government satellite in outer space" to find the hole where I had set a 1/2" diameter rod a few weeks before. "Hmmmm," sez I. "Somebody must have pulled up your pin. Here's the hole." Sheepish bystanders are easy to spot. Some people......

Had a case of the missing bar once where it was quite obvious the seller had decided to move our bar over 20 feet so as to cheat the buyer. Normally, this would have never been found or, at least, not for decades. The buyer needed a mortgagee title inspection that we performed roughly a month after creating the tract out of a quarter section at the seller's direction. When we went to tie into the first two bars to set our baseline we discovered the missing bar was quite obviously not where we had put it. We found it but knew it had been moved. Found a third bar to use to set our baseline, rotated to the correct location and the pole tip went into a nice 1/2" diameter hole.