We are trying to help a client out, originally so they could put a big machine shed up on their property. We secure a copy of the deed and find that mathematically it doesn't close. We end up getting a copy of all previous deeds and the original that created the parcel. They are all exactly the same. The description is something like:
Beginning at a point that is 1602.35 feet north of a point being 86.27 feet east of the southwest corner of the northwest quarter; thence...metes and bounds with distances to the hundredth and bearings to the second...to the point of beginning, containing 0.45236 acres.
This description was originally written in 1957. Seems like some pretty accurate measurements for that time period.
If using the bearings and distances from the deed, there is a misclosure of about 3.81 feet. This is a four sided figure and the angles add up to 360° 00'00".
We can't find any type of scrivener's error that would make it work.
There are no occupation lines. This is a parcel cut out of a big farm. This is also not the farmstead which sits southerly of the parcel in question and has its own description but is not near this parcel. The original grantor and grantee are no longer above ground. Their successors have no knowledge of original intent and are many times removed from the original transaction. Our client has, for the past 20 years, acted as landlord/liaison for the farm owner (parent tract) for the farmstead rental house. The current owner of the farm is either an attorney or a judge on the federal level in Chicago. He probably has never seen the property with his own eyes, only knows that he owns a whole bunch of ground.
This is also a landlocked parcel. it is near a public road (around 30 to 40 feet from the centerline of the pavement, the driveway comes off the public road, but the farm surrounds the parcel entirely. All other descriptions for parcels on this road call out the road itself as a bound. Not our clients.
There is no monumentation to be found, except the section and subsection corners.
I have pulled in an aerial from 1941 to try to look for intent, with no avail.
We do know that the intended machine shed will not fit on the property. The owner of the farm is unwilling to sell our client anything. Now, our client, who has raised their children in this house, just want to sell and move on. Kind of sad.
The farm owner is willing to swap some land to try to correct things. BTW, regardless of ambiguity in the desc., there is a garage (our client's) that will be over the deed line.
My thought are; Assume the original description assumed the bearing of the S. line of the quarter was due east and the bearing of the W. line of the quarter was due north. That said,
Assume the POB is 86.27 feet east, along the monumented S. line of the quarter and 1602.35 north, along the bearing of the monumented W. line of the quarter. Thence, using adjusted bearings related to the monumented bearing of the W. line of the quarter, use record calls and force closure of the last call since it states TO THE POINT OF BEGINNING.
After this is done, we can calculate some area on each side of the parcel to swap to put the garage entirely on our clients parcel. We will also describe an easement over the existing driveway so the parcel has access. Now they should be able to sell without a title problem.
Opinions?
I would probably look for a bearing that might have been "flipped" (N and E instead of N and W).
If it is a four sided figure I would think that someone blew it in 1957 with their trig tables. That was about 10 years before I started surveying...in the B.C. days (before calculators). Calculating geometrics to perfectly close is a good trick unless everything is NSEW.
You've got three possible locations of a bust:
1. beginning
2. body of the parcel
3. closing line
flip a three sided coin. 😉
With no occupation lines that are evident, it's going to be your call. That's why
they pay us the big bucks. :pinch:
EDIT:
My personal belief is that leaving the error in the closing call is a cop-out. But in your particular case with no other apparent evidence, that would be an option.
My thought, since this is a landlocked piece in the first place, would be to assist in negotiating a win/win type of final result that would effectively eliminate the need for perpetuating the erroneous description to infinity and beyond. Simultaneously, they could resolve any access/utility issues.
On the one hand you have an absentee owner who doesn't want any tax-related issues cropping up. On the other you have the local citizen who is in a delicate situation. Money talks and BS walks is the old expression that may be appropriate here. Getting something for nothing is rare. Finding a mutually beneficial result is a possibility.
As I am also an absentee owner of farm land, I can assure you that I don't like anyone attempting to tell me what is in my best interest relative to that land. The issue forces me to leave my state of complacency and actually pay attention to issues that are more easily ignored. Out of sight, out of mind.
> If using the bearings and distances from the deed, there is a misclosure of about 3.81 feet. This is a four sided figure and the angles add up to 360° 00'00".
> We can't find any type of scrivener's error that would make it work.
4 ft. mis-closure is nothing around here...........
> I have pulled in an aerial from 1941 to try to look for intent, with no avail.
If the original deed is from 1957, this is no surprise.
> The farm owner is willing to swap some land to try to correct things.
> After this is done, we can calculate some area on each side of the parcel to swap to put the garage entirely on our clients parcel. We will also describe an easement over the existing driveway so the parcel has access. Now they should be able to sell without a title problem.
It sounds like you may be not able to issue an opinion of exactly where on the ground the boundaries were, and, based on the above statement, you may not need to. The best solution, since the landowners are willing to correct the problem, is to ask the landowners how they want to fix the problems/ambiguities. In other words, get them to agree to place the boundaries where they want them and help them accomplish it. You will need to first find out what constraints they are worried about such as minimum/maximum side lengths, area, etc.
One area of possible concern is the area, make sure you meet the minimums for water & sewer, etc.
There was one surveyor in this area that only used a compass.
His distances match very good even at over 2,000ft.
The bearings depend upon what area the property is and what affects the needle.
He did put down whatever reading he came up with regardless of closure.
When and if able to follow his footsteps, results are about the same as his.
He trained others that worked this area and they kept up with their declination settings and produced better closures and would actually turn angles.
Then there is that other bunch of surveyors around here that actually surveyed all but one side and calculate that one for perfect closure.
As to your project, you have to weigh all the evidence and put it on the ground.
good luck
😉
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
Just a heads up. Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure, so your 360° closure is meaningless.
That was something Dad showed me early in my career. I've heard quite a few surveyors make the same statement hunting for a blunder in a description, and once upon a time I was one, but it's ignorant (in the classic definition of the word).
As to your problem, they didn't leave you much to go on it sounds like except measurements, which are the lowest of dignity in retracing a description (behind intent, jr/sr rights, and monuments). It's a good example of why we shouldn't be doing the same things today. You might post the calls, I like trying to track down description errors and have gotten pretty good at it over the years.
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
> Just a heads up. Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure, so your 360° closure is meaningless.
>
😉
I won a lot of bets with my "estimation" of bearings. Made them calc. the 'angles' and do that N-2*180 thing with their fancy calculator.
DDSM
Not to be disrespectful, but maybe another set of eyes on all the actual data might see something.
I know I have entered data wrong and can't seem to find it by myself.
+1 ain't that the truth.
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
ha!
I had to think about it myself back in my early days. I visualized a square (all sides cardinal). Then I imagined the North line going from East to N 80° E. Northeast interior corner loses 10° while the Northwest interior corner gains 10°. Still, the figure would add up to 360°.
No disrespect taken. I'm the third set of eyes on all the data though.
Just Four Sides, So Post It
If you want answers, supply all the calls.
Paul in PA
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
I worked with a surveyor who didn't really get the concepts. He actually set up in the middle of a parcel once, and side-shot in all the corners. He then ran coordinates on his shots, inversed between the coordinates to get bearings and distances. Then, finally he ran the bearings and distances he calculated in a traverse program, and came back and told me he got better than 1:1,000,000 closure.
Another guy I knew came up with a great idea (pre-gps) where he set traverse points along either side of a highway, and measured between two of them. Then he turned angles for all of the Triangles in the traverse and basically could do bearing-bearing intercepts. He always came back with "perfect" closure.
You can do great things when you have no redundant measurements. :-O
If the parcel is land locked buy the owner selling the farm, I wouldn't survey it.
An attorney could prepare a quit-claim to the owner of the farm. The owner
of your parcel would quit-claim all his rights of the small tract.
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
> Just a heads up. Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure, so your 360° closure is meaningless.
>
> That was something Dad showed me early in my career. I've heard quite a few surveyors make the same statement hunting for a blunder in a description, and once upon a time I was one, but it's ignorant (in the classic definition of the word).
Expand on that a bit. If I'm looking for a possible cause of misclosure, why not look at the bearings to see if they add up to what they are supposed to? Seeing that the bearings in this case add up to 360°, I can assume the writer of the deed knew something about angles in closed figures. So, could this be a bust in distances alone? Some things I ponder are, if it was surveyed at the time, what kind of accuracy could be measured in distance vs. angle. I'm pretty sure this was done by a geek who was out to prove that he was so good, he could calculate acreages to 5 decimal places.
Low and behold, he messed up. This is a case where fancy "accurate looking" numbers don't mean squat without describing intent.
>
> As to your problem, they didn't leave you much to go on it sounds like except measurements, which are the lowest of dignity in retracing a description (behind intent, jr/sr rights, and monuments). It's a good example of why we shouldn't be doing the same things today. You might post the calls, I like trying to track down description errors and have gotten pretty good at it over the years.
The calls of tract are from the POB...
North 30° 43' 54" West 142.19 feet to a point, thence North 50° 46' 23" East 147.31 feet, thence South 31° 46' 28" East 127.52 feet, Thence South 44° 37' 10" West 150.15 feet to the POB, containing .45975 acres
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
> Expand on that a bit. If I'm looking for a possible cause of misclosure, why not look at the bearings to see if they add up to what they are supposed to? Seeing that the bearings in this case add up to 360°, I can assume the writer of the deed knew something about angles in closed figures. So, could this be a bust in distances alone? Some things I ponder are, if it was surveyed at the time, what kind of accuracy could be measured in distance vs. angle. I'm pretty sure this was done by a geek who was out to prove that he was so good, he could calculate acreages to 5 decimal places.
> Low and behold, he messed up. This is a case where fancy "accurate looking" numbers don't mean squat without describing intent.
>
Best way I can explain it is to ask you to change any one of those bearings by any amount you like - such as the last call from S 44°37'10 W to S 49°37'10" W (5°). Calculate it and tell me if the angular closure isn't still 360°.
You'll notice that the Western vertex is now five degrees less and the Southern vertex is 5° more which changes your total by nothing.
I'm playing with the description. The 5 decimal places in area is stupid of course, but may help track down the booger. My usual tricks aren't doing it though.
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
If you had the original surveyors field book with the actual angles he turned at each corner rather than the resulting bearings, then adding up the interior angles would show if there was an angular bust. As others have pointed out the same is not true with the resulting bearings.
Bearings ALWAYS produce perfect angular closure
Can you double check that acreage? You gave a different value in your opening post.
Calls Given:
N 30°43'54" W 142.190
N 50°46'23" E 147.310
S 31°46'28" E 127.520
S 44°37'10" W 150.150
Closure Error Distance> 3.13761 Error Bearing> S 88°13'45" W
By making the first call parallel to the third.
N 31°46'28" W 142.190 made this call parallel to third call
N 50°46'23" E 147.310 no change
S 31°46'28" E 127.520 no change
S 45°12'19" W 149.920 forced this to close
Closure Error Distance> 0.00000
Total Distance> 566.940
Polyline Area: 19698 sq ft, 0.45220 acres
Because of the misclosure, this became apparent that there is more than one bad call in this description. With a near cardinal misclosure, an incorrect quadrant, as Paden mentioned, would be the first thing to look at, but because the tract is rotated so much from cardinal, this can't be the culprit. With two or more errors, the area becomes important to help settle some assumptions. Even at that, what I'm proposing is a guess really, but it'd be what I'd look for on the ground. First, I think the first call should be very nearly parallel to the third. It could be that it should be N 31°43'54" W (change by an even degree) or perfectly parallel to the third call (as I have it). Both will produce similar results. This still did not create a closed figure, but it was closer. Next I let the last line close by inverse and noted some interesting things: The distance is very close to what is given (150.15' - 149.92' = 0.22') and the bearing is very close to a compliment of the given bearing (45°12' + 44°37' = 89°49'). Could it be that the surveyor (or whomever cooked the numbers) reckoned the bearing wrong - subtracting instead of adding? The result hits very close to the acreage given in the first post: 0.45236 ac. If the acreage was supposed to be the 0.45975 you later gave, we'd have to look a little more.
Fun stuff. Nothing I'd hang my hat on, as there are no conclusive smoking guns here, at least that I can find.
Another Possible Explanation
I first took a stab at it by comparing the distance from the southwest corner to the northeast corner if using first two calls versus going backwards using last two calls. Averaged those numbers, then forced internal angles from either side to fit that length using distances as provided. Compared all internal angles then to find the only one significantly out was the internal angle between the second and third calls. It was pretty close to being exactly one degree.
Using internal angles only, I started with the first call then placed the second call as reported. Then added the third call, but rotated it to have an internal angle one degree less than reported. Then added the fourth call with the record internal angle. The closure was off almost exactly one foot along the length of the first call.
So, change the distance in the first call from 142.19 to 141.19, a fairly simple misreading of a handwritten number. Then alter the bearing of the third call to be one degree less or 30-46-28 instead of 31-46-28 and use the same internal angle as reported between the third and fourth calls. Now the closure is 0.10 east-west and 0.06 north-south. Not bad for 1957 work. The only problem is with the area reported. My solution shrinks the area by 0.01 acre.
In summary, change a 2 to a 1; change a 1 to a 0; get an area that is very close to 0.01 acre short of record. The first two errors don't seem too terribly uncommon. The area issue may result from doing things long hand with trig tables and a slide rule and a bit too much rounding off.
I have problems reading my own handwriting sometimes. I have definitely made a 1 that looks like a 2 before. I have also made an extremely narrow 0 that at a quick glance could be mistaken for a one, especially in dim light conditions.