Many years ago my party chief walked over to the area in a yard where a monument should have been located and saw what he perceived to be a 1" pinch top pipe. We shoot in the monument and nothing fit. We later examine the monument and it was a Jobe's tree fertilizer spike. That was good for many years of ribbing. Also had guys in later years shoot in what they thought were 1" iron pins in asphalt which were later revealed to be rusted bottle caps.
I can't say much, when I was 13, we were working in Bryan/College Station all summer (great job, no parents). We were looking for a corner and I dug the hole when the chief asked if I found it. I said it was a 3/8" rod and I flagged it. We turned it down and the instrument man came ahead and couldn't find it. It was a cylindrical iron ore rock about 2 inches long. I still get hell about that 20 years later.
>what they thought were 1" iron pins in asphalt which were later revealed to be rusted bottle caps.
That reminds me of this old LS I worked for many years ago. He told me that he was set up on a lead and nail and it just would not fit any of the other lead and nails up and down the block, for line or distance. He said that when he took a closer look he was set up on a piece of Black Jack gum that had a small rock stuck in it.
I had a co-PC that had run out of small PK's to set up in some asphalt. He set a black concrete nail instead and failed to tell me for some reason. As you know, most good crews can operate with very little talk, and this was one. I found a small PK (after a little searching) and set up and being the good PC that I was checked the distance and was off about 5 feet... I told him to relax, checked the level and such and went to BS again... again, about 5 feet short. He asked what was wrong and after a few minutes he told me about the black concrete nail (in black asphalt)... It took another few minutes to find....
and no, there was no flagging or markings, we were trying to be stealth and it ended up costing us time.... grrrrr...
funny, but how'd he know it was Black Jack? did he kneel down and give it a lick?
my favorite is to spend 10 minutes digging up and flagging what turns out to be a grounding rod near a power pole.. doh!
Just so you young guys know...
I still feel sad that this was not highly unusual in that time and place.
I was just surveying in a notoriously difficult subdivision where the map shows original 1" pipes but one of those where you never can find them. A new ROS showed he found one. I was happy, since I could use that.
It was 3.5 feet away from the seam formed by old retaining walls where one would expect the true line to be. It also cloth taped the same distance off in both directions from there to other old seams or fence lines.
Took the spoon and scraped more and it is some old elbow/bent section for an abandoned horizontal utility pipe that bends up and ends there. It was nothing.
Downtown sidewalks have a wealth of old bolt stubs, ground flush, that formerly held down phone booths or sign posts, etc. I've had crews come back with 16 "monuments" , in 4 groups of 4, within a 2 foot radius.
Not a Monument>Local builder
In one of the local towns the planning board required that the front bounds be set prior to allowing building permit to be issued by the building inspector.
One local builder had a couple of 4" high concrete bound tops (4"x4" top) that he would put in the vicinity of the front corners and then apply for the building permit. The building inspector would go to the lot, see the "bound" and issue the permit.
Of course by time the road as-built needed to be done to release the road bond the front corners would have been set by us, without the knowledge of how he had obtained the building permits for the existing homes!
There's a 1996 subdivision in my city that's entirely on university land, but has a single street connection to the adjacent city. The subdivision map shows a standard city cased monument set at that intersection.
A few years after the subdivision was created, I had occasion to tie into that monument. In the intersection I found not the standard water valve box that the city uses, but one of the small boxes sometimes used for monitoring wells. I thought that a little odd -- and annoying, since there's no room to bail out any standing water -- but wasn't otherwise concerned. When I opened it I saw what appeared to be a standard 1" capped iron pipe in concrete, but when I started to clean the top to find the punch mark the whole pipe -- all 3 inches of it -- came loose into my hand.
It turns out that the subdivision contractor had gone bust on the job, and had tried to get the punchlist items taken care of with as little cost as possible. They had apparently dug a hole in the street, dropped blob of concrete into it, pushed a capped pipe nipple into the wet concrete, set the box and left. The subdivision surveyor (a friend and former employer of mine) never did see to it that the monument was properly set, and the city gave up trying to squeeze blood from that stone of a contractor.
Not a Monument>Local builder
In the City of Los Angeles utility excavation repairs in the street are required to be identified as to who did them.
Well, wouldn't you know it, someone decided the best way to identify them was with a washer stamped with the utility company's name that was held in place with...are you ready?...a spike!
How many of these have been used as survey monuments by inept surveyors or their helpers is unknown.
Many are now marked "Not a survey point."
A sectional breakdown property.
The SE. corner, is a section corner, and called out on the survey as
"Recovered Steel Plate"
Well, the plat (done by the same company, a little earlier) calls for a "Recovered Metal Plate" with a CCR number.
The CCR is done by an old friend of mine, back in 81, and it calls for a 1/2" IR in a Well Box.
When I went and looked, the "metal plate" was the cover of the well box!
The cover came right up by hand,and it was labeled "SURVEY POINT"! The IR was clearly visible inside.
Somehow they just missed finding that one.
😀
Relates to a beef of mine when maps say "found standard street monument". For some this seems to be the go-to description for any monument that is in a street.
Recently I found a hub and tack inside a cast iron casing, presumably set from straddlers. I would assume this is not the "Standard" within that city.
I remember seeing a plat once that used street monuments calling them 6" iron pins stamped "Survey Monument". A lot of the street monuments here are 7" cast iron wells with 6" diameter lids. The actual monument inside the well could be anywhere inside and not directly below the center of the lid. Yes, some people are really that stupid.
Oh No -- Not a Monument Box!
>When I went and looked, the "metal plate" was the cover of the well box!
I always dread digging down a foot through pavement and finding a box cover. It means having to make the hole a lot bigger in order to open the box, and then trying to suss out what's inside.
Oh No -- Not a Monument Box!
> I always dread digging down a foot through pavement and finding a box cover. It means having to make the hole a lot bigger in order to open the box, and then trying to suss out what's inside.
Ugh. No kidding. There is new asphalt now that has recycled tires within the mixture and the asphalt is therefore rubberized in a way. We had a hell of a time exposing one that was a mere 0.3' from the surface. When you pilot down to expose a 0.2' diameter hole, you cannot pry out a larger amount. The digging bar just absorbed into the asphalt wall of the hole we dug. We had to make several pilot holes all over the place. It probably took the two of us about 45 minutes to get the monument exposed.
Oh No -- Not a Monument Box!
> I always dread digging down a foot through pavement and finding a box cover.
I beg to differ. That's like striking a vein of gold and complaining that now there is a lot more digging to do. Sure, it means loads of work, but have you ever found a cased monument that wasn't a "holder"?
What I hate is digging through a foot of asphalt and finding a valve cover.
4" long 1/2" rebar driven into asphalt pavement. Looks good.
8d nail through a pop bottle cap used in a country road (crushed limestone) for a section corner on a standard parallel and county line. It was still there!
Not a Monument - Todays find
Half buried in a concrete alley..
Looks like a 20 gauge.
I had one that was a town lot calling for rebar w/ ID caps having been set at the corners.
After finding three corners and searching diligently for the fourth near the base of a tree, I finally decided to shoot in the others and calc the fourth to make sure I was at least in the search area. The calc point put me smack dab in the middle of the tree.
I started sweeping with the detector around the base of the tree again - when I just happened to glance at the correct spot to notice the top of a plastic cap had been removed and tacked into the side of the tree at a height of about 3 feet.
