The thread I started last wek was intended to get all of us to think a bit harder about the data we produce and how we arrived at that data. This applies to all boundary surveys, whether in a Colonial State, a PLSS state or a "whatever it is" state such as Texas. The abiility to theoretically measure to one hundredth of a foot and one arc-second is of no value if the basis of the measurements is faulty to start with.
Say you are finding a single lot in a block of a city addition platted more than 50-60 years ago. That work was not performed with the same equipment as 40 years ago and nothing akin to what most are using today. The monuments found to use as the basis for your work today may not be the same monuments in the exact same location as was reported at the time of the plat. Try to think of why that is the "real World".
Agreed but with a caveat, find the best available evidence then measure it with a high degree of precision.
I've retraced sixty-year-old surveys performed with a steel tape that were more precise than some modern surveys performed by a PLS with bad technique and an indifference towards precise measurements. Land surveyors should be expert measurers and experts at finding and evaluating boundary evidence. It's a false dichotomy to assume that a PLS can be one but not the other.
Agreed, but, with further caveats. First, one must even think enough to do a complete search for where monuments may have been set by surveyors over the period of time since the inception of the parent survey, whether a city plat or a subvision/addition plat, or the PLSS form of section creation and subdivision thereof. Examples from the real world follow.
An addition to a town was platted before 1860 on the west half of the southeast quarter of a PLSS section. The plat dimensions add up to precisely 1320 feet by 2640 feet. The earliest tracts to be sold/measured off were along the west side of the plat and near the middle of the west side. If you start from there and work outwards over time to eventually reach the far east side of the plat and the far north and south sides of the plat using plat dimensions, things work rather well. But, you will find about ten feet of extra land being added to the easternmost lot in order to reach the far side of the aliquot part. Along the entire north side of the plat, there is an extra 20 to 30 feet of extra land to be awarded to the northernmost lot. Along the entire south side of the plat there is a similar amount of land missing from the southernmost lot. You absolutely must follow the monuments found across this plat area. Any attempt to find the corners and use proportionate measurements will lead to incredible chaos. The modern surveyor must know this history or add to the chaos.
A plat for an addition consisting of about 45 acres to another city was designed in about 1970. Every block is surrounded by streets with the bearings and distances provided for the entire block borders and then bearings and distances for every individual lot. The perimeter of any block does not close by any reasonable measurement. The same is true of each lot. A room full of baboons could not provide worse "original" data. The city officials signing off on the plat had no idea of these facts. Concrete streets with curb and gutter were built. The perimeter of each "resl" block was set at one-half street width from the center of each street centerline. The back line of each lot is the 'real' centerline of the 'real" block. Proportioning of front lines of each lot, per the plat dimensions. must be applied. The back line is a mess as the plat numbers do not agree on the plat for lots either side of that centerline. Applying prorated dimensions results in mismatched lot corners such that the point where two lots would appear to occupy a singal point but, through, prorations differ by a few inches up to a few feet. The modern surveyor must know this history or add to the chaos.
There have been many stories here from surveyors in PLSSia citing found corners being over 100 feet from record. Sometimes aliquot tracts in two sections that should share a common corner along a section line simply do not. Old surveys in one section use a different location from old surveys on the adjacent section. I have dealt with this in a couple of surveys. One had a distance between the the monuments at what should have been a common quarter corner of roughly 29 feet. The other had distance between monuments of about 68 feet. If you grab the correct monument, you will agree with oher found monuments on one side of the road but will be off the distances stated for found monuments on the other side of the road. The modern sureyor must know this history or add to the chaos.
There is a very small addition to a nearby city from the 1880's consisting of only five lots, Each lot is 60 feet wide by 150 feet deep, with an alley behind and a street along one end and along the front. On the plat, the easternmost lot is Lot 1 and the westrnmost lot is Lot 5. Somehow, someway, the seller sold Lot 1 as being Lot 5 and sold Lot 5 as being Lot 1. Two and four are similarly switched. Three is still three. If the modern surveryor is tasked with surveying Lot 2, they need to understand that is the location labeled as Lot 4 on the plat.
Just last week I reviewed a survey for a tract in a nearby city which consisted of two lots in one addition to the city and one lot in an adjacent addition to the city. The northern addition showed the lot depth to be 200 feet and the southern addition showed the lot depth to be 199 feet for the same line. All streets and alleys had full agreement as they crossed from one addition into the other. Perfect measurers go into a coma attempting to set "correct" corners.