I have decided that I am no longer going to argue with anyone telling me, "that line isn't straight!" Too many times, in situations where you can't see from the front corner to the back corner, we have put stakes on line and had someone tell me the line wasn't straight. From now own my answer is going to be, "it is straight and if you don't believe it, hire another surveyor to prove it" and then walk away.
Maybe the solution is to show them your survey, and say "See, the map says it's straight!"
A number of years ago, a crew I was on staked out a proposed line on a parcel of land for a possible split. The client did not believe the staked line was straight. One of the guys on the crew had his hand held GPS in the truck, so he got it out, marked each stake in as a poi, and showed it to the client. Everybody was happy.
(OK comma police, did I use the correctly here?)
I have a set of gear loppers. The handles spread very wide. I spread them apart and look down the line one way to line them up then look the other way down the other handle as a rough check on where the straight line should go.
In rough terrain with a lot of trees and brush, straight lines often look crooked until I check them then they look straight.
I've had people stand there (while looking down a 600' straight row of lath) and tell me "It's crooked, I mean, it's straight...but it's crooked to MY property line."( Even when there is a pin at both ends.)
People just get in their heads where their "lines" are...and it is difficult to change their mind. Even when faced with visible and physical evidence.
You can lead a horse to water...but..
Can't fix stupid.
Just tell 'em its one of those "floptical delusions." It's not supposed to look straight.
JBS
They are the same people who get anxious when you tell them the 1/2 mile distance along a section line and determined the mid point, and then they ask you whether you started at the East end or West end. It makes a BIG difference to them for some reason.
I almost did this, but didn't and wish I had. I had one guy arguing with me about a 400' long line. I started to tell him to have his wife go stand at the back corner and shoot a rifle right over the top of the stakes. If the line isn't straight, she should be in no danger.
No such thing as a straight line
I like the folks that think they can put them self on line between only two stakes....
or the one time a retired Naval Captain told me that a line wasn't 90 degrees to the road, even after I set the gun up and turned it in front of him. His experience far out weighed mine! Who was I to argue!
Go on...
Was he the guy who tried to get a lighthouse to yield to his ship?
Get off my lawn!
tommy, if you are this grumpy now, think how grumpy you'll be when you get to be my age.
2 points create a straight line, a third one puts a kink in it...;-)
Tell him he's right, it isn't a straight line, its a plane with an orientation either perpendicular to the earths surface or the earth's axis if based on latitudinal arc. That usually makes their head hurt.
Well, you may not get much work after that.
A few times (it only happened to me once, I learned my lesson) when lines are marked, the stakes are not plumbed up. When this happens, the line does not appear to be straight. After having to fix 3000' of "T" posts one day, I always dropped a bob on both sides. It makes the line look better also.
When I did a lot of heavy construction staking on multistory buildings I would pull my hair out laying out floor control on the next floor of many. We would be working soon after the pour was done, while labors were stripping forms and plastic and materials were being stacked everywhere. We would get called back to the floor a few days latter and a carpenter and his crew would be standing next to one of my points saying “look it’s off 1/8 of an inch”. Mind you the floor was swept and as clean as a whistle all the materials were moved to the center and out of the way and a chock line was pulled from the two end points with my point in the middle being 1/8" off the line. I finally learned to say Wow you can measure better than the surveyor, next time you lay the points out, and walked away. That was the end of it. Seemed to work well for me. Jp
It's difficult to argue with someone who already has a certain thought in their mind. And it is especially offensive to surveyors when they are expert, and the client comes along and "knows more than you do". But I think you generally need to exercise patience. It is hard to find clients these days ....but you don't pay them. A slight more on the client's side, is situations I have been in, where I don't know more than my contractor or roofer, but I need to be watchful and wary of everything they do, because if they make a mistake they will never admit it and I'll wind up with a leaky roof that I don't know about until the next time it rains.
I think the best approach is "yeah I know, I guess it's an optical illusion...it looked crooked to me too, but when I double-checked it, they were all straight."
Have you ever run levels and could have sworn the terrain was going at an upward grade but the levels proved you are going downhill? (I have, not on steep grades but down a county road for instance).
These guys aren't professionals like you are. They remember corners to be in the wrong place from 30 years ago, or they see something on a hill that makes the stakes look crooked. Or they stand on top of the hill and look one way and turn around and it looks wrong to them. You and I know that. You need to play nice and realize that they are trying to make sure some incompetent surveyor isn't ripping them off. To the layman, it is hard to tell the difference between a surveyor who knows what they're doing and one who is incompetent. And they have probably been ripped of by other professionals in the past.
When asked to mark boundary, I have been doing to by setting T post at intervals according to their budget and at least attempting to set them at places that they can stretch wire between or see between when clearing has been done.
So, my answer an explanation is that "this is $xxx straight" and should pass thru all the T post in place.
Actual lines and boundaries have no width or area and are invisible.
We set stakes of some form to mark these boundaries for our clients and the clients then use their land accordingly.
Some locations a few feet is good enough to decide where to stop cutting timber and end a drop field and in other places it is defined by to the width of your cross-hairs.
😉