Me(answering home phone @ 9:30 last night): Hello
Mr. Bird Hunter: Is this the Brian that surveys land?
me: yepper
BH: Say, I've got some coordinates for a property corner of a friends land and he wants me to stake it with my GPS, but the coords do not appear to be latitude/longitude, I was wondering if you can help me?
me (getting rather nervous): What exactly are you doing?
BH: Well, as a favor for my friend for letting me hunt birds on his land, I told him if he could get the coords of his property corner which he hasn't known the location of since he bought the property 20 years ago, I would stake it for him this weekend with my GPS. He brought me an aerial photo with yellow lines on it that are his property lines, and hand written by the corner are the coords: 4xxxxx, 4xxxxxx (probably UTM for my area, but I didn't tell him). I need you to tell me what kind of coords these are and covert them to lat/lon so I can show him where his property corner is located?
me (completely scared and shocked now): I explain that I not only can't but will not do that and then try to explain the inaccuracies of non-corrected GPS, the unknown origin or accuracy of the coords, the law about surveying without a license, and the potential damage not only to his friend but his friends neighbors. I told him to bring the map in & I would look at it. My goal is to find out who provided the coords (I have my suspicions already) and depending on what I find out, may have to have a talk with a local gov't office.
Good Grief!! Then I got to ruminating on this and am now wondering how many times this is happening that we don't know about???
Call the neighbors and tell them their neighbor might be setting corners without a license. If they see a strange corner appear, they might need to call a surveyor.
There is no reason for this to be scary. If you explained to the guy and he won't listen and does it anyway, he is just generating more work for you.
Happens all too often.
Instance One:
Local Fort Campbell soldier calls about getting a survey. He doesn't like the price and proceeds to explain to me "all you have to do is..." Ends by telling me that he will just get the coordinates for his corner from the tax office (they will not provide this information anyway) and he will 'borrow' a GPS unit from his work (government equipment) to mark his corner.
I politely explain that as he and neighbor are arguing over about one foot of distance, his GPS unit will not be the ideal piece of equipment to use because of it's limitations on accuracy. He claims to have known that and just wants an idea of where his corner is (even after having explained in detail that his neighbor was a foot over the line).
Instance Two:
Get a call from a fellow asking about how to get the coordinates off of his friends plat into his hand held GPS unit to mark a line for him. After several questions from me, it turns out the coordinates are just bearings and distances on a local coordinate system. No coordinates at all.
That is just within the past year.
I don't give a damn about the work. What scares me is: 1) the potential damage to the unsuspecting landowners 2) how many times this may have already happened 3) someone, in complete ignorance, (probably a local gov't office) is providing "property corner" coords to the public. I just am thankful he called me and not the other guy.
And how often do unlicensed people drive pipes in the ground where they believe the corner to be, only to have a surveyor come along unaware of what happened and without enough evidence to disprove the pipe, so the surveyor accepts it?
> I don't give a damn about the work. What scares me is: 1) the potential damage to the unsuspecting landowners 2) how many times this may have already happened 3) someone, in complete ignorance, (probably a local gov't office) is providing "property corner" coords to the public. I just am thankful he called me and not the other guy.
People have always been setting corners where they think/want the boundaries.
:good:
Regardless of where it originated, if the landowners have accepted the monument as representing their common corner, who is the surveyor to disagree with them?
Around here, I don't accept 99% of the #4 rebars without caps. Overheard a conversation a while ago and the 2 were discussing the Public Works Director was telling his staff where to put these bars for the property owners in town. It had been going on for years. It doesn't happen now as I had a heated discussion with the PWD and City Manager. They both wanted to take me out in the alley for an off the record discussion. They did get a letter of concern from the BOR.
> Me(answering home phone @ 9:30 last night):
The first thing you should have told him is to call your office during business hours. Surveyors are not open all night long!
It's inviting future problems. What happens when a licensed surveyor comes along and finds out that the "accepted" corner causes the property line to go through a structure that the owner is sure was built on his property (before the pipe was set)? What happens when one adjoiner sells his property and the new owner has a survey done? Perhaps he finds conflicting evidence and the pipe has been relied upon for fences, buildings, etc., but the new owner just wants what he has title to. I just think setting property corners without a survey is asking for trouble.
Those "what if's" are things that I would look at before accepting the monument. There is no law anywhere that says that a surveyor is the only person that can set a monument. What makes a monument a monument? Acceptance and reliance of the adjoining landowners. Not a surveyor's plastic cap.
We are getting a little off topic here.
> Regardless of where it originated, if the landowners have accepted the monument as representing their common corner, who is the surveyor to disagree with them?
Well, the surveyor is supposed to be the expert. What happens when these two land owners both sell to some unsuspecting buyers?? should they be held to the idiocy of the previous owners?? Where does it end? With that logic, why even have surveyors to begin with? :-O :-S :-S :-S
> ...What happens when these two land owners both sell to some unsuspecting buyers?? should they be held to the idiocy of the previous owners?? Where does it end?
It will differ a little in each state but the root of much of our case law is the principle that the landowners have the power to establish their boundaries, with or without the benefit of a survey.
> >
>
> It will differ a little in each state but the root of much of our case law is the principle that the landowners have the power to establish their boundaries, with or without the benefit of a survey.
Landowners in my state are not allowed to change their boundaries without a plan stamped by an LS.
> There is no law anywhere that says that a surveyor is the only person that can set a monument. What makes a monument a monument? Acceptance and reliance of the adjoining landowners. Not a surveyor's plastic cap.
>
> We are getting a little off topic here.
Ummm, again, there is a law HERE...
It would be absolutely against the law. If you are talking about a meeting of the minds of all the affected parties, that is a different thing altogether, but for a landowner to go out and stake his corner, that is surveying, and you need a piece of paper from the state to do that, at least here.
> Good Grief!! Then I got to ruminating on this and am now wondering how many times this is happening that we don't know about???
SWEET!!!
This is called job security! (And it is a perfect way to punish people that hold any old rebar they find.)
But...reality is, this is the future. Real positions down to the foot are coming soon to a cell phone near you, and a requirement to publish your survey in state plane...and then who needs you?
"..What happens when these two land owners both sell to some unsuspecting buyers?? should they be held to the idiocy of the previous owners??"
Apparently, yes in some cases. David Lee brought this up a week or so back.
regulation of surveying
The law in each state is for the regulation of surveying. It requires a surveyor's license to be a third party that sets a monument to a corner.
There is no law that keeps adjoining landowners from agreeing on the location of their line and monumenting it, provided that the line is unknown to begin with.
The licensing of surveyors here in WV didn't begin until the late 60's. What are we supposed to do with all those monuments that were set before then? Ignore them and set a new one?
I had a client hire me to redivide a 60-ac parcel into 3 20-ac parcels. The overall had been surveyed 10-yrs prior by one of the more reputable PLS's in the area.
While running my boundary, I located all the called for pins. The rear pins fit the survey great, but some of the front pins were 10'-20' off. While discussing this with the owner/client, he stated "Oh, I moved some of those pins on the front, I didn't like where he (previous PLS) set them..."
Happens all the time... 😐
