If you remember section 16 of the Texas Civil Procedures and Remedies Code, it only takes 5 yrs on deeded land for the occupation line to become the legal boundary that cannot be challenged. The deed holder is the only party having authority to challenge before the time limit has run and I don't see where you qualify as a deed holder or where you have discretion to ignore Texas law.
'Monuments' in place, whether relied on or not, define liability if they are a problem, and they must be in place for our legal system to protect the citizen.
The surveyor has no authority regarding land ownership, we merely recover and report our findings, including designating the legal boundaries established by unchallenged occupation and control by the deed holders. When we discover a material difference between the location of the legal boundary and it's described location, we provide the means to correct the record so that the legal boundary is not questioned or moved.
Relevance or irrelevance of existing monumentation that may or may not apply is not a surveyor's call, we don't own the land.
Richard Schaut
OK, the world is obviously coming to an end
Richard and I actually agree on something and are using the same section of law to argue it.
Quick someone, I need a drink!!!!:beer: :beer: :beer:
> My bet is that Kent's bearings are oriented to NAD 83 while the record bearings are more than likely true north or some variation of previous deed calls for a parent tract.
Right, Alan. My survey is oriented to Grid North of the Texas Coordinate System of 1983 (Central Zone) since it is an independently reproducible bearing basis. Naturally, retracement of original surveys run on an assumed meridian is just a matter of reconstructing the relative directions of lines or of computing the grid bearing of the assumed meridian, quite elementary stuff.
> I do notice that none of your bearings match record.
Uh, why would they? The bearings of lines fixed by original monuments are whatever the bearing between the monuments is and the bearings of some earlier survey typically are understood not as the absolute directions of the lines, but their relative directions. I'm surprised that I have to explain that one.
> Did you collaborate with the previous surveyor prior to pulling up his pins, just maybe he had some research that you missed and caused him to make a different call at the time.
>
> Did the previous surveyor agree to having you pull up his pins?
>
> I think that if the previous surveyor believed in his survey and wanted to defend it then you could be held liable for removing his survey marks.
Yes, that's nutty enough. Read the initial post again and get back to us. I swear some of you guys and/or gals seem to have zero experience if you want to make an obvious one like this even a close call.
> If you remember section 16 of the Texas Civil Procedures and Remedies Code, it only takes 5 yrs on deeded land for the occupation line to become the legal boundary that cannot be challenged.
Bzzzz. Sorry, not even close. You aren't the weakest link in this thread though. I'll say that for you.
> Yes, this is what I think is most egregious about this behavior. The topo survey was only 9 yrs old when KM took up the boundary. I don't know how or why he wouldn't have even tried to contact the surveyor to discuss the survey! This is the arrogant part...one needs to afford a peer (so-called perhaps) the respect & decency of a discussion at the least.
Well, you're welcome to call your colleagues. In this case, it would have been a total waste of time since there was absolutely no question but that the 1990 survey had correctly identified only one of the eight or so corners of the parcels and that the original marks I found in place had been there in 1990 as well. If I were collecting a book of lame excuses for surveying fox-ups, I suppose it might have been fun to get some new material, but I'm not and I find it not worth the time unless the surveyor is someone whose work is ordinarily reliable.
> > Did you collaborate with the previous surveyor prior to pulling up his pins, just maybe he had some research that you missed and caused him to make a different call at the time.
> >
> > Did the previous surveyor agree to having you pull up his pins?
> >
> > I think that if the previous surveyor believed in his survey and wanted to defend it then you could be held liable for removing his survey marks.
>
> Yes, that's nutty enough. Read the initial post again and get back to us. I swear some of you guys and/or gals seem to have zero experience if you want to make an obvious one like this even a close call.
???
You knew enough that the 1963 surveyor had retired - what about the 1990 surveyor (presumably a P.S. or whatever they're called in texas)? Regardless of the contempt you clearly feel towards this particular surveyor, why do you avoid the professional obligation of contacting him/her for discussing the survey? I don't know who's ethically worse here, him/her for questionable retracement, or you for being too chickensht to try to make contact - or you (again) for pulling monuments again w/ no prior consultation / notification. Most peer review groups that I know of are made up of more than one person, I guess Texas is a free-for-all.
Naturally, retracement of original surveys run on an assumed meridian is just a matter of reconstructing the relative directions of lines or of computing the grid bearing of the assumed meridian, quite elementary stuff.
One would have thought so.
> > Yes, this is what I think is most egregious about this behavior. The topo survey was only 9 yrs old when KM took up the boundary. I don't know how or why he wouldn't have even tried to contact the surveyor to discuss the survey! This is the arrogant part...one needs to afford a peer (so-called perhaps) the respect & decency of a discussion at the least.
>
> Well, you're welcome to call your colleagues. In this case, it would have been a total waste of time since there was absolutely no question but that the 1990 survey had correctly identified only one of the eight or so corners of the parcels and that the original marks I found in place had been there in 1990 as well. If I were collecting a book of lame excuses for surveying fox-ups, I suppose it might have been fun to get some new material, but I'm not and I find it not worth the time unless the surveyor is someone whose work is ordinarily reliable.
I would and will! You seem to be in love with your ability to effectively research a boundary - why then short-change this process by failing to adequately ascertain the positioning of another surveyor's markers that were only 9 years old? You made your mind up without remotely considering what this other surveyor did. Epic fail. You did not perform due diligence in this boundary retracement, regardless of the wrongness of the previous surveyor's work. You are on the same level of the very surveyor who's monuments you yanked, and too in love with yourself to see that realization.
Around here
a retracement survey means that you assume a basis of bearings from the record and that shows your relative position to the original survey. I would think that would be kind of important to any retracement survey that you actually orient to the record bearings when you are showing a difference between record and actual.
> You seem to be in love with your ability to effectively research a boundary - why then short-change this process by failing to adequately ascertain the positioning of another surveyor's markers that were only 9 years old? You made your mind up without remotely considering what this other surveyor did.
And how can you possibly conclude that from the description of what I did? Sorry, no sale. The only thing that the other surveyor could have provided was a BS excuse for why his location of the boundary was completely out of whack. I had his map and it was perfectly clear from it what he'd done. He'd reconstructed the parcel using Rod 56 and Pipe 71, correctly identifying Rod 56 as a corner of the parcel and mistakenly thinking Pipe 71 was as well. Then, by COGO magic, the rest of the parcel corners were computed and set out, and without doing any checks to the corners of adjacent parcels laid out by the same original survey in 1963 that would have shown the disaster.
In fact, the 1990 surveyor evidently didn't even bother to wonder why his location for the corner he marked with Rod 50 meant that the street right of way on the opposite side of the street would be out in the street pavement.
No, I've heard as many BS excuses as I need to for now. There are plenty of surveyors who do a diligent job and whose work is usually reliable. I would call them, but hardly ever need to. The quickie-dickie end of the survey market, on the other hand, is hardly ever worth the trouble unless, as I mentioned, you just want to hear some elaborate BS excuse or the "I'll get back to you" that never does.
> You knew enough that the 1963 surveyor had retired - what about the 1990 surveyor (presumably a P.S. or whatever they're called in texas)?
Sorry, but this thread isn't about beating up the 1990 surveyor whose work created the mess. It's about how to fix it. The quickie-dickie surveys exist for a reason that is mostly economic. The question is how to fix the problems that are created in the most effective and efficient way. The solutions that involve lavish amounts of time and energy are inherently misguided in a similar fact situation.
Had my clients wanted to sue the 1990 surveyor, they probably would have been out of luck since the statute of limitations had run. They didn't care. They just wanted things to be corrected so they could build a house without discovering that it had been located over a boundary line.
I dunno Kent - seems a bit like performing a deposition without the benefit of the deponent being there. You're comfortable with what you did, & I'm certainly not arguing the validity of the 1990 'retracement' - live & let live :beer:
> I dunno Kent - seems a bit like performing a deposition without the benefit of the deponent being there.
Well, I had his map and I found his monuments. The story just wasn't that complicated, particularly when it was obvious that the original monuments I show on my map had most likely always been in place since 1963. They were there in 1972 and they were there in 2005. All I was going to hear from the 1990 surveyor was some lame excuse. That is just how it is in quickie-dickie world.
> So, would anyone care to tell me why, in this real world situation, it is important to preserve the markers placed in gross error by the 1990 surveyor?
As I ponder this maybe you could answer a couple questions?
Is Texas a recording state? If so, was the 1990 survey plat recorded?
Were ALL of the adjoining/affected landowners in agreement with your findings?
Around here
No, Kent is correct.
We often do Surveys in State Plane coordinates. Sometimes a note is placed on the map sort of like "Rotate bearings of Reference Deed 1 (or Reference Map 1) 01°15'45" clockwise." If I find a bunch of monuments from Reference 1 and show my bearings between them the next surveyor can do whatever he wants to do with my map, rotate it wherever.
The typical practice is to show the measured bearing and distance with record bearings in distances in parenthesis underneath.
Notice I said Around here in the Subject, David
Must just be a regional thing. Around here, SPC is only for Subdivision maps or state highway projects. Retracements are on the bearings of the subject property and if the subject property is made up of properties that come from multiple deeds one is held and the rest are rotated to said deed. Some go so far as to show record bearing, rotated bearing and actual bearing. That way you can compare apples to apples. To me it just seems funny that you have to add an angle to each bearing to compare to record. Plus, when you write a new description (in Florida if it is not in agreement with a record you generally write a new description based on your survey and that is a habit that I now use as it makes sense to me), it is really hard to follow the chain of title when suddenly it jumps 2°. My first thought looking at the portion of the map shown was that Kent may have been rotated to the purple survey which he then decided to scrap.
Notice I said Around here in the Subject, David
It also happens when you have several maps and deeds on different basis of bearings. You have to pick one or use something else such as state plane or geodetic north.
You will see maps here with a whole stack of bearings and distances on a line such as:
N 45°15'15" E 297.45'
(N 45°15' E 300')(R1)
(N 45°15'00" E 297.29')(R2)
and so on.
Sometimes the map will use different symbols instead of R1, etc such as (), (()), [], {}.
> > So, would anyone care to tell me why, in this real world situation, it is important to preserve the markers placed in gross error by the 1990 surveyor?
>
> As I ponder this maybe you could answer a couple questions?
>
> Is Texas a recording state? If so, was the 1990 survey plat recorded?
No, the 1990 survey plat wasn't recorded. The only way that anyone could know of it would be if either the 1990 surveyor were to give them a copy or the landowner were to.
> Were ALL of the adjoining/affected landowners in agreement with your findings?
I located various corners of the adjoining parcels to verify that my construction was consistent with the other parcels also laid out by the 1963 surveyor and monumented by him. It was. As for the question of agreement, it was simply a matter of referring to their deeds to see what their record title amounted to. The deeds incorporated the 1963 survey, either by a resubdivision plat that was made in about 1972 by the 1963 surveyor or by a metes and bounds description prepared by the 1963 surveyor. Adverse possession wasn't an issue.
The landowner on one side was the original owner and I pointed out to him where the true corner (No. 104) fell, rather than at No. 50. I explained to him that it looked to me as if discharge from a culvert under the road had probably washed the original marker out and he agreed that it probably had. Obviously, No. 104 was in his favor and he had no objection to removing the quickie-dickie rod at No.50.
