Was recently approached by a former client about surveying a 500 acre tract of land he owns about a three hour drive from my office. He wants to do some timbering and post his lines. I told him the job was too big and too far for me to tackle and to look for a surveyor in his area. He got a quote from a local surveyor that he felt was too high. The quote included marking line every 100 feet and recording the survey. I thought the quote was very reasonable for the amount of work involved.
Still not satisfied the guy contacted a survey equipment dealer and inquired about renting GPS equipment to locate his corners as he thinks he knows where all of his corners are located. The dealer said they would gladly rent him the equipment. Then he ask if I would draw him a map with the coordinates from the GPS observations. To which I responded H#LL NO!
I guess a dealer is free to rent anything to anybody, but the whole thing does not sit well with me. I can see this happening more and more with all of the GIS and Google Earth information available to the public. Some area planning departments are requiring subdivision plans to be referenced to state plane and a DWG being submitted. What will keep someone from renting equipment and getting centimeter accuracy to locate corners set my a surveyor? Where are we going!
Lookinatchya, post: 349962, member: 7988 wrote: ... What will keep someone from renting equipment and getting centimeter accuracy to locate corners set by a surveyor? Where are we going!
It is a free country. The toys available to any one individual are limited only by their pocketbook.
Hopefully you're not implying the only thing that separates surveyors from the rest of the herd is our equipment.
Lookinatchya, post: 349962, member: 7988 wrote: What will keep someone from renting equipment and getting centimeter accuracy to locate corners set my a surveyor? Where are we going!
Turn them into your State Board for practicing Land Surveying without a license.
Hopefully you're not implying the only thing that separates surveyors from the rest of the herd is our equipment.[/quote wrote:
Not at all Paden. Only concerned with the DIY crowd. Seems like more and more I am trying to educate a layman about surveying and liability and applying boundary law to our work. Not sure where the public is getting the idea that everything is referenced to Google Earth and is on record at the courthouse. Or that the GIS map at the courthouse is gospel.
StLSurveyor, post: 349965, member: 7070 wrote: Turn them into your State Board for practicing Land Surveying without a license.
In NC a landowner can still survey their own property.
There's nothing to prevent a dealer from renting equipment to any Joe off the street; however, at least when I was in sales, I always managed to convince said Joe that trying to do it himself was a bad idea. Especially with an RTK system, it wasn't hard to convince them that the cost and level of complexity were much more than they were expecting. Personally, my position was that the responsible thing to do was to tell people that they needed to hire a surveyor. And anyhow, the surveyors were my clients and potential clients that mattered, not the random Joe that thought that because he was a doctor or engineer he could handle surveying his own land.
Just because there is RTK these days doesn't mean the practice of laymen renting survey equipment is new. We've seen the results of property owners from years back renting a "transom" and running their own lines for fences. In fact, we have a job now that the owner "surveyed". It's rural property that is 300 feet wide and 1500 feet in length. It was partition land and the properties on each side of him are similarly shaped. When he went to the back of the wooded property, he somehow managed to diagonal across the neighbor's vacant land. He connected his own SWC to his own NEC and connected his own SEC to his neighbor's NEC. Substantial improvements are across the actual line. He actually did a good job mechanically making a straight line between objects, he was just at the wrong objects. This isn't the first time we've seen things like this, although it isn't too common.
My point is that there is, as the Good Book says, 'nothing new under the sun'. Sounds like your property owner is just itching to make trouble for himself. Very hard to prevent a highly motivated fool from injuring himself.
ekillo, post: 349968, member: 773 wrote: In NC a landowner can still survey their own property.
Does that authorize him to survey the adjoiner's property on the other side of the line?
Maybe this guy could go in halves, on the rental of the 'quipment, to survey their mutual line! (Partners in crime) To save money!
Just kidding!
From the other side of this fence, here is my 2 cents:
There is a minimum 3-day training period for getting someone who has NEVER used RTK from zero to topo speed. There are a lot of things to go wrong (radios, batteries, won't work under heavy canopy, what is a topo shoe, adjust the bubble, basis-of-bearings) and then there is the problem of tricky unknown words: Fix, Float, SDGPS, Inverse, Base Initialization, Offset, (the list goes on and on.)
A robot is even more complicated and difficult.
Finally, we require insurance. If you rent a device and you loose it, destroy it, break it -- we don't want to eat it.
And once the field work is completed by the DIY guy, am I responsible for downloading the data? An I supposed to make contours for them?
I can tell you from experience that rentals to DIY's are a total pain in the a__. The customer is never happy, they always screw up the mechanics of the operation and they always screw something up from survey standpoint as they have no idea what they are looking for, what they see, what they find, what they might set.
We don't publish a rental rate. If a DIY walks through the door we quote them a daily rate that is 10 times the equivalent daily based on a monthly rental. We threaten to bill our training and post time at $200 per hour. We refuse to make any derivative product: no matter what. We make comments like "I am going to give you the best advice that anyone will ever give you: Hire a Professional Licensed Surveyor". Then I make suggestions for who to hire (since I know everybody.)
And still it happens.
A few years ago a mapping product customer called and talked to me. They owned three sections in Wyoming that adjoined the USFS near Yellowstone. They were building a $2.5 million dollar home. The home appeared to be 25 feet from the FS boundary. There was no fence, no evidence of survey since the corners and quarters had been set. Even after explaining that it would literally take an act of congress to adjust the line if the home was built in the wrong place they soldiered on.
I have obfuscated this story sufficiently to admit that I personally called the FS office and talked to the area manager and ratted out the customer. It was for their own good.
The correct answer is NEVER RENT to DIY.
M
Ken Salzmann, post: 349972, member: 398 wrote: Does that authorize him to survey the adjoiner's property on the other side of the line?
I've puzzled over this for years - Arizona also allows landownersl to survey their own property. It would be interesting to know if a case involving this has ever been litigated...
Jim in AZ, post: 349977, member: 249 wrote: I've puzzled over this for years - Arizona also allows landownersl to survey their own property. It would be interesting to know if a case involving this has ever been litigated...
I would assume as in most States that a landowner can "survey" their own property, i.e. topographic, locate improvements, etc. However, when it comes to property lines can cannot establish or define their own lines, but I think they could survey between a line. So if they paid me to set/reset/mark the corners and I did, they can run a line between them perhaps for a fence. Again though this is not a smart idea unless you can see between them and we have walked the bounds together.
How
StLSurveyor, post: 349981, member: 7070 wrote: I would assume as in most States that a landowner can "survey" their own property, i.e. topographic, locate improvements, etc. However, when it comes to property lines can cannot establish or define their own lines, but I think they could survey between a line. So if they paid me to set/reset/mark the corners and I did, they can run a line between them perhaps for a fence. Again though this is not a smart idea unless you can see between them and we have walked the bounds together.
How can you do a boundary survey of your own lines without surveying your adjoiners' line?
StLSurveyor, post: 349965, member: 7070 wrote: Turn them into your State Board for practicing Land Surveying without a license.
Why? It's perfectly legal to survey your own property.
StLSurveyor, post: 349965, member: 7070 wrote: Turn them into your State Board for practicing Land Surveying without a license.
The board would say they don't have standing to do anything to a private person surveying for himself, if he offers services for money,,,,,,,then
