Message: Good Morning! This is Dudley Quickclose. I'm a realtor and my client Sigfried Longholder is selling his 20 acres that is Lot 6 in Cowabunga Hill Estates. You did a survey of this property for him and we'd like to get a copy of the map. I can pick it up or you can send it to the title company and you'll get paid at closing!
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Amused Surveyor returns call: Dudley, I thought I recognized the name Longholder. That is a blast from the past. He did hire me twenty years ago to set some line stakes along the South line of Lot 6, but that was the extent of the service. The only map I've made showing Lot 6 is the subdivision plat from 1995 recorded in the County Clerk's office. I'm sure the County Clerk can sell you a copy of that if all you need is a map showing what the property looked like twenty years ago.
Amused Surveyor returns call: Drop a check for $4500 in the mail today and I'll see what I can do for you when I get around to it.
> Amused Surveyor returns call: Drop a check for $4500 in the mail today and I'll see what I can do for you when I get around to it.
Actually, this Amused Surveyor fully expects that Dudley Quickclose has some quickie-dickie surveyors on speed dial. The subdivision was well surveyed twenty years ago. Boundary markers are aluminum-capped iron rods with i.d. numbers that are shown on the plat and mostly set in drill holes in rocky ground. Bearings on the plat are accurate and refer to grid North. The Combined Scale Factor that relates the ground distances annotated on the plat to grid distances is stated on the plat. It just shouldn't be a challenge. I'm happy to let someone else handle it.
How did Dudley know to call you? Just wonderin'...
edit: I guess you prepared the original plat
20 years ago and you referencing combined scale factors? Impressive
> How did Dudley know to call you? Just wonderin'...
Sigfried Longholder told him that he recently "had the place surveyed" by Amused Surveyor.
Does Mr. Quickclose work for the realators, Hookem, Fleecem and Screwem?
> 20 years ago and you referencing combined scale factors? Impressive
Sure, the Texas Coordinate System wasn't invented yesterday. The bearings in the subdivision were based upon grid North as computed from solar observations for astro azimuth, converted to near-geodetic and from there to grid. When I returned a couple of years later with then-new GPS, it was pleasant to confirm that the whole layout was basically free of any systematic azimuth difference.
> > How did Dudley know to call you? Just wonderin'...
> Sigfried Longholder told him that he recently "had the place surveyed" by Amused Surveyor.
Yes, McMillan having set line stakes for fencing along the South boundary of the lot 20 years ago meant in Longholder's mind that he as seller could undertake to pay for the survey that the pending transaction would require and it wouldn't cost him very much since he had already had a survey made!
was that in austin?
does the company's name that did that start with "S"?
that's kinda impressive..
> was that in austin?
> does the company's name that did that start with "S"?
> that's kinda impressive..
No, that subdivision was my work. I practice under my own name.
> Yes, McMillan having set line stakes for fencing along the South boundary of the lot 20 years ago meant in Longholder's mind that he as seller could undertake to pay for the survey that the pending transaction would require and it wouldn't cost him very much since he had already had a survey made!
A few years back I was searching for monuments in a neighborhood of NW Portland. This is a recording state and I had an assortment of survey records in hand, literally. In accordance with state law, each of those records included the name of the person who commissioned the survey. One person came out of her house, indignant because she "just had the place surveyed". I had a record of survey in hand of her lot with her name on it, dated 1968.
> One person came out of her house, indignant because she "just had the place surveyed". I had a record of survey in hand of her lot with her name on it, dated 1968.
Yes, if the property has been surveyed once, why in the world would it ever need to be surveyed again? This surveying is some sort of a RACKET!
> > Amused Surveyor returns call: Drop a check for $4500 in the mail today and I'll see what I can do for you when I get around to it.
>
> Actually, this Amused Surveyor fully expects that Dudley Quickclose has some quickie-dickie surveyors on speed dial. The subdivision was well surveyed twenty years ago. Boundary markers are aluminum-capped iron rods with i.d. numbers that are shown on the plat and mostly set in drill holes in rocky ground. Bearings on the plat are accurate and refer to grid North. The Combined Scale Factor that relates the ground distances annotated on the plat to grid distances is stated on the plat. It just shouldn't be a challenge. I'm happy to let someone else handle it.
With all that, they should be able to jump out of their truck with their Network RTK and get it done in an hour or so!
Didn't "S" work for Espy Houston back then?
With all that, they should be able to jump out of their truck with their Network RTK and get it done in an hour or so!
I bet you can see those aluminum caps from Google Earth
> With all that, they should be able to jump out of their truck with their Network RTK and get it done in an hour or so!
>
> I bet you can see those aluminum caps from Google Earth
Actually, I got a call from my 1995 client Longholder to find out whether I was available. He said that he and Mr. Buyer had already walked the boundaries and he'd showed him the aluminum caps with my name on them and the i.d. nos. that match those noted on the plat. That is exactly the way it is supposed to go when you set permanent, identifiable markers that a layperson of normal intelligence can connect with the plat.
> With all that, they should be able to jump out of their truck with their Network RTK and get it done in an hour or so!
I'm sure one of our local branches of quickie-dickie mortgage survey mills, inc. will turn it all into a dog's breakfast, but they will have to work at it. I foresee a good bit of spray paint on some aluminum caps (that are above grade to begin with) just beyond the horizon with perhaps some decimeter-level busts thrown in for laughs.
> > With all that, they should be able to jump out of their truck with their Network RTK and get it done in an hour or so!
> >
> > I bet you can see those aluminum caps from Google Earth
>
> Actually, I got a call from my 1995 client Longholder to find out whether I was available. He said that he and Mr. Buyer had already walked the boundaries and he'd showed him the aluminum caps with my name on them and the i.d. nos. that match those noted on the plat. That is exactly the way it is supposed to go when you set permanent, identifiable markers that a layperson of normal intelligence can connect with the plat.
That is absolutely correct. Nice to know it works sometimes.
Who in Austin does mortgage surveys?