I've been hired to prepare an easement for a billboard. Typical rectangle easement in the corner of a parcel. Then they want access for maintenance easement as well. And lastly I have been asked to include the location of the shadow of the sign. Of course they don't want to pay someone to (nor would I want to) be there all day tracing the shadow as it moves along the ground. Not to mention, the property is in the Northern Hemisphere and this is short of a month from the summer solstice. I brought up these reasonable questions, and they said well we will just add a buffer around the sign for the shadow. I am not going to represent that I know where the shadow is, or is going to be, just by adding a buffer. I did a quick search on here to see if it had been discussed before and did not see anything come up so my question to fellow surveyors...
It seems like with the latitude and height of the sign, there should be a way to calculate how long of a shadow would be cast.?ÿ
Define "shadow". At?ÿ sunset and sunrise the shadow might be infinitely long, although not sharply defined.
Maybe one of these will help.
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ShadowCalculator - Show sun shadows on google maps
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=simulate+a+predicted+shadow
Simulate when sun and shadow hit your house - Reddit
Define "shadow". At?ÿ sunset and sunrise the shadow might be infinitely long, although not sharply defined.
That is kind of my point exactly. This site the billboard is running North - South (ie viewed while driving E-W), so the morning / evening shadow would be wide, and the noon shadow would be thin.?ÿ?ÿ
Maybe I should note that this is for an existing billboard. It is in the Northern US, about 46?øN. Also they are not asking for a separate easement for the shadow portion, just for it to be included. I think the answer is a hard no, but I want to be open to the idea that it could be defined.?ÿ
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Maybe one of these will help....
Thank you Lurker! I will check these out before our conf. call.
That is an interesting challenge.?ÿ For one thing you may end up dealing with several adjoiners depending on how the land has been split up over time.?ÿ Remember that the sign's shadow will include an area to the southwest and southeast of the sign at this time of year.
It depends on why the owner of the property would care about the shadow. It's different, depending on whether the owner wants to watch the sunrise vs. wants to generate solar electricity. If it's about solar electricity, it might be possible to calculate at what time of day the generation becomes negligible even in full sun, and calculate where the shadow is at that time. But that will depend on the technology of the solar cells, and whether the panel is fixed or tracks the sun.
Perhaps this has been resolved by now. I hope so.
Here are a couple of shadow exhibits submitted for a land-use application in Minneapolis a few years back. There were 6 or 8 of these, showing morning and afternoon shadows at several different times of the year. The architects generated these, probably with an AutoCad routine, though I never heard for sure.
The architects could have submitted hundreds of different shadow exhibits, no two exactly alike. But they didn't do that, and the City planners didn't require it. No one wanted to chase shadows to that extent.
If the billboard is located on farmland, the landowner might be concerned about the effect of its shadow on the crops. That would be easier to define.
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