OK, here's another one for discussion based on a hypothetical, but likely, scenario.
The client contacts you to split an existing 40.000 acre tract into two equal area tracts as he has a willing buyer for one and plans to keep the other. He provides you with a survey made by a very reputable company about 10 years earlier creating the 40.000 acre tract.
You go forth and do what you always do on a metes and bounds type tract like this with eight sides to it. First, you find all eight monuments in place and undisturbed. You do your thing using whatever equipment you use every day. You download the results, generate a plat, label everything and prepare the two new descriptions. You deliver the product to the client.
Fast forward until after the client receives your product and suddenly...........
Ring Ring:
You: Friendly Surveyors, Inc., how may I help you?
Client: This is Client. You totally screwed up my plans. Fix it! Fix it, NOW!!!
You: Whoa! Settle down! Let's figure out what the problem is and go from there. What is the problem as you see it?
Client: You goofed. You ignored my deed and wrote up some pile of $#@@ with new distances and bearings that result in me only owning 39.999 acres instead of 40.000 and the planning authority here will not allow me to divide my property at all because no tract can be smaller than 20.000 acres. What are you going to do to fix this?
You: Give me a little time to take another look at what I did and then I will call you back. I'm not sure what went wrong, but, I will investigate.
Client: OK, but hurry.
So, you review what you did and what the first surveyor did. You find that when you put in the first surveyor's data you find a traverse that closes very, very well so that's not a problem. Second, his area calculates to 40.0004 acres. You compare your work to his and discover that you are virtually in agreement on every line. Some differ by 0.01 or 0.02 feet and a few seconds difference in bearing, but, that's all. However, those little bitty differences cause you to end up with a calculated total area of 39.9994 acres. Every monument you found was a 1/2" or larger monument so your measurements and the first surveyor's measurements would both fall on the top face of the monument. In fact, adjusting just two of your locations by 0.02 feet would get you up to 40.0002 acres.
There you are. How do you handle this tough situation?
> There you are. How do you handle this tough situation?
If I quote areas in a proposal or contract I do so to the nearest tenth +/-.
Tough situation averted.
The increasing level of hairsplitting expected from us (and, I guess, provided by us) is rather vexing at times.
Compounded by circumstances such as variations in cogo across CAD platforms. Had to explain this very scenario too many times to count.
Perfect example, for me, was working as an SIT about 12 years ago on a rather large r.o.w. acquisition/design/build for the state. State DOT dictated that parcels close to 8 places past the decimal, which is hard enough. Couple that with the directive that analysis and calcs be done in geopak with a corresponding mapcheck done in LDD, and you can guess the results. I beat my head against the wall for about two months trying to explain the inherent issues, then finally gave up and found a new gig.
How about "distance a to b 1,247.36, 1,247.35 a.m., Area 40.000,(39.999 a.m.)"
or how about area 40.000, (40.00 a.m.)
I don't know.
Here's what JB Stahl said on another thread some time ago....
"Questions regarding the land area are questions which need to be asked when the boundary is created. The parent parcel is divided with the intent of meeting those requirements. A lot intended to be 10,000 square feet, shown to be 10,000 square feet and approved to be 10,000 square feet. A parcel created to meet the 5 acre agricultural exemption is 5 acres by intent to comply with the law.
With all that intent in mind, show me one surveyor who can set lot corners to the perfection we seem to expect from one another but ourselves can never achieve. Then show me one landowner who can maintain that perfection throughout the history of their occupation. We are expecting an impossibility that the law does not require.
When making an original survey, those questions are valid. During a retracement survey, your measurement of the property will not change the property status from compliant to non-compliant."
That makes sense to me.
Haven't been in private practice for a few years and Ohio standards have been changed. However, the "facts" you present would be reviewed against the state/local standards and the local planning and zoning requirements before the survey was completed. If the field survey reproduced the original survey within the current standards these standards allow me to report the original distances. Some of the local standards require bearings to be on the correct zone of the Ohio Plane Co-ordinate Grid system. Then the only remaining problem is rotation of the deed bearings as required.
Report the rotated original and divide that as required. Don't get so deep into "measurement perfection" that you ignore the latitude allowed you by the standards of practice.
scale that drawing to fit...
Who shows acreage to 4 decimal places? I never could figure that one out. Sometimes a foot wedge works too, but we're not allowed to say that (unless we're golfing)
39.9994 = 40.00+/- Problem solved. But you may have to sweet talk the anally retentive planners boss as you go over his head before he removes it from twixt his buttocks. Yes, I have run into this hypothetical situation before and it isn't any fun.
This kind of goes in line with non-surveyors scrutinizing our surveys. Easier just to play their silly game and enlighten them on the next go around, before you submit it.
Once again, I wouldn't have put out a plat with 39.999 acres in the first damn place. It would have been 40.00 and a split is 20.00.
Acreage to three decimals for anything over an acre is silly in my opinion. We have a few surveyors around here that do hundreds of acres to three decimal places. I NORMALLY match them at two but VERY SELDOM at three.
Life isn't this hard so why make it?
> Who shows acreage to 4 decimal places? I never could figure that one out. Sometimes a foot wedge works too, but we're not allowed to say that (unless we're golfing)
>
> 39.9994 = 40.00+/- Problem solved. But you may have to sweet talk the anally retentive planners boss as you go over his head before he removes it from twixt his buttocks. Yes, I have run into this hypothetical situation before and it isn't any fun.
>
> This kind of goes in line with non-surveyors scrutinizing our surveys. Easier just to play their silly game and enlighten them on the next go around, before you submit it.
Yep Wayne, 40.00 ± acres or more or less in the land description. 3 or 4 places behind the decimal point, jeez. One is probably what should be used (± or more or less).
OK, everyone
My thought on this particular issue goes back to the core act of stupidity. That being the insane desire to rewrite what is a perfectly good property description simply because you think your measurements are better than those of the first guy. Your measurements have confirmed that none of the monuments have strayed away from where they were placed. Why on God's green earth is there any possible need to do a description rewrite and thoroughly confuse the adjoiners and anyone doing anything related to boundary issues on their behalf. You have just created a teeny, tiny overlap or gap where one does not exist in reality.
OK, everyone
I knew it was a trick question. Silly Mr Cow.....:-)
kick one of the pins and bump it up to 40 acres. but in reality, the surveyor should have been aware of the potential problem before producing the plat (i.e. 20 acre min. lot size)
I was told one time by an extremely anal retentive checker that lot splits in his city had to close within 1:100,000, and that with today's modern equipment that was easily possible (and that was 40 years ago!).
There was one company in the city that got all of the work because they could afford all that new-fangled equipment, and guess who supplied the checkers for that city?
Well, he was right: with my modern-day electric eraser and new-fangled Leroy pens I changed one distance by 0.01 feet and everything closed just fine.
[sarcasm]If you are using an LDP just tweak the scale factor a bit and you'll be good to go! You also might re punch the caps. [/sarcasm]
OK, everyone
:good: :good:
This actually happened (in a sense) to me.
I have a 3 acre lot up near Pineview Reservoir outside of Ogden Utah. A decade ago the county did a rezone and made all lots smaller than 3 acres too small to develop.
I got a note explaining this from the tax assessor. I knew exactly what had happened, and got it fixed with one letter:
The lot was 3.012 acres in size if you computed from the metes and bounds description.
However if you GIS'ed the vectors and projected them to State Plane Coordinates at grid, then then computed the area at grid, the area was like 2.98 acres (~5,600 feet elevation.)
I sent a short note to the county surveyor that read:
"I have computed the area in AutoCAD, Carlson Survey, DeedPlotter+ and I get 3.01 acres in every product. Here are my calculations and the printouts. What is up?"
A couple days later everything was fixed up. I got a nice letter from the surveyor letting me know he agreed with me and did not know how the mistake was made. (I had not mentioned that I knew.)
I like to say "There is no geodesy in GIS land." I believe this to be true statement.
I don't meet too many "GIS Professionals" who know the difference between grid and ground. Most have no idea what a scale factor is. Most don't even know what a GEOID is. Few know the difference between international feet and US survey feet. They never attribute epoch dates on their GPS data. And virtually none know how to compute a NAD83 coordinate from an IGS08 GPS measurement.
In short, they can't measure the distance between two points on the ground, let alone calculate a ground area. But they run the assessor's office and have no problem taking 0.02 acres from an innocent land owner (that would be me) through their ignorance.
Someone should write an article on this.
M
I agree with the comments regarding precision. Easily averted by using significant digits.
I have NO idea what you mean about creating gaps and overlaps. If your description passes through the same monuments as the previous description and the adjoining descriptions, there are no gaps nor overlaps. If you are suggesting that because your bearings and distances differ slightly that you are creating gaps and overlaps, it sounds like you are one of those that believe boundaries are defined by measurements. I know that can't be, but your argument sure points that direction.
Lastly, it's important for clients to understand they don't "own 40.0000 acres". They own the land that is within the bounds of what would be adjudicated in a court of law. This may be exactly 40.0000 acres as called for in their deed, or it may be more or less. This is because the acreage is simply not of highest dignity in most cases (excepting situations in which the owner has sold you 40.0000 acres from his more than 40.0000 acre tract and that 40.0000 acre tract sold to you has not yet been surveyed and acquiesced to). So, if I determine that the called 40.0000 acre tract is 39.95 acres, rounding won't cut it, and sorry to tell you, this is what I've found the tract to contain. At this point, your client doesn't have a survey problem (as he and you are presenting it to be) he has a legal issue with the governing powers that be. As a surveyor, neither you nor I established the law that a new tract must exceed 20 acres, take it up with the mayor.
What I was referring to as mini-gaps and overlaps is because no one but a surveyor can comprehend what you just said. If you have two tract descriptions side by side that were written at the same time and then someone rewrites one of the descriptions, you have introduced confusion relative to the adjoining tract(s).
If one reads with a bearing going 5 seconds to the west of north and the other reads 14 seconds to the east of north for what is supposed to be the exact same line, the appearance of mini-gaps and overlaps occurs.
I would encourage surveyors to think about the impact on others instead of merely doing what is "standard" or "convenient" or whatever term is applied to this foolish desire to write new descriptions when none are needed.
To further explain. This entire region is built on descriptions that are all dimensions. Maybe one description in a hundred actually mentions monuments. That is how it is. Right or wrong, that is representative of virtually every deed that is not an aliquot or lot/block type description. Therefore, the common user is basing their thinking entirely on dimensions, not monuments. Writing a description that includes mention of monuments will not simultaneously fix all of the abutting properties' descriptions.
This is precisely the reason .....
This is precisely the reason why subdivided lots should always be created with an extra percent or two above the Minimum Acreage and minimum Frontage Requirements as specified in the Subdivision Regs.
For example, usually create 2.05 acre lots with 201' of road frontage.
Sounds like it might be a better exercise of your energies to encourage better description writing. Might not be the "convenient" approach and might buck the local "standard", but it sounds like the surveyors in your area could greatly improve the quality of their product by actually describing their surveys and not just writing a polygonal shape in words.
