I assume you put some flagging around the tree that was on the line.?ÿ If not, maybe that would have helped her understand.?ÿ My wife has trouble picturing things "spatially", but she's better at remembering how to get somewhere than I am (especially in some winding subdivision).?ÿ She'll say something like turn right where that white house with the blue trim is.
It's been a long day on another job, I was wet and tired when I got home and cranked up the fire and took a nap so I have just started reading the replies but yes I painted the "line" on the trees and flagged them as well.
Couldn't you have placed some wood stakes on the line in front of and in back of the tree(s) for her?
I did every 25 feet, 36" stakes flagged and painted orange. I really overdid it, or at least I thought I did.
On a side note I had originally posted this in the General Chit Chat forum and noticed that it had been moved to here. My apologies for not putting it here to begin with but my original thought was to put it in Humor but I settled on general Chit Chat since some folks take your Surveying discussions entirely too seriously for me.
Plus.....I'm kinda lighthearted on these matters anyway. I find amusement with things and while I might not say it that lady did amuse me but I had to keep a straight face.
Now I have to put some duct tape on the cats paws.
I had an old time rancher cuss and swear at me for 20 minutes. He was standing 10 feet off his line, fixing his gaze on one stake, then "swiveling" his neck about 40 degrees, thinking he was winging a perfect 180, when he needed to crank his neck about 190 to sight the other end, which of course, would appear to be wildly out of whack. I told him I would come back and fix it later.?ÿ
I posted something similar ----
Shortly after earning my license and partnering up with a friend, I was hired to do a lot line adjustment in a subdivision that was only a couple of years old.?ÿ That job provided the material for an inside joke that still lives to this day.
This subdivision was in a rural part of the county with no sewer service.?ÿ To meet the 1 acre minimum lot size for septic and maximize the number of lots, the original surveyors had found a way to meet the 1 acre requirement while completely violating the intent.?ÿ The common lot line between this pair of lots began at the back of the cul-de-sac and ran radially toward the rear line of the subdivision until it was about 15' off the rear line, then it turned to the right and ran about 300' before intersecting with the rear line.?ÿ This created a 15' x 300' triangle that technically gave the lot on the left 1 acre but could not be used as reserve drain-field area (the intent).
My client owned the lot to the right, and saw that buying the funky triangle from his neighbor would give him that little bit of extra needed space to build a detached garage between his house and the common lot line.?ÿ He had agreed on a price with the neighbor and obtained a variance to the zoning to allow the reduction of the neighboring lot to .95 of an acre.?ÿ All that remained was for me to survey the lines, set the new corner and record the map.
I met the client and adjoiner on site and got the same instructions from both of them.?ÿ My mission was to extend the radial line the additional 15' to the rear line of the subdivision and eliminate the funky triangle that should have never been there in the first place.?ÿ By early afternoon we had traversed around both lots, calculated the new corner, and were setting the new corner when the adjoiner came over and wanted to know why I was driving the new corner at that particular location.?ÿ I explained what we had done and how I had extended the radial line per their joint instructions and that this was the resulting corner.?ÿ He promptly informed me that I was an idiot, and that the radial line if extended properly would fall several feet closer to my client's house.
I remained calm and explained that due to the vegetation and terrain that it was impossible to sight from corner to corner. I told him that I would set several intermediate stakes so that he could start at the road and work along the line, sighting from stake to stake to assure himself that the point I set was in fact an extension of the radial line.?ÿ He agreed and I staked the line, and after he worked along the staked line he still insisted that I was wrong.?ÿ After several minutes of arm twisting, threats to kill the deal, etc., he came up with this gem, "Son, I've played a lot of golf and I can see a straight line, and that is not a straight line!".?ÿ I explained that I'd done everything in my power to prove to him that it was straight but that I couldn't make him see it or believe it.?ÿ I left him fuming and explained the situation to the client and pulled off the job (it was finished other than the plat).?ÿ A couple of weeks later I got a call from the adjoiner apologizing and asking me to move forward with the plat.
My employee knows this story so anytime someone questions the straightness, squareness, or general correctness of anything we've done, one of us will always comment once we're out of earshot, "He must play a lot of golf".?ÿ?ÿ ??ÿ ??ÿ
It can get frustrating for sure.
I work in a largely Orthodox community with an explosion in new housing construction and an influx of new investors.?ÿ Most of the builders are great and know what they are doing but the investors getting into the market with no experience in construction at all drive me crazy.?ÿ The new homes are largely huge and completely costume with jogs and angle points in the foundation so I typically stake a box of the major building lines with double 10' offsets and provide a sketch leaving it to the masons to pull the tape.?ÿ There is one particular contractor who I stopped working for because he would routinely dig the basement before requesting the stakeout and pile the soils around the hole where we need to work.
I find it extremely irritating to explain to some of them what they need to do for just accomplishing the basics but I bill them for my time in educating them on their functions.
She might have been implementing a cunning way justify not paying you for your accurate work.
