What the Georgia rules say
> Ah, but there is the rub. 10.00' is an approximation. It is any number between 9.995 and 10.005. And each of those numbers is an approximation of a more accurate number. Therefore any number is going to have some error. That is why the 0.1' would apply rather than the 1':10000.
Well, you're using a subjective process to change the clear meanings of words and phrases used in the rule. The rule said that the positional error between any two corners was not to exceed a maximum value. To get your meaning out of the rule, you pretty much have to ignore the proportional positional accuracy statements.
>Because the irons at 10 feet apart would, using the 10.00' approximation be technically over the limit that would be allowed.
Not really. I'd think that the obvious point is that the measurement limit is fixed by the physical objects commonly used to mark boundary corners. They have datum marks that have physical dimensions and may or may not be of a character susceptible to repeatable measurements. So as long as your work cannot be proven not to meet the test, it is acceptable.
> Really, it is common sense. You make sure your traverse is 1:10000.
Except that your Georgia rules don't specify traverse closures do they? (I didn't read them all.) In the section I quoted, they speak of positional accuracy which is something different.
> You shoot your irons from multiple setups. And you let your friend StarNET do a good least squares.
Well, as a practical matter, you definitely would need least squares survey adjustment software to evaluate the relative positional uncertainties, to verify that your work complies with Georgia standards. You wouldn't need to do locate monuments from multiple setups, however, to get that done.
> Not really as hard as you are trying to make it out. The Georgia board just realizes that arguing over 0.04' is foolishness.
Hey, I'm just reading what the rules actually say. As a general principle, laws and administrative rules mean what they say, not something else that is at odds with the actual language.
What the Georgia rules say
Rules are interpreted by way of how they have been enforced. The enforcement of said rules agrees with the interpretation that I have given. The enforcement does not agree with your fantasy land. Ergo, you are incorrect in your interpretation of the laws of a state that you do not practice in.
What the Georgia rules say
> Rules are interpreted by way of how they have been enforced. The enforcement of said rules agrees with the interpretation that I have given. The enforcement does not agree with your fantasy land. Ergo, you are incorrect in your interpretation of the laws of a state that you do not practice in.
Well, that idea flies in the face of the whole point of rules and laws, if they are to mean not what their language says, but whatever someone wants them to mean.
> >And showing a pin to be on line which may be, by my own expert perzacktly measurements, 0.07' off line ain't one of the things I worry about.
>
> Well, as a rule it is hard to see how encouraging surveyors to be less than honest in their reporting of findings is in the interest of the public.
First off, you can't cite anything I've said which encourages another surveyor to be "less than honest". That is really twisting the truth. I am only stating a portion of my philosophy of practice. I can truly understand a difference of philosophy, but to state that some 'philosophies' are more detrimental to the public interest than others, based on a personal opinion, steps into the realm of being judgemental. A realm that neither you or I qualify for.
For instance, using such logic, then one who moved another's pin 0.07' from where they found it to a point on a line they had determined to be on the "true" line, disregarding all the eccentric error that would invariably exist in their own measurements, and then only informed the one who set the offending pin, but not the affected land owners or the BOR, could not only be considered as encouraging less than honest 'reporting of findings', but maybe even fraud. Or, maybe, even criminal destruction of private property! :-O
Now, would you do something like that if you felt, in your best personal opinion, it was the right thing to do? 😉
UMM, Ed
Kent has been known to pull irons that he does not agree with. No doubt that he would "knock one over on line" with his mathemagically perfect line.
UMM, Ed
> Kent has been known to pull irons that he does not agree with. No doubt that he would "knock one over on line" with his mathemagically perfect line.
Oh, I know of Kent's exploits well from the old board. In a way I think we just like to mess with each other's heads. We're all basically 'good eggs' here. There's a LOT of different philosophies of surveying practice, though.
Take care,
Ed
UMM, Ed
I hear ya. Out of curiosity, what part of NW GA do you do work in. I have inlaws in Dade County.
I think any of us who have done some work back in the hills will take an iron that is off 0.07' any day of the week. Heck I have had deeds that I followed that called for White Oak that when I found them were so big around that it took two of us to tie flagging around the tree. That deed had Bearings to 1/4 degree and chain distances and the guy who did the work used a 60 foot chain! Only reason I knew that was that I had followed him before. And that was the good deed in the area. The other end was a stone set standing up with an X cut in the face. About 1' square. Heck of a lot of wiggle room in that line! But nobody questioned it, they were just thankful to have corners marked!
> >And showing a pin to be on line which may be, by my own expert perzacktly measurements, 0.07' off line ain't one of the things I worry about.
> First off, you can't cite anything I've said which encourages another surveyor to be "less than honest". That is really twisting the truth.
Well, the remarks quoted above pretty much do reveal that honesty becomes an optional accessory, don't they? I mean, as I understand their rules, the Georgia BOR specifies that 0.10 ft. is an absolute relative positional accuracy limit to be met in urban work, right? Well, to meet that standard, it means that you have to work to a much tighter tolerance in more than two-thirds of all pairs of monuments. This is a characteristic of how the random errors that affect survey positioning behave, not some eccentric obsession.
So, right off the bat, if you're pretending that a relative positional error of 0.07 ft. is insignificant and not worth mentioning, you're engaged in ignoring the facts in a way that works against the purpose of the actual rule, which would appear to be to get an accurate report of the actual conditions.
UMM, Ed
> Kent has been known to pull irons that he does not agree with.
Actually, Kent has been known to remove survey markers that have been set in ignorance of the existence of the original when it is plain that the erroneous marker serves no purpose and in fact only serves to conceal the existence of the original monument, the actual corner. Get those facts straight. :>
UMM, Ed
>There's a LOT of different philosophies of surveying practice, though.
Yes, but when the Georgia BOR adopts a formal written rule regarding some practice, is it really purely a matter of philosophy only?
UMM, Ed
Did someone else have a map out there calling for that monument? If so, you have added more confusion, not eliminated it. You call it out, but you do not remove it. You start yanking irons that you do not agree with, it is every bit as bad as knocking them over, heck it is worse. You have destroyed evidence.
I have personally never been able to generate exactly the same numbers for a given survey run at different times, whether the equipment, methods and procedures were the same or not. This, to my understanding, is why we are allowed certain relative positional accuracies, because there is nothing exact about anyones measurements. So my philosophy is to achieve at least the required relative positional accuracy in my traverse and then report the record dimension verses measured/calculated dimensions between accepted or set monuments for the survey that is reflected by the plat that I am drafting.
If you think that your client or their adjoiner gives a bull pizzle whether the record corner falls exactly in the dimple on that plastic cap or not you are mistaken. Not only that most of the public is not willing to spend the money that it would take to get things that exact anyway. None of this means that I do not strive to do the best possible work that I can; but, when I find a monument 0.13' away from where I feel that the record corner should fall I refuse to bump it to where I think it should be and I also refuse to set another corner (pincushion). Report what you find, and set what you feel you must, and then report the location of anything that you choose not to hold.
RRain
UMM, Ed
> Did someone else have a map out there calling for that monument? If so, you have added more confusion, not eliminated it. You call it out, but you do not remove it. You start yanking irons that you do not agree with, it is every bit as bad as knocking them over, heck it is worse. You have destroyed evidence.
Sorry, no sale. Where the boundary is defined by the original monuments and the presence of some careless surveyor's marker means that later surveyors will assume that the original was missing and needed to be replaced, all you're doing by tiptoeing around the erroneous marker is adding to the mess.
Sure, survey markers ought never to be casually removed, but there are plenty of cases where it is in fact the only professionally acceptable thing to do. The ones that get pulled aren't even close calls. The only thing they are evidence of is that some quickie-dickie surveyor's field party didn't have the shovel with them that day or didn't know how to use a metal detector.
Excuse me Kent;
I hope that you are not advocating removing another surveyors marker for any reason whatsoever. Big time NO NO. Don't hold it if that is your conclusion but never ever remove it.
RRain
Why I'm jumping into this thread, I don't know. We have many blocks around here that are 1/2 a mile N-S and 1/4 mile E-W. Most have at least a couple of hills in between block corners. If I traverse around one of those blocks with let's say 10 setups and I close within a tenth, I go home with a smile on my face. I do not get out the Starnet and I do not call monuments within that traverse off by 0.07'. If I've GPS'd those block corners and tied intermediate points within the block, I don't take my data as the ultimate answer and call BS on everybody else that's ever been there, either. That's what I call virtual pincushioning.
UMM, Ed
Arrogance = 
Excuse me Kent;
> I hope that you are not advocating removing another surveyors marker for any reason whatsoever. Big time NO NO. Don't hold it if that is your conclusion but never ever remove it.
Randy, you're in Florida, right? In Texas the situation is that there simply is no other practical way to deal with the following case:
A quickie-dickie surveyor sends a survey party out to survey a boundary. His employees (typically) fail to find the boundary monuments described in both of the adjoining owners deeds and stab a new monument. I've seen parcels where as many as five out of eight or so corners were marked with a new monument where the old original remained in place within a foot of the new marker.
The new monument is ferrous and, because it is at grade or slightly above, has a magnetic signature that hides the fact that the old original remains.
Okay, if you leave the mistaken attempt to mark the corner in place uncorrected, you've pretty well guaranteed the following:
a) Future surveys will tend not to find the originals remaining in place. As a result, the chaos will grown and extend to adjoining parcels as more new markers are stabbed by the same sorts of quickie-dickie efforts.
b) Parties may rely upon the erroneous new markers, thereby making even more of a mess of the boundaries that prior to Mr. or Ms. Quickie-Dickie Surveyor were marked upon the ground substantially as reported by the original surveyor,
c) Thousands or tens of thousands of dollars may end up being spent dealing with the fallout from the fact that boundaries that once were well surveyed and well marked could not be perpetuated.
So, because the surveyor has without really thinking things through declined to protect his client and the adjoining landowners, by leaving the mess in place unresolved as if it might somehow magically sort itself out without a surveyor's intervention, boundaries are now in doubt that should not be, unknown losses are suffered by ignorant reliance upon a new marker that was carelessly placed.
At that juncture, a surveyor really needs to consider why he holds a license in the first place and why land surveying is a licensed profession. It isn't to protect quickie-dickie surveyors, it's to protect the public.
And poor Stacy...
would still just like to get a clearer image of his plat posted up.
Hang in there, fella. You know how hard it is for surveyors to stay on point.
(Especially if Kent's hangin round the stove)
Just kiddin,:)
Take care,
Ed
> > I hope that you are not advocating removing another surveyors marker for any reason whatsoever. Big time NO NO. Don't hold it if that is your conclusion but never ever remove it.
>
> Randy, you're in Florida, right? In Texas the situation is that there simply is no other practical way to deal with the following case:
>
> A quickie-dickie surveyor sends a survey party out to survey a boundary. His employees (typically) fail to find the boundary monuments described in both of the adjoining owners deeds and stab a new monument. I've seen parcels where as many as five out of eight or so corners were marked with a new monument where the old original remained in place within a foot of the new marker.
>
> The new monument is ferrous and, because it is at grade or slightly above, has a magnetic signature that hides the fact that the old original remains.
>
> Okay, if you leave the mistaken attempt to mark the corner in place uncorrected, you've pretty well guaranteed the following:
>
> a) Future surveys will tend not to find the originals remaining in place. As a result, the chaos will grown and extend to adjoining parcels as more new markers are stabbed by the same sorts of quickie-dickie efforts.
>
> b) Parties may rely upon the erroneous new markers, thereby making even more of a mess of the boundaries that prior to Mr. or Ms. Quickie-Dickie Surveyor were marked upon the ground substantially as reported by the original surveyor,
>
> c) Thousands or tens of thousands of dollars may end up being spent dealing with the fallout from the fact that boundaries that once were well surveyed and well marked could not be perpetuated.
>
> So, because the surveyor has without really thinking things through declined to protect his client and the adjoining landowners, by leaving the mess in place unresolved as if it might somehow magically sort itself out without a surveyor's intervention, boundaries are now in doubt that should not be, unknown losses are suffered by ignorant reliance upon a new marker that was carelessly placed.
>
> At that juncture, a surveyor really needs to consider why he holds a license in the first place and why land surveying is a licensed profession. It isn't to protect quickie-dickie surveyors, it's to protect the public.
I'm curious as to what state board provision or statute you believe exists as to allow you to willfully destroy survey monuments you disagree with? I hazard a guess that there is none...
Kent;
Show me in your state rules and regulations where the Texas Board or Legislature have statutorily extended you or any other surveyor the right or responsibility to remove corners of other surveyors who are likewise licensed in the state of Texas. I am not denying that pincushion corners exist and are frustrating in the extreme; however, the fact of their existence does not give you the right to destroy private property, remember someone paid that surveyor to set that monument that you have determined is "not correct".
RRain
