What would you do? Put in an angle point?

Congratulations, You Have Enough To Begin Your Survey

All three of those found irons have a mate on an adjoiner some distance away. Until you reconcile those adajacent lines you can make no statement as to what you found.

If your deed calls for the adjacent parcels and they call for you no gap or overlap exists or is created.

Paul in PA

It would seem some jr/sr issues should be checked into. It also seems you found the angle iron for the adjoiner. Your line measuring long is no big deal, but it would seem that somebody was there first.

Also, where on your line is the angle point? If somewhere in the middle, I'd tend to just kink it and move on. If it's real close to one of your "accepted" corners, I may tend to want to treat it as you presented, and just show it 1.22' North of your line. You're surveying your clients property, not the universe. I just finished up one like that and did exactly that, but that was 6 ft, not 1 ft.

If that angle iron is senior and close to one of your corners, you may want to reverse that concept and call the rod you found "used as E (or W) property line only" and set your own on the true line. I don't like that plan much, but it may apply.

As usual, it depends. Good luck

Wayne

I read one time that golf course design is 10% skill and 90% drainage; and if your not that skilled of a designer, just add more drainage.

Boundary retracement is the same way, 10% measurement and 90% research; and whenever there is a question about how the measurement evidence "fits together", just add more research.

More Field Work Is Required

At least 3 more adjoiner companion points and most likely more are required.

After all any surveyor would already have adjoining deeds, maps and descriptions.

Paul in PA

I agree that more research may be needed, but you've got 2 situations given the facts as you present them.

- The "pin finders" that post here would say the pin is it. Of course that doesn't solve the problem of the potential gap.

- But you gave the answer when you said the neighbor's deed says "in the line" of your tract. That trumps the location of a hunk of metal you found close to where you expected it. There is a very good possibility the surveyor of the tract to the North did not survey the full length of your line and had just run a bearing or turned an angle from a corner - so it's location may not be precise.

Pins found are not always in the right location. But more research needs to be done to figure out what should have been. Especially as pointed out from the stand point of junior / senior rights.

More Field Work Is Required

Trust me, I have been researching and working on this project for quite a while between construction layout projects.

The area was logged many years ago, and what little pieces of fence are still left are all over the place. The owner brought out an old survey yesterday and asked if this would help. I said heck yea!

We are back out there today doing more field research and location.

Yeah, Let’s talk surveying. I don’t work in TN, but I like to think that my boundary survey would be the same for a client that is fencing, building a building or doing a subdivision. Someone already mentioned the possibility of how the angle iron may have been set. Those surveyors who set corners like that continue to cost the rest of the public a lot of money as the adjoining property is surveyed later by a surveyor who does not cut those corners. So we now have three owners who will gain or lose by what this surveyor does. The two owners to the North lose land by holding the angle iron. Since Jimmy didn’t mention it, the other deed to the North must not call for anything at that corner. Or maybe it also calls out the angle iron. If both those owners on the North side of the line accept the angle iron as their corner, maybe it should be their corner. It certainly seems that Junior/Senior would hold the most weight with the data we have been given.

I usually like to get theoretical about solutions and come up with as many of them as I can and then talk to the landowners before making my final decision. During our discussion I may or may not disclose some of the theoretical solutions to the land owners. The idea is not to complicate the location for them, but to inform me so that I can make a better determination which will hold more weight for my survey and the future of this particular corner. I hate solutions that won’t stand the test of time! We have seen enough of those. Kudos to Jimmy for not taking the cheap way out since it is just for fence building!

The "Pin Finders"

Dave,

You have no idea what the "pin finders" who post here may think because you've never taken the time or expended the mental energy to try to understand any of our statements or opinions on such issues.

you have two abutters to the north, I assume. What does the other abutters deed say about that common corner? And, are abutters called for in the deeds? With calls to abutters you don't have a gap....

Is it logical to believe that the intent was to create a gap resulting in a land locked tract? Is a call to a common line, calling for a senior monument?
jud

What would you do? Put in an angle point?Dave I.

Dave, I thought the abutter to the north called for that angle iron as their corner.

I'm not seeing this as a "pin finder" vs. "button pusher" issue.

I would be tempted to put an angle break in the line, depending on what both the northerly deeds say. I know that when 2 abutters are called for on a single line, there is the chance of an angle break on the ground.

Some important info is missing here

At this angle iron position, what did you find there, the angle iron as called by the adjoining deed, or the IP as called by the old survey you have?

Which of those records is older? Does the IP or the angle iron appear in record first? Is it possible that there are two monuments in relatively close proximity and that you missed one of them, having found one and not expecting to find two, so not looking further when you were at that location?

When were the surveys by which these monuments were set performed? How far are any of these points from the next closest monuments of the same survey? Is the positional error your finding (about 1.2') within the positional error you might expect to find between points of surveys of that era and under the conditions existent when the surveys were performed?

What is the terrain like? Is this open fields on rolling hills or thick brush & timber on a steep mountainside? If the surveys are old enough to have been performed with transit and tape and the terrain and other site conditions at the time the survey was performed would have presented some difficulty, I wouldn't be too bothered by a positional error of 1.2' at all. I've seen far worse than that in the mountains and brushy areas.

I'd be a bit more concerned about the pedigree of the monuments you've found. Do you have any way of tracing the 1/2" and 3/8" rebar you found at the endpoints back to the record monuments? Do you have or can you get maps or field notes of the surveys by which they were set? Do you know what the original monument was at the angle iron/iron pin location? Do you have or can you get records that trace whatever is there now to the original monument?

I would far prefer to have records that provide a history of the establishment of the current monuments that traces their position definitively to the original monuments at these locations, but if such records have been diligently searched for and are not available, I would still be hesitant to reject any of the monuments without finding a reason to do so.

If, in addition to locating the monuments you have found, you also performed a careful search at each location for the original monuments, I would lean toward accepting all three and showing an angle point. That makes far more sense than creating a gap that was clearly not intended by any of the landowners or their predecessors in title.

Creating gaps based only upon ones current measurements is very poor practice, creating potentially costly conflict between neighbors which should not occur. Furthermore, it is an admission by the surveyor that he did not conduct adequate investigation, was unable to exercise adequate judgment with the evidence available, or perhaps both.

If the record shows no gap, then there is no gap. If you can't definitively find the one line between adjoiners with the given evidence after thoroughly investigating the causes or potential reasons for an apparent gap (or is it just an angle point that is less than the precision of the original survey was capable of measuring?), then it's up to your judgment as to where that line exists given the evidence at hand. Sometimes the level of uncertainty is such that you may need to facilitate a boundary line agreement, or perhaps reform a deed, but I don't see this one rising to that level. I see this one as more likely a matter of you having found points that are either within the expected positional errors or surveys of a prior era, or perhaps near the edge of the normal expected errors.

If that's the case, the two best solutions that I see is to either show an angle point, or to treat the angle iron/iron pipe that is called at the corner of the neighbor's property like a closing corner, being on the neighbor's line but with that line being extended 1.2' to meet your client's line. either of those decisions honors the clearly expressed intent that the adjoiners land actually adjoin your client's land.

Something else that must be considered is the descriptions of other adjoiners along this line. If the one adjoiner calls to your client's line and also calls the angle iron, does the next adjoiner up the line also call to your client's line and also call to the angle iron? Does it call to a monument of a different character?

What would you do? Put in an angle point?Dave I.

That's where additional research to determine junior / senior comes into play. Given the information as presented I would not be looking for an angle. However, if the North parcels were created first and the South parcel is essentially a residue, then yes there could be an angle. But note that the deed from the North says to a point in the line of the parcel to the South.

The monument that falls between the two original monuments should have fallen along the straight line.

It's position being off a foot or so is common when the original or record information is used and not checked on the ground. If field checking was done, someone made other mistakes for a monument to be off a foot or so.

Depending upon when, where, why, how and some other facts found in the record information will decide what to do next as far as Texas Law.

Basically, when the original boundary can be proven to have been a straight line, the junior claims should hold to that line.

Even though your objective is for your client to build a fence, it is usually customary to stake the boundary and the client to build his fence where he wants.

Will you return to verify the fence location?

0.02

The objective is to locate the boundary and mark it. The owner needs that location to place a fence along that line. He employed a surveyor to locate that boundary, not to survey a fence.

What would you do? Put in an angle point?Dave I.

> That's where additional research to determine junior / senior comes into play.

That is absolutely right from where I sit in metes and bounds Texas. The surveyor performs adequate research to determine (a) when the boundary in question was created and (b) what the sequence of conveyances out of common source of title was.

yep

That sure is a lot of typing just to say dig around that angle iron and find the original pin.;-)