Surveyor woes- any advice???

[Egon]

I hope I have not muddied up the water too much.

Ralph, it sounds like the survey waters are already muddy and need lots of sifting thru the opaque water to find an answere.

Very informative comments. Many will now realize why the waters are muddy.

 

[J_J]

Ralph,

Your answers seem very clear about the surveying, and I appreciate the honesty about a subject that so many have doubts.

What would be your answer about if the so called property line that has been assumed and relied on for a number of years, They don't just give land away because of use, do they? For instance, the neighbor is driving down a road beside your fence, but your property line in in the middle of the road that has been made by the neighbor driving down the fence line, does the property from the fence to the original property always belong to the owner of the property being encroached on, or does it somehow get transfered to the one who is using it , say over 10 yrs.

 

[survriggs]

Ralph,

Your answers seem very clear about the surveying, and I appreciate the honesty about a subject that so many have doubts.

What would be your answer about if the so called property line that has been assumed and relied on for a number of years, They don't just give land away because of use, do they? For instance, the neighbor is driving down a road beside your fence, but your property line in in the middle of the road that has been made by the neighbor driving down the fence line, does the property from the fence to the original property always belong to the owner of the property being encroached on, or does it somehow get transfered to the one who is using it , say over 10 yrs.

JJ:
I'm going to tell you just like I tell my clients or future clients. I'm not an attorney so my legal advice is worth exactly what it cost you...so here goes!
What you are referring to is adverse possession which is often misunderstood. It is based on the Doctrine of Laches "Equity aids the vigilant, not the negligent (that is, those who sleep on their rights)." "Plainly stated, this means the law does not reward a person who neglects to enforce his property rights by allowing him to claim the fruit of another person's labor at a later time."
To your question: If you allow your neighbor to drive on your property, mow your property, cut hay off of your property, run cattle on your property and you don't care enough to assert claim to your land, then yes you can lose title to that land. It's not as easy as some think. It is not automatic. It has to be determined in court. A judge will determine if the possession is actual, notorious, exclusive, continuous, hostile and open for the statutory period. And this varies by state.
The statements in quotes are directly from Wikipedia.

Ralph R.

 

[MarkV]

As Ralph said adverse possession is often miss understood and much harder to do than many seem to think it is. In many states you may be running your fencing and cattle on some ones property for years but if you are not paying the taxes on that property you will never win in court.

MarkV

 

[riptides]

..but if you are not paying the taxes on that property you will never win in court...

MarkV

Bingo, and it only matters as long as you live.

 

[CurlyDave]

When we bought our property, I didn't want a survey, and I made sure no one did a survey.

I wanted it to build a house on. We had 39.6 acres of sloped land with lots of trees, most scrub, some nice ones. Uphill from us we have a 1/4 mile long boundary with BLM land.

Now we needed 40 acres to build a house, and the country said 39.6 was "good enough" so we got our permit and built.

Now I had heard rumors that the old survey was somehow off, and there wasn't really as much acreage as claimed. While it would have been nice to know the exact boundaries, I kept thinking: "Why should I pay someone thousands of $ to get an answer which might be really bad?" I am pretty sure that if I proved I only had 35 acres, I couldn't have built the house and would have had a big lawsuit with the seller. All I really needed was a deed which said I owned enough land to build and I already had that.

Someday in the future, if the laws ever change and I can carve off 5 acres and sell it for a homesite, I will get a survey.

Right now, I am pretty certain that one neighbor has encroached about 3 or 4 feet with a 40' section of seldom-used dirt road. He is a pretty good guy, and why would I want to get into an expensive dispute over 400 square feet when I own millions of square feet? We trade tools, implements, work, and good times. I have hunted with him and his friends for the past 4 years, and they are now my friends too.

There is a lot more to country living than exerting control over every square inch of your land. In the city, where your lot might be 6000 square feet, a few hundred of those is enough to get excited over. 40 acres is 1,742,400 square feet. If someone takes a few hundred off, does it really matter?

 

[ultrarunner]

CurlyDave... I've come to know you as a very wise man in deed and philosophically

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

Hey, he just called me.....apologized....said he had been working out to "the plant" which is our neuclear enrichment plant (much more $$ than me, i'm sure)....

he said they have been out to the property (i haven't been out for about 3-4 weeks) and that they should finish this monday and he'd get with me on it....

cool.....i need to get out there and take a look at it....

 

[J_J]

Hey, he just called me.....apologized....said he had been working out to "the plant" which is our neuclear enrichment plant (much more $$ than me, i'm sure)....

he said they have been out to the property (i haven't been out for about 3-4 weeks) and that they should finish this monday and he'd get with me on it....

cool.....i need to get out there and take a look at it....

Be sure and take your camera and document all the ref points to your survey. You might even put a half cement block around those pins, and paint accordingly. If you have a GPS, you can get a rough coordinates on any pin/marker. Even the better GPS will sit in a spot for a while to give the units a look at more satellites.

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

the half block is a good idea....i like the gps too....i've thought about it.....just didn't know how accurate it would be....i guess if the pin gets "removed" then close is better than nothing, huh?

i like the block idea....i would like to put a metal fencepost or 5/8 rebar about 6" back on my side from their pin....sticking about 4' above the ground and painted orange every year.....

there's only one neighbor that i forsee problems with.....what i'm trying to help prevent are problems when/if my current neighbors move...i have 12 neighbors adjoining my property...anywhere from 100' to 1600'.....

Be sure and take your camera and document all the ref points to your survey. You might even put a half cement block around those pins, and paint accordingly. If you have a GPS, you can get a rough coordinates on any pin/marker. Even the better GPS will sit in a spot for a while to give the units a look at more satellites.

 

[J_J]

As Ralph said adverse possession is often miss understood and much harder to do than many seem to think it is. In many states you may be running your fencing and cattle on some ones property for years but if you are not paying the taxes on that property you will never win in court.

MarkV

I don't think that part about the other guy paying taxes on the encroachment has any merit, and probably isn't true for this reason, The neighbor has been paying taxes on his marked boundary, and don't think the neighbor would voluntary pay more taxes than what he owes, and you have been paying your taxes even with the encroachment.

 

[J_J]

the half block is a good idea....i like the gps too....i've thought about it.....just didn't know how accurate it would be....i guess if the pin gets "removed" then close is better than nothing, huh?

i like the block idea....i would like to put a metal fencepost or 5/8 rebar about 6" back on my side from their pin....sticking about 4' above the ground and painted orange every year.....

there's only one neighbor that i forsee problems with.....what i'm trying to help prevent are problems when/if my current neighbors move...i have 12 neighbors adjoining my property...anywhere from 100' to 1600'.....

I don't think I would put more markers anywhere, that will only confuse any neighbor or surveyor that is trying to find things. I think the surveyors are supposed to mark all monuments, pins, rods, pipe, etc, and either verify or install their own pins with number, and indicate same on the survey.
The Tom Toms, Garmin and others are only good to about 5 to 10 ft. I believe that you would be doing yourself a favor by locating all the corners that join your property, and if the neighbor want to share surveys, the better.

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

the fence posts were a suggestion from the attorney that i bought the land from......he never did it, but, then again, he was an attorney and probably thought people would leave him alone......

he said something about setting a precedent and confident in title......

i think the half block painted on a regular basis is a good idea.....heck they can pull up a fence post about as easily as throwing a half block over a hill then again, i may be a wild hair and drive posts in the ground....


edit: just had another idea....i'd like something that someone can't see....if you can't see it, then you are a lot less likely to move it......wonder about taking magnetic survey nails and measuring out a foot on three sides (not the neighbor's side) and drive them just below the surface of the ground.....easy to find- for me- later but not so easy for a neighbor that wants to pull them.....honestly, there's only one neighbor that i'm concered about pulling them.....ALL the rest i have told them about what i'm having done and all seemed to want me to do it.....heck, that way they get the goods without having to pay money too....

I don't think I would put more markers anywhere, that will only confuse any neighbor or surveyor that is trying to find things. I think the surveyors are supposed to mark all monuments, pins, rods, pipe, etc, and either verify or install their own pins with number, and indicate same on the survey.
The Tom Toms, Garmin and others are only good to about 5 to 10 ft. I believe that you would be doing yourself a favor by locating all the corners that join your property, and if the neighbor want to share surveys, the better.

 

[CurlyDave]

the fence posts were a suggestion from the attorney that i bought the land from......he never did it, but, then again, he was an attorney and probably thought people would leave him alone......

I kind of like the fence post suggestion -- most surveyors would recognize that a fence post was not really a marker pin, but might be close to one. If you put 2 or even 3 T-posts around the real pin, it will be easy to locate and see from a distance.

Any decent surveyor can reconstruct where a moved pin should be from all the other pins, if someone should happen to one or 2 of them.

 

[JoeL4330]

I wish Google Earth would date their images. I know at my home it has been several years since they re-imaged, I can see my pickup in the yard with my car trailer attached and a blue tarp over some building supplies, I therefore know when it was.
My remote property, I have no idea and it is also much lower resolution images.quote]

You might locate an aerial survey outfit nearby and ask them when their last images were ...I did and got a hi-res scanned image and bought several hard copies ...More interestingly, they offered to "fly a mission" for me and the price was surprisingly low (of course, they might resell the imagery many times, but so what...)

Incidentally, I don't mean to start an argument, but 5mm ...millimeters? More like 3-5 centimeters is best one can do ...has to do with how accurately the position of the satellites is known (and that is not constant) and their position is gauged from some well-surveyed ground station's! ...whose antenna feed points are known to about 3cm vis a vis the "center of the earth".

 

[J_J]

I wish Google Earth would date their images. I know at my home it has been several years since they re-imaged, I can see my pickup in the yard with my car trailer attached and a blue tarp over some building supplies, I therefore know when it was.
My remote property, I have no idea and it is also much lower resolution images.quote]

You might locate an aerial survey outfit nearby and ask them when their last images were ...I did and got a hi-res scanned image and bought several hard copies ...More interestingly, they offered to "fly a mission" for me and the price was surprisingly low (of course, they might resell the imagery many times, but so what...)

Incidentally, I don't mean to start an argument, but 5mm ...millimeters? More like 3-5 centimeters is best one can do ...has to do with how accurately the position of the satellites is known (and that is not constant) and their position is gauged from some well-surveyed ground station's! ...whose antenna feed points are known to about 3cm vis a vis the "center of the earth".

Perhaps you should read this. It may be possible.

Differential GPS
Up to this point, all of the GPS calculations discussed have been concerned with locating a single point in space, but one of the best ways to increase the accuracy of the GPS calculations is to perform GPS observations on two points at the same time, a technique known as differential GPS.

When using differential GPS (DGPS), one receiver is used as a reference station. This receiver is set up over a point with known coordinates. Another receiver is used to determine the location of the unknown point. While the GPS data is being collected at the two points simultaneously, the distance between the two receivers remains constant. Introducing the constant baseline between the two receivers into the GPS calculation increases the positional accuracy significantly. When using the C/A code only, DGPS can achieve accuracy in the range of 30 centimeters. With more sophisticated receivers that use code and carrier to calculate positions can achieve accuracies approaching 5 millimeters.

 

[Egon]

This receiver is set up over a point with known coordinates.

Now it all depends on the accuracy of this point which could be???

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

i went out there and the south and north sides are done.....they did a great job....they didn't shy away from any of the over-growth.......

where they drove a wooden stake without driving a pin directly beside it, would it be ok if i pulled the wooden stake and in the remaining hole drive a pc of rebar like they had? i just hate to touch anything that way i can always fall back on "i don't know, you'll have to take up that issue with the surveyor....." i guess i could just use fence posts then i'd know where they are, be able to maintain them and know that i put them there.....there's only about two of these places right now....

i'm really pleased......i own much more than i thought on the south side (about 50' over a 1600' span)....or, well, i thought i owned about that much but had no way to prove it until now......on the north side i own a few feet less than i thought (about 4')......

 

[Dmace]

where they drove a wooden stake without driving a pin directly beside it, would it be ok if i pulled the wooden stake and in the remaining hole drive a pc of rebar like they had?

No, grade-stake usually means only accurate to a few tenths or so. Rebar means very accurate monumentation set to the accuracies of the survey plan. I am a land surveyor but refuse to comment much on these types of threads that tend to turn into a "I think surveys are unnecessary, inaccurate, and overpriced" thread because most people have no idea what they are talking about...

 

[Egon]

accurate monumentation set to the accuracies of the survey plan

Dmace, it might be very worthwhile to comment on your statement to help clear up confusion on accuracy.

In another life many years ago I worked on survey crews that were setting third order monuments. We worked from first and second order monuments using wild T1, Geodometers, Titanium rods with sunshades and temperature recordings. Needless to say the technology used is now in museums and the methods I have long since forgotten.