Question about land survey

[bp fick]

A surveyor oft times "re-does" the previous survey many times using the notes available. He computes and re-computes, over and over until he is satisfied that he has not presently made a math/trigonometry error, nor had the previous survey. Sometimes, the reconciliation process shows who has made what error, if indeed, the discrepancy can be called an error.

Thomas Jefferson implemented the range system which simplifies, somewhat the land descriptions; NE quarter section, blah blah. Meets and Bounds, however, is what it is. A referenced rock is no more, a marker Oak tree isn't even a stump. On rare occasions, modern surveyors see the finger prints of surveys done by George Washington and other early Americans, many of whom were surveyors. Given the tools available at the time, their work was pretty good, actually.

 

[dodge man]

Those are good questions. As far as different colored tags, I'm not sure what is the norm in Pa. I don't know if you are talking different colored surveyors ribbon, or the tags that are actually attached to the corner marker. If its tags attached to the rebar, every surveyor that uses that marker and agrees with it maybe attaches their tag to it. I'm speculating on that as Illinois does not require tags or caps on the markers.

To answer your other questions I'll give and example. Say your deed says "thence 1300 feet to a corner marker". Say I survey your property and I measure 1298 feet and find and iron pin, I'm going to hold that marker and just understand the fact that our equipment is better today and I can measure the distance better. Say the distance measure 1295 feet today, or 1290, or 1250? At what point do you not hold the marker because the distance it too far off? That is up to the surveyors judgement and there is no hard and fast rule. Then throw your adjoiners deed into the picture, and maybe another adjoiners deed on the other side, and see how the distances on their deeds fit your conrners, and you can see it can get complicated in a hurry if the distances don't fit that well. Then throw into the mix the angles between the corners, and that can make it more complicated! I would just say that surveying a boundary is more complicated than most people understand.

I will say it is generally excepted law that once a corner is set, used by the owners for a number of years, that marker should hold unless fraud or a gross error is involved. I suppose the kicker is that it is up to the surveyor what gross error is.

 

[Freds]

One point of interest on farm surveying, In Ky, the old surveys (done with pole/rods/chains or whatever) always show 10-15 % more land than the new surveys show. For example we bought a 165 acre old surveyed farm the actually was a 143 acre farm on the new survey. Ken Sweet

Sounds like your loss was someone else's gain :laughing:

 

[Bird]

One point of interest on farm surveying, In Ky, the old surveys (done with pole/rods/chains or whatever) always show 10-15 % more land than the new surveys show. For example we bought a 165 acre old surveyed farm the actually was a 143 acre farm on the new survey. Ken Sweet

Variations I can understand, but that would seem excessive to me. When I was thinking of buying a little place in the country in 1994, I asked a local banker about surveys and how important they are. He said the last time they asked for a survey to finance a farm, they got 3 different surveyors to survey it and got 3 different answers.:laughing: So when I bought 10 acres, I don't know when a survey was done, but the land was fenced and it was easy for me to find iron pipe in each of the 4 corners. According to the deed, it was an exact rectangle and exactly 10 acres. Eight years later when I was selling the place, the buyer wanted a survey, and of course I told him that would be fine with me if he wanted to select the surveyor himself and pay for it, which he readily agreed to. So the survey he paid for concluded that the property was 3" wider at the back than at the front, so it was almost 10.1 acres.:laughing:

 

[SARG]

My limited experience over the years has shown me that "one surveyor rarely disagrees with another".

 

[sweettractors]

Variations I can understand, but that would seem excessive to me. When I was thinking of buying a little place in the country in 1994, I asked a local banker about surveys and how important they are. He said the last time they asked for a survey to finance a farm, they got 3 different surveyors to survey it and got 3 different answers.:laughing: So when I bought 10 acres, I don't know when a survey was done, but the land was fenced and it was easy for me to find iron pipe in each of the 4 corners. According to the deed, it was an exact rectangle and exactly 10 acres. Eight years later when I was selling the place, the buyer wanted a survey, and of course I told him that would be fine with me if he wanted to select the surveyor himself and pay for it, which he readily agreed to. So the survey he paid for concluded that the property was 3" wider at the back than at the front, so it was almost 10.1 acres.:laughing:

Bird, I bought a 80 acre farm in 1985 at public auction that almost adjoined my home farm. The survey had not came in at the day of the auction. When the survey came in, it was actually 59 acres. In Ky when acreage is sold at auction, the auctioneer announces the acreage more or less 10% of what he advertised and the State law recognizes that as the norm. The auction company would not adjust the price downward to fall within these 10% parameters, so I let them have it back. No hard feelings. They sold it again at 59 acres about 6 months later for $10,000 less that I paid originally. Ken Sweet

 

[schmism]

To answer your other questions I'll give and example. Say your deed says "thence 1300 feet to a corner marker".

IL is a gridded state. meaning the entire state is divided into grids. (sections)

it can get even more complicated if the deed says "thence 1300 feet to the corner of the north west section of the northwest quarter...."

now the measured distance to a corner pin that is found is 1300ft. but the accepted corner of the grid sq is 10' different than that.

so the deed actually locates the corner in 2 different ways and today (with todays measuring tools) those numbers dont agree.

So one survivor may use the grid corner, one may use the existing stake with dimension. Technically neither are wrong. A good survivor will attempt to go back in the records and find the earliest known survey and how that is written. But not all survivor's do the most intensive searches.

in short ask 3 different people your likely to get 3 different answers.

 

[sweettractors]

I can tell you how our local surveyors keep out of trouble when surveying a farm. They get the old deeds from all adjoining property at the courthouse and make sure all mesh together. I have a acre that I don't have a deed too, however, none of my neighbors have a deed to it either and all know it goes with with my farm, so all is well. Ken Sweet

 

[smstonypoint]

Dodge man and/or other surveyors,

I am curious as to how GPS technology has affected the surveying profession.


Steve

 

[greasemonkeyok]

I'm not a surveyor, but GPS technology has added a whole new dimension to land surveying. As said above, it is not always as simple as one might imagine to identify "boundary lines". First, you have to identify what you mean by "boundary". There are the legal descriptions in the deeds recorded in the government records, and even they may be in conflict in looking at the description of one tract versus the description of the adjoining tract. This is particularly true in states like PA that have all metes and bounds descriptions, and references to monuments that may have been obliterated. GPS helps with the science of locating data points, but it doesn't really help with the practical application of that information to establishing a boundary.

Then there are actual boundaries, which may or may not coincide with the legal descriptions in the deeds. The parties may treat a fence as a boundary between two tracts, and it may or may not be located on the line stated in one or both of the deeds to the respective tracts. If not, then you have a fact question as to where the "boundary" is now located, the fence or the line stated in one or both of the deeds, assuming the descriptions in the deeds are not in conflict.

Even the data sets used by GPS devices vary, just look at the difference in the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Grid data points on USGS TOPO maps, NAD83 vs NAD27.