Thoughts of a Land Surveyor.

[dodge man]

Surveyors say GIS stands for get it surveyed.

 

[Jstpssng]

I'm familiar with a parcel of land along a river that was subdivided into about a dozen lots all about the same size (average 100' wide and 350' deep)...I was here when the original survey laying out the lots was done and know exactly where the original corner pins are...

On a few occasions where one or more of the lots changed hands and a new survey was done...the new surveys never once agreed with where the original pins should be...some would be different by nearly 3'...

It happens. The subdivision where our family camp is was done in the 1950's. Somewhere around 1975 it was determined that the first pin was set about 17 feet to far to the north, thereby making every lot corner in the 25+ lot subdivision about 17 feet to the north. In another case a former employer sold the corner lot of a much larger parcel which abutted two roads. When it was carved out the surveyor used the wrong road r/w width so had to go back and fix it. The problem was that on his second attempt he added 17 feet as he left the road; then tacked it on again at the far end, so that the corner was that much too long. Since he never closed his survey I picked up on it when connecting the two back pins with a hand compass, but at the point they decided not to pursue it.

 

[newbury]

<snip>
When a person buys a house or piece of property, it is most likely the largest investment they will make in their life. Why not get it surveyed BEFORE you buy it? <snip>

It's a good idea IN THEORY. But your out the money if the purchase falls through.

Before we bought our current Mississippi "retirement tree farm" we were hot and heavy on another parcel, closer to town and smaller but IDEAL.

The owners we eventually found out were just ripping of buyers. They mandated it had to be closed on in 4 weeks. "They" were two sisters that lived in different towns. After we started the process they would only deal via mail, no faxes. And they took their sweet time to return documents "oh, the weather was bad", "I had to go to the doctors", just a ton of excuses for not getting signed paperwork back and forth. At the end of 4 weeks we asked for an extension. They said no, start over.
Luckily we had only put down a small deposit and we told them to file it where the sun don't shine. They asked for a copy of the survey we had done, but we had not recorded it yet and they did not get it. But we were out about a grand for the survey.

The next place was being sold as house w/2.5 acre, and land 70 acres, survey turned up house w/ 3.5 acres and something like 67 for the rest, but all is good and we bought it.

I spent my entire working career with the Army in what is now the Army Geospatial Center and worked closely with a lot of good surveyors.

But it was drilled home to me early in my career when my Father was selling the house I grew up in and the 20 acres more or less that went with it. He had bought the 20 acres more or less about 1963 and he, my Grandfather, and I built a duplex on it. (I miss that, it was a slice of paradise. I could walk out the basement door and catch 3lb trout for breakfast, lunch or dinner)


I insisted he get a survey, because I had studied the aerial photos and thought the boundaries I grew up on were bigger. It ended up that the 20 acres more or less had grown to 30 acres by 1978!

 

[dodge man]

As a rule but it is not set in stone and can be regional, the seller pays for the survey.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Dads farm is 1/4 of a section, plus another 1/16 section. A section is a sq mile by definition, but in reality they aren't. Even the section corners are not well defined. The GIS maps are way off.

 

[Dadnatron]

This is a parcel which was selling in Plano, TX a few years ago...

Every little bit counts... BTW... that is 10x10' shy of 7ac.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I have a survey question. I bought a piece of land in 2006, the entire legal description of the property in the deed reads as follows (identifying information redacted):

That certain parcel of land, with the buildings and improvements thereon, situated in the Town of _____ , County of ________, State of Rhode Island, bounded and described as follows:

NORTHERLY partly on a highway known as _____ Road, partly by land now or formerly of [Person 1] and partly by land now or formerly of [Person 2].

EASTERLY on ____ Brook.

SOUTHERLY by land now or formerly of [Person 3].

WESTERLY partly by said [Person 3] land and partly by land now or formerly of [Person 4].

Containing approximately __ acres. Be all said measurements more or less, or however otherwise the same may be bounded or described.

Looking at online genealogy records, I've been able to establish that:
Person 1 lived 1848-1928.

Person 3 lived 1830-1920.

Person 4 lived 1829-1908.

I believe this description was recorded around 1875 when the property was mortgaged for the first time. The property was acquired in 1683 by a family that owned it until 1950, passing only through inheritance.

Is there any point to a survey with a description this vague? Property lines are marked by stone walls, I have aerial photos from the 1930's showing the location of the stone walls, they haven't moved.

 

[mapper]

Surveyors say GIS stands for get it surveyed.

GIS data bases are only as good as the data that they are built with. In many cases boundary and parcel information is taken from the county assessor`s tax maps. If it is continually updated with data from recorded surveys it can be fairly good in those areas that the survey data covers.
I remember a lot of debates between the GIS managers and the survey and mapping folks on how accurate the data should be. The GIS folks for the most part were not very interested in spot on accuracy, they were more interested in getting the most coverage for the least cost.
In the early days many paper plat maps were hand digitized to bring the data into the digital realm. Consider that a line on a 1:24000 scale map is about 1/50 of an inch wide and 1"=2000' the error in measurment is up to 40` - assuming the paper map was correct to start with!

 

[dodge man]

Quicksand, your out east where the ground was never split up into sections of ground that are a mile square. The east part of US is like your deed, metes and bounds. In your case it has calls for adjoiners. I can not tell you if you need a survey or not. You think you know where the boundaries but a new survey may prove you wrong or might prove you correct.

 

[Jstpssng]

I have a survey question. I bought a piece of land in 2006, the entire legal description of the property in the deed reads as follows (identifying information redacted):



Looking at online genealogy records, I've been able to establish that:
Person 1 lived 1848-1928.

Person 3 lived 1830-1920.

Person 4 lived 1829-1908.

I believe this description was recorded around 1875 when the property was mortgaged for the first time. The property was acquired in 1683 by a family that owned it until 1950, passing only through inheritance.

Is there any point to a survey with a description this vague? Property lines are marked by stone walls, I have aerial photos from the 1930's showing the location of the stone walls, they haven't moved.

That's where a surveyor shows that his career is an art as well as a science. My deed is very similar. If the lines weren't well defined by fences, lines of occupation as well capped surveyor's pins on one side and partway up the back- or if I was going to be doing anything near them- I would have had it surveyed long ago.
On the sideline which the abutter had surveyed there is a rock wall ; yet he opted to go with a wire fence instead which was straighter. Unfortunately he died in a car wreck years so so I am unable to talk to him.

 

[s219]

I was looking at some land in the VA mountains, composed of three odd shaped parcels (one looks like a cowboy hat), and the county GIS system out there had the owner names, parcels, and shapes totally scrambled up in a way that made no sense at all. I got the original surveys from the property owner, but have no way to visualize them on a full map to see how the three properties go together. If the county GIS site was even approximately right, it would be easy, but it's so out of whack it's completely misleading. God help the person who uses that information and doesn't attempt to sanity check things.

We'll go out there in the fall with the old paper surveys, find the corner pins, get modern GPS coordinates, and then put them on a map. That will be the first time I get a glimpse of the whole spread with the properties knit together. Having three separate plats of oddball shaped properties but no larger parcel map makes it a real challenge to know what we'd be buying.

 

[Egon]

There are times counting buggy wheel revolutions may be at odds with GPS findings.

 

[orezok]

I live in earthquake country, so situations here are different than most of the country. In 1992 there was a quake in Landers CA where there was a ground rupture of some 18’. If you owned the land where the ground rupture occurred, what do you actually own after the quake? The part that moved north 18’ or the part that moved south? Or maybe each side moved 9’.

 

[pmsmechanic]

Interesting read!

 

[newbury]

And DON'T TRUST THE COUNTY GIS, MAPPING, AND PROPERTY LINE DELINEATION!!!

I've lived in Fairfax County, Virginia since the mid-70's. It is home to the USGS and and has an excellent mapping department. Despite that when they redid the street in front of a house I own they messed up the driveway apron. Now for perspective, based on valuation for taxes, land around my house goes for about $850,000 dollars an acre.

Here's the apron:

I own to the right.

A guy bought the house to the left and was flipping it. He wanted to widen his drive to the perceived boundary. I caught him and told him NO, I own much of that. So I immediately got a survey. It shows as inside the driveway apron by about 4 inches. He went and got a survey. They confirmed my survey.
He flipped the house.

We have not even asked the county to relocate the apron. The new owners are aware of the actual property line.

I've also got houses and land in northeast Mississippi. The county has what they call a GIS section and there is a firm that publishes plat books based on the county maps. Now as I'd say down south, these are good people, they mean well.

But they constantly get properties mislabeled. We've properties where the deed shows my wifes last name and my last name. The plat map may show my middle name and her first name. Or the names jumbled up.

One of the properties was part of a 200 acre parcel from an Aunts estate. We bought the west half, another person bought the east half.

The maps showed up with it split on latitude, not longitude, with us owning the north and the other person owning the south. But like I said they are good people and mean well.

 

[dodge man]

As a land surveyor it痴 not like I知 the only one that can use a tape measure or GPS or total station. There is nothing wrong with a person trying to find their corners or measure up their property. It can also be a problem if your wrong. Kind of a little knowledge can be dangerous.

A person above mentioned getting GPS coordinates on their corners. How? There is a big difference between consumer grade and survey grade GPS. If this is just so you can get close to spot the corners. That痴 fine. Just figure consumer GPS can be off 30 feet in open skies and worse in trees.

There is also all sorts of coordinate systems. Surveyors rarely work in lat and longs.

 

[s219]

As a land surveyor it痴 not like I知 the only one that can use a tape measure or GPS or total station. There is nothing wrong with a person trying to find their corners or measure up their property. It can also be a problem if your wrong. Kind of a little knowledge can be dangerous.

A person above mentioned getting GPS coordinates on their corners. How? There is a big difference between consumer grade and survey grade GPS. If this is just so you can get close to spot the corners. Thatç—´ fine. Just figure consumer GPS can be off 30 feet in open skies and worse in trees.

There is also all sorts of coordinate systems. Surveyors rarely work in lat and longs.

Don't know about anyone else but I use Virginia state plane coordinates (SPCS83) and NAD83 datum for most surveys, but in reality I will use whatever is needed to match a map or plat (couple weeks ago I used UTM and NAD27 in order to find coordinates of a shipwreck, going off an underwater archaeology survey report). Most online and mobile maps are based on lat/lon and WGS-84, so eventually the coordinates will need to be converted to that format if they are to be used in Google Earth, smart phone maps, or similar.

My iPhone's GPS can be accurate to 3 meters under good conditions. The dilution of precision numbers (HDOP, VDOP, etc) can be used to know when I am actually getting 3 meter accuracy (generally only happens out in the open with clear line of sight to the sky). It can be a lot worse under tree cover of course, but the DOP numbers will tell me that too. Anybody using GPS (of any grade) should constantly monitor the DOP and accuracy estimates to know how good/bad the numbers are. All of this varies in realtime depending on satellite coverage, signal quality, and how the various satellites allow the triangulation calculation to work.

I also have a pro-grade sub-meter GPS unit that the iPhone can read via BlueTooth. It will give the advertised accuracy, but is so slow that I rarely use it. I rarely need sub-meter accuracy anyhow.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

There are times counting buggy wheel revolutions may be at odds with GPS findings.

Yeah, whats the circumference of "a" buggy wheel?? Was there a standard buggy wheel back in he ole days? Someplace I saw a conversion table for some of the old time measure methods. No indications if some of the units of measure were an accepted standard. Man's pace is all over the ruler and changes uphill and down hill, pretty broad definition. Wish I had copied it.

Ron

 

[ultrarunner]

I'll finish by saying there are times you need to get a surveyor and a lawyer involved. In my 34 plus years of surveying, 26 years of it licensed, I've seen a few cases where a person was truly getting screwed. In one case a person had been to court and was being pressured to settle a case even though he was right. He couldn't afford a survey or a lawyer. I ended up doing a $2000 survey for $500. In another case I did the work for free. I'm lucky in the fact that my boss let me do this work at reduced cost or for free.

I hope I brought a little perceptive to how a surveyor views things related to boundaries. To be honest most of the disputes I read about on here sound petty. I always try to look at the other side of the story also, but based on my experience, I also realize these don't seem petty to the person living it.

I never have commissioned a survey but a very reputable surveyor I know sure did come to the aid of a then 99 year old widow in her home of 50 years...

The city sent her a notice to remove several "Hazardous" trees on her through lot... she did what most that are mostly homebound and living alone... called two tree companies and got bids for $12,000 and $9500... a lot of money for someone on savings and social security...

She happened to mention it to Mom and I went to look... and it didn't look right... yes the trees were hazardous... but in my opinion they were not on her land... I called the city and they said yes they are unless she had a recent filed survey there was no point discussing it and the clock was ticking...

I called the only surveyor I knew... he was in his truck and said he would swing by... he was there 20 minutes later.

He pulled out some maps and said the trees were most definitely NOT on this ladies property... they were on city property... then he pulled out his cell phone called the top guy at the city... said he was on site and the trees are city trees... and he could meet with the city surveyor if needed...

Richard solve the entire problem in 1 hour tops... amazing... he wouldn't take a penny from the widow... simply said she has good friends willing to help...

Oh... it took the city about 6 weeks to take out the trees... the 21 days did not matter for city jobs.

 

[Jstpssng]

Yeah, whats the circumference of "a" buggy wheel?? Was there a standard buggy wheel back in he ole days? Someplace I saw a conversion table for some of the old time measure methods. No indications if some of the units of measure were an accepted standard. Man's pace is all over the ruler and changes uphill and down hill, pretty broad definition. Wish I had copied it.

Ron

Before GPS I did a lot of pacing and it's more accurate than you might think. Generally you use a little bit longer stride to make them more uniform. After a while you get pretty good at it, tying into roads to calibrate and learning to compensate for when you are taking shorter steps.
Still, I wouldn't want to buy acreage based on anyone's pacing.
One of the best descriptions I've read included this reference; "Thence westerly to the point where the old cow lies down in the afternoon."