Thoughts of a Land Surveyor.

[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."