How do you accurately find your property line to post signs and paint trees

[Jstpssng]

Use a transit with compass. Set the compass to the bearing on your land survey plat map. Sight down the transit to landmarks at that bearing, moving from one landmark to another as you travel down the line. Hang plastic flagging or set pin flags to mark the line as you go.

This is the best way. Get the line as straight as you can and mark every 100 feet. If you're off when you hit the target corner, adjust proportionately on every 100 foot marker until you get it straight.

 

[bdhsfz6]

I post a 25 acre irregularly shaped parcel. I use a newer handheld GPS that receives signals from 3 different satellite systems. Most newer units have this capability. I typically a get location accuracy of less than 6 feet but this will vary from location to location. In any case, it's good enough for posting purposes.

Using a GPS requires that you know the coordinates of your property lines. Many older survey maps are recorded using meets and bounds (direction & distance) and it's often difficult to convert for GPS use.

To do this, I use Google Earth with an overlay of my property survey map. There is some minor error but again, it's good enough for posting purposes. I obtain the coordinates of the locations I want to post from Google Earth and save them as waypoints in my GPS. It's then a simple task to navigate to each waypoint and spray or post a sign. This makes it easy to post a property line that isn't straight.

 

[Jstpssng]

I post a 25 acre irregularly shaped parcel. I use a newer handheld GPS that receives signals from 3 different satellite systems. Most newer units have this capability. I typically a get location accuracy of less than 6 feet but this will vary from location to location. In any case, it's good enough for posting purposes.

Using a GPS requires that you know the coordinates of your property lines. Many older survey maps are recorded using meets and bounds (direction & distance) and it's often difficult to convert for GPS use.

To do this, I use Google Earth with an overlay of my property survey map. There is some minor error but again, it's good enough for posting purposes. I obtain the coordinates of the locations I want to post from Google Earth and save them as waypoints in my GPS. It's then a simple task to navigate to each waypoint and spray or post a sign. This makes it easy to post a property line that isn't straight.

You also can get your coordinates by walking your lines and locating the corners, whichever way works best.

 

[dodge man]

As a land surveyor, I can’t say any of the advice you got is great. Consumer grade GPS is not that great. The accuracy also degrades when in trees and vegetation. Also gps on tractors often have corrections which make it more accurate.

3Ts described a method that is called “wiggling in”. Him describing how to do it isn’t the greatest but I can’t describe any better.

A compass? Maybe if you know what you are doing, most people don’t. The problem is there are so many basis of bearings on surveys, grid north, geodetic north, magnetic north that it is tough to get orientated correctly.

The best way is to get the surveyor back, but probably expensive.

 

[Root Cause]

Thanks to everyone who offered some ideas.

I am going to try the "wiggling in" method using 3 lights if I can find something solar-powered so I can set them during the day and view them at night.

 

[dodge man]

I’ve only done wiggling in a couple of times using a surveying instrument (total station) and it’s time consuming. That was only using one point in between, in other words I could see both ends of the line. It seems like it would be difficult having to use 3 points.

I don’t know if driving t posts and putting some lengths of pvc pipe over the posts would help. You could probably get 20 to 30 feet in the air that way, just use a carpenters level to plumb it up a little.

 

[JethroB]

Probably not helpful for the OP‘s purpose but a county’s tax assessors website may have satellite photos with estimated property lines super-imposed. Fun to play with and get a feeling of an area and properties including acreage & ownership. Qpublic.net is the mapping provider to counties in my state.

For example Google “qpublic.net county name & state”.

 

[ZTMAN]

I recently posted our 127 acres with the purple paint. Previously used the yellow signs. No real issues finding the deed and an old survey's call out of pile of rocks here and there, big oaks etc. Was able to fine parts of a barbed wire fence as well.
Worked out good because our neighbor had a recent survey and the flags are spot on.

My reason in posting is not the property line discovery , it is the purple painting. I made a template out of a shoe box based on our state law. :
Purple markings must be at least 8 inches long and 1 inch wide. The bottom of the mark must be no less than 3 feet or more than 5 feet from the ground. And painted marks are not more than 100 feet apart.

Cut out a 2"x10" rectangle from the bottom of the box, stapled the box to a scrap piece of 1x so the bottom of the template was 4 foot off the ground. Worked great. No guessing if you are at the right height and width and the sides of the box gives you wind protection.

 

[seville009]

I used Google maps to draw lines to connect the corners of my property. I then could identify the larger trees, etc close to the line to give me a relatively good idea where the property line is. Crude, but good enough for my purposes.

 

[jmc]

Ha. it isn't that big. It's that dense and that steep. I literally could not pull a straight line 20' with the dense vegetation. And if I could, I would not be able to see it. I've thought about using a bright light on one end but no way I would walk that in the dark. There are a few places where you have to crawl up or slide down depending on which way you are going.

Unlike the pool-table-flat rest of Indiana, my part is hills, hollers, sinkholes and caves. My WWII vet neighbor (RIP) said our part was originally settled by families who came up from N. Carolina. I asked him why they stopped here when they coulda gone 30 miles further to the flat, fertile part of Indiana. He quipped, "Compared to N. Carolina, our land musta looked pretty good!"