Surveyor woes- any advice???

[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.