Surveyor woes- any advice???

[J_J]

i don't have any disputes, as of now......this is why i want them marked now.....most of the neighbors have been really good and i want to keep it that way once they pass away or sell is mainly why i want them marked clearly.......

just like now, there is a cherry tree that fell on to me....it's about 75' from one of my clearly marked corners. i'd like to drag it in and cut it up.....i have a friend with a sawmill and i'd like to have some mantels made to use in our house when we build.......

what is in question, is whether or not the root ball is on me or the adjoining property......i'm sure the fella won't mind me taking it because he can't even hardly access his back corner where it is.......however, i'd like to know for sure (just as an example) so i don't have to ask.......

each state is different, but in general.....say a tree falls from my property and lands on another....who's responsible......i would assume me......what if it lands on a neighbor's barbed wired fence.....i assume i would have to repair it...

I believe that if your tree fell on his property, his home owners should take care of it. If your tree fell on his fence, his home owners should take care of that also. If the branches from his tree is touching your roof, you have the right to trim it by staying on your property. You have to be careful about things, like what if the tree dies after you trim it. What about his tree roots growing through his fence and breaking up your cement pad. There again you can dig them up, but if it kills the tree, debatable.

Sometimes, one thinks he knows justice, but not.

 

[Egon]

(on the survey plat) says it runs 1400 feet, is that a straight line distance like the crow flies, or is that a wheel on the ground distance?

That is horizontal distance.

 

[kthompson]

I would visit the office. It might be anything. he may not even be in business any longer. He could be sick or even passed away with answering machine running. That is unless you know why he does not answer. Or you could drop him a letter in the mail asking did he know his answering machine is not keeping messages as you are sure he would return them.


This may vary from state to state but don't think you have the legal right to trim limbs or roots that cross your property line. Think it is the responsibility of the tree's owner. If they will not then believe you will find you need to go to court to require them to. If they have a good and growing tree and it falls say in a storm and does you damage think that is your loss. If it is dead and easy known then that is their responsibility for allowing a dangerous situation (not the word they use).

 

[tallyho8]

During Katrina 75 of my neighbors trees fell down on my property on top of my new 3000' long fence on the edge of my cleared pasture. Lawyers said "it's an act of God and the neighbor is not responsible to clean up the trees or repair your fence". It took me several months to cut up and burn his trees and repair my fence.

I hired a surveyor for $6000 to mark the 4 corners of the 6 acre lot I bought. He marked 3 corners and said the other corner was under water because it had rained so he didn't mark it. It took him about 3 hours of field work.

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

speaking of time to do the job......

one of the neighbors said that they showed up every day at about 8 and worked until about 4, for two weeks.....ticks, chiggers and poision ivy was/is VERY bad......they even made some jovial comments as to how "hard" it was to survey.....as i said before, all of the fence lines are completely grown up.....

but, he didn't act like any of that was a problem.....

 

[ZetorShaun]

I think that it is a problem to have all that overgrowth. I spent a lot of time hacking away with my surveyor to get very specific sightings from very specific locations, I wanted very accurate pins. I saved some money because he didn't have to have a crew there and they were doing another job making him money.
We did it in the Fall to avoid the overgrowth and we still chopped quite a bit.

How can he be accurate without good sightings from some central locations? They probably swag quite a bit when it is like that, and that gets you pins that are "close enough" but not accurate. They need to lay in pins with the expectation that they can defend them in court. This is serious business, if you are paying taxes on 60 acres you should know where all 60 acres are. I am not giving up an inch.

Sounds like tallyho paid a premium price but did not get good service. Underwater? He should have given you two pins on either side of the water. That guy stinks.

 

[EddieWalker]

One of my boundries is a creek. The pins are set inside my property line 25 feet from the center of the creek and marked as such on the survey. If they cannot get to a point, they don't have to. They do have to mark it as such and say where the pin is and where it is from the actualy boundry.

I found that I can save allot of money by clearing the land for them to work. They charge by the hour that they are in the field, so if they are done in half the time, it's a significant savings. Having the area cleared speeds things up for them. They can see farther, so they can set out their markers farther and move along faster.

If not, they have their ways, but it's more work for them, which means a bigger bill for you. Simple math.

Eddie

 

[Podunkadunk]

Thanks for the gospel Egon.

I have been doing what Eddie is talking about for the last 2 years. I've got one last run of my line to clear, then I'm calling a different survey team out, not to do another survey, but to ascertain whether the original team was on the mark or not. It'll be easy, straight line of site work for them, no hacking, no using a chainsaw or machette. I don't think one of the corners is marked correctly.

On another note, When I get them cleared, I'm going to use an oil based white paint and paint some 6' diameter circles around the corners. Then, next time the Google Earth Satellite comes over snapping pics, I'll be able to see them from above. I mean, I can see my fenceposts, I should be able to see a 6' circle in bright white!

Podunk

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

he didn't act like it being grown up was an issue at all....kind of dismissed it, really.......BUT maybe he mentioned the job to his boys and they kind of stalled it.....

it's a LOT clearer now than it was. they shot angles through the fields....some simple geometry should allow them to shoot through the fields and then place something on the line.....

i would bush hog more, in certain areas, but i don't want to get on to someone else....i told him he could put paint down in the general vacinity and i'd come along and back the bush hog in there and clear a wide path for them...

i think i'll leave a message something about it's not nearly as grown up as it was, if that is stalling him at all.......and that i'll sit quietly on my tractor seat waiting for them to tell me where to plunge cut for them

 

[J_J]

With an accuracy of 5 mm, why are there not more surveyors using GPS. I also believe that GPS data will stand up in court, especially if you could tell the judge the exact coordinates he is sitting at that moment. I know price is a big factor, but for the accuracy, I would think it would be worth it, and the labor saved, plus the ability to get the job done faster . I guess you all know that the government can flip a switch and kill the accuracy of GPS. Are there any qualifications one should look for when searching for a surveyor. Are they registered, or certified. Is there any way to check to see if any of their surveys have been in dispute.

Purdue University CORS

 

[Egon]

The GPS systems are indeed accurate.

But the real problem arrives when integrating the new accuracy with survey monuments established in bygone years. It can be a Brouhaha it can!

 

[2manyrocks]

The aggravating thing here is that the surveyor won't call him back and he doesn't know why he won't call him back.

A reputable survey and engineering company surveyed a downtown street in Nashville, TN. The city changed the grade of the street. A couple of years later, the same company did the work to establish the line for building a multi-story office building. They messed up and the building was constructed encroaching on the city property.

Not a good thing for the survey company to mess up.

 

[tallyho8]

I should have mentioned that my surveyor used a gps to mark the 4 corners. He didn't have to clear any brush or shoot any lines. The corner that he didn't mark because it was under water, he put a nail in a crosstie a few feet away and used that for his mark. Unfortunantly, the railroad came by and changed cross ties the next week. $1500 per rod driven in the ground on each corner for less than an hours field work is pretty high but I couldn't find anyone else to do it because surveyors are so busy in our area since Katrina checking elevations for people to rebuild.

 

[slowzuki]

I learned the GPS the corners trick after the surveyer spent a day cutting down my trees without permission. That was an expensive lesson to go over exactly what any contractor is going to do while you aren't there.

 

[ultrarunner]

My Grandfather's Dairy Farm consisted of about 20 different parcels... there were several pioneer type farm families that cleared and divided the land hundreds of years ago.

Only one of the farms still farm and most of the non-forest land owned by the original farms has been sold off for home over the last 40+ years.

Anyway, the original Farmers of my Grandfather's generation knew the exact boundary lines. Once a year the 4 farmers would spend time going over and remarking boundary points... Grandfather said they never had a problem... ever. That all changed when some of the land was sold.

Grandfather always kept his fences 4' back so he would have unrestricted access. His creek boundaries had pins set back anywhere from 5' for very small creeks to 25' for the larger creek. You can probably see where I'm going with this...

Somehow over the years, even though it was clearly shown on license/recorded surveys, he ended up loosing land outside of his fence in one area and lost creek access in another.

He could have fought it, but didn't. He told me when two farmers to court over a cow, everyone eats well except the two farmers... his reference to the state of the legal system for a layman.

I think the more permanent the corners, the better... with additional reference points nearby for added measure. What's wrong with some 4" cast-iron concreted into the ground with a smaller steel pipe extending up out of the ground 5' Should be open and notorious in my view.

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

kind of an irony to add to this story....

this property used to belong to the first county engineer/surveyor....

where he marked, he used a steel pipe in the ceter of concrete incased in a larger steel pipe.......

i have his original survey notebook of the property.....even though it's greek to me...

i ought to share this with the next surveyor......maybe they'll find it helpful and interesting, historically....

 

[2manyrocks]

So why was the property resurveyed? Was some land deeded off the original tract?

 

[EddieWalker]

...I would bush hog more, in certain areas, but i don't want to get on to someone else....i told him he could put paint down in the general vacinity and i'd come along and back the bush hog in there and clear a wide path for them...

If the property line isn't marked or posted, then it would be very difficult, if not impossible for your neighbor to do anything legally about you bushhogging over the line. I'd mow the heck out of it and if they say anything, tell them it's OK, you won't charge them for it.


JJ

It was explained to me by a surveyor that GPS is not 100% accurate every time. This may have changed, but on big jobs with multiple corners, it's fairly common to have at least one get put in the wrong place because of the GPS being off. It might be a few feet, or a few yards, but on large properties, and not knowing which pin it is, the few feet can make a significant change to the size of the property.

Eddie

 

[Skyco]

On another note, When I get them cleared, I'm going to use an oil based white paint and paint some 6' diameter circles around the corners. Then, next time the Google Earth Satellite comes over snapping pics, I'll be able to see them from above. I mean, I can see my fenceposts, I should be able to see a 6' circle in bright white!

Podunk

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.

Speaking of survey nightmares my remote property has a curvy driveway that some prior doofus had them survey down the middle with 36 segments, as a shared boundary. Sure would have been simpler and cheaper to have made it 4 or 5 or even 1 or 2, splitting the difference between the two properties

I've also getten somewhat mad when a surveyor trespassed down the middle of my property painting big orange marks on my trees. When I found it I painted over them and they did it again. When challenged they said they were using it as a tie line between two of my perimeter points to judge the adjacent properties boundaries. Fine with using my edge points but quit painting on my trees in the middle of my property, the edge is ok and accepted.

 

[MarkV]

Now, right after we closed, I called him and asked him to go back out and place permanent, legal pins all around the perimeter. He was very helpful and answered a lot of other questions. He gave me a quote of about $1100.

However, being that the perimeter has been shot recently; the magnetic spikes, pins, ribbons and wooden stakes are still in place.

I don't quite understand what you are having done. The property has been surveyed by a licensed surveyor recently and I would assume a stamped plat filed with the county. Plats here must note what the corner markers are, "11/2 galvanized pipe, 3/4" rebar, ect." The surveyor's magnetic spikes, pins, ribbons and wooden stakes are in place. Sounds like the corners are already marked.

Am I missing something or are you paying $1100 to have him drive some other sort of spike? I don't know why you would do that with the survey already done. If you are worried the existing marker will not last go drive some rebar 3' into the ground.

MarkV