shortage on Land Surveyors

Thermometers have degrees too . . . These are NOT trivial.

Here is a though experiment for you. You have a subdivision plat that describes a block corner as being 25' from the CL of a street. You, as a home owner, pull a string between 2 set rr spikes to establish the CL, and you dig up the iron pipe that is called out in the plat. You pull a tape and discover that the distance is actually 26.35'.

Where is that property corner actually at? This isn't trival. It is legal. And if you are licensed you know that it not only effects that corner but every other corner on that block.

Can you, as the owner take your pictures of your chalked CL and pulled tape to court and establish that the corner is located incorrectly to justify you pulling it out of the ground and putting it where the plat says it should be?

The answer of course is no. The corner is where the pipe exists. Regardless of the measured distance. If it was a surveyor he would record his plat with a note that states he measured 26.35' where the description is 25' by the plat. But the corner was located where it was located, not re-established.

So, that data gets uploaded to the GIS map and 30 years later the son of the above home owner repeats the same process, except he now discovers that the corner is now 27.05' from his established CL. His CL was based upon the centers of disks set in wells in the roadway that replaced the above mentioned rr spikes due to a road resurfacing project, and his eyeball guess. (The engineer that replaced the spikes didn't record his actions so there is no record that they actually represent the same location as the spikes or evidence of his actions available. Even more inconvenient, he also never got around to punching them so now we really don't know for certain where the CL is either. Yes, this happens ALL THE TIME.) The only thing we have now is that pipe, and the previous home owner moved it because he didn't know what the common law is behind these things.

None of the actual recorded data on the digital maps is accurate within a few tenths. What now?

If this location happens to be on a hillside forget it. None of the recorded data is reliable. You can only go by any existing monumentation that can be located and the current location of improvements to try to re-establish corners. No digital map is going to be able to get you through that.

Now, another home owner on the block is told by a neighbor that his nicely stamped monolithically poured walkway is over the property line. What now? That is some pretty expensive concrete work that has to get hammered up because some other homeowner on the block did some DIY surveying. If I had to destroy a 10K landscaping project I assure you I WOULD NOT THINK IT TRIVAL.

This is not a unique situation, it is not uncommon in my area. I review the surveys, and come across these situations regularly.

/r/Surveying Thread Parent