I know a lot of you live where survey is almost irrelevant due to city conditions and/or flat land, but I’ve had a lot of fun finding old monuments by reading topo maps, using compass skills, guesstimation on slopes, and my own step calibration (carefully counting out your stride on level ground to see exactly how many relaxed steps YOU take in a quarter mile).
These skills are a bit outdated due to GPS, but finding a medium sized rock, with six chiseled lines on the east side, in a forest on a slope is sure satisfying.
Anybody play around with sort of stuff?
Replies
Well I've sure been thinking about it.
Moved in a year and a half ago and been trying to nail down
the property lines ever since.
Steep hillside with several gullies and terraces that make holding
your line near impossible.
Any tips would be more then appreciated.
Over rough ground the best way, sans GPS and software to go with it, is to start with three people.You must know one point to begin with (just as in real survey which may start with a known point distant from your land), have the metes and bounds description of your land (legal description with distances and bearings), know the angle between true north and magnetic north (printed on every quadrangle map), and have a compass. A compass with a gunsight is helpful. If you hold it right, you can look in the mirror to see the compass needle and, without moving, also sight along the gunsights.So you start with the known point, you've calculated the angle using the legal description, you've gotten familiar with the your good quality compass, and you have two other folks with you to find the rest of the corners. With you standing on the known point, you direct the other two to stand on the line of the correct bearing with them being a distance apart. Once they are positioned you leave the marker and go as far along the line as you can where you can still see both the other two helpers. Repeat, marking the line along the way. It will help if you get some plastic ribbon or plastic flags on wires to tie along the route (make it easier to refind the new point later). You will likely find that in some spots the helpers can be pretty far apart and in some spots, such as over the top of a ridge, they will have to be quite close together so you can still see them. Following along in this manner you can establish a good approximation of the property boundary.It's much harder to gauge distances over steep ground (If you have a range finder that would be a great help). As long as the corner is marked I've usually been able to find the marker. If the marker is small it may be buried and then it'll take a metal detector or a lot of luck and digging. I use a little seat-of-the-pants calculating to guess how much extra distance I need to go to make up for the angle of the slope I'm on. It ain't perfect, but you'll be surprised what you can do. It also helps to calibrate your steps on flat ground beforehand so you have a good idea of how long your steps average out to be.It's also possible to go around the lot in reverse of the manner the surveyor described it, but you have to reverse the bearings from something like "north of east" to "south of west".It all takes a little practice, but if you can read blueprints you'll find it easier to figure out.If you don't have a copy of your survey you may (or may not) be able to get one from your County Clerk and Recorder (or whatever they call it where you live).I think it's best to approach it as a bit of recreation.Good luck!
I really do not trust surveys that much. My neighbor has had 3 surveys in the last 15 years and there are 3 different pins marking the corner of her lot. Each time they have left an iron pipe and I end up driving it below grade so I won't hit it mowing. The 3 pins are within a foot of each other but far from that "gnat's ####" precision people assume a survey gets you.
Find your front corners. Get a tax or subdivision plat so you can see the relationships between your adjoiners, and the ROW. A one or two-hundred foot cloth tape and a metal detector rented from a local survey supply place will help with pulling over gullies. Look for previously cleared lines and/or tree stumps that indicate somebody has been there before. When you think that you're someplace close to a corner, start sweeping with the detector set to it's most sensitive. Stick a lath on what ever pins you find, with the realization that it MAY NOT be the correct corner, until it is accurately measured to from other points. In other words, don't build a fence till you prove it more closely to your satisfaction. To do that you need an accurate chain, plumb bobs, hand level, and an instrument to keep you on line and to measure angles.
Not knowing how big your lot is, or what the topo or brush situation is like, it's hard to give any good advice.
Thanks guys. Well, the lot is 49 acres that has never been surveyed. All the adjoining lots have so I know where the corners are. The one line inparticular runs kind of diagonally up a
mountainside.
Steep!
I can walk it but end up using my hands now and again.
the whole property is broken up into a series of terraced levels so
line of sight is very tough. Well on the map it is a straight line from corner to corner, but
over the years it has been posted following old fence lines.
Apparently the cows were more concerned with topography then
legal property rights cause its all over the place. Mid way up is a logging road that I think is ours but the posted
signs cut it in two. Kind of need the only road up there!
49 acres with no tract surveys except adjoiners is gonna be tough. I'd start by getting copies of the metes & bounds for the adjoining tracts, and look for "ties" to corners. These can be tree "blazes," rock "cairns (piles)," or other physical features that can be identified. Look at the notes and see if actual pins were set, and not just stakes or rocks for corners. Fences are no indicator of where the actual line may be. The notes on the adjoiners will PROBABLY have ties to intermediate points so the surveyor could occupy them and see additional points down the line.
Not to be nosey, but how in the hell did you buy a piece of property that only had adjoining property surveys? You may or may not have 49 acres, and you may have more.
IMHO, you're gonna have to have a survey done, for no other reason than to avoid a big probate problem when the time comes.
Unless you discover gold or diamonds on it....
Not that uncommon for property to be unclear around here. Central New York.
In fact the deed says 30 but the town says 49 (and taxes us on 49).
I've a pretty good sense of property size and theres no way it's 30. If you take all the neighbors lines and add up the whole in the middle
it's 49.
No gold or diamonds but horizontal gas drilling is starting to
ramp up here so... There is an old marker at the bottom and one tie going up. then
another tie on the corner.
That's how come I think the road is our's. I'd like to have my
head screwed on straight before I talk to the neighbors about it.
Okie-dokey, here's what I'd do...but I don't live in New Yawk and don't know a damn thing about yer antiquated "township" rules. ;-)
Surveyors are the same everywhere. Less work they have to do, less they charge.
Get together all of the adjoiners most recent surveys, be it tax plats, metes & bounds, or whatever info is available to you. You do the leg work and get all this together. Try to find a "parent" survey, the one that all others were based off of, and include a copy of that plat. These don't have to be full size, just the area directly adjacent to your tract.
Make a rough sketch of your tract and label it with the adjoiners iin the proper place, and the road, where you THINK it is.
Go to a local surveyor and ask for an estimate for him to take the AVAILABLE INFORMATION, run a coordinate system, see if it closes reasonably close, provide one or two surveyors with a GPS reciever/station to attempt to find the corners called for on the plats. If found, to get GPS coords on the actual position of these monuments. You could break this up between office work and the actual field work as you could afford it.
In the old days we'd have to traverse to find these, and that takes money and time. You can accompany them with a machete and cold beer and make it a joyful and rewarding experience even if you don't find anything.
Just make it good beer...like Shiner Bock...
Hey thanks!
How does it work if it's the line that's unknown? I mean the neighbors have the corners marked (Markers on trees),
which I would fully believe. But the line in between should be
straight and it is not.
wouldn't the surveyor have to traverse the whole way and tag as he went? PS. I'll provide all the Shiner you want. When do you start?
PPS.
I'd even send ya back with some Catamount growlers.
Any figure with more than four sides is a polygon. It's relatively easy to find the "missing" side distance and bearing with the other sides known, or even the acreage.
If you know the coords of one point, and the coords of another point, you inverse between the two and get the bearing and distance. Then, if you have a "backsight" from another point, and the bearing to that point, you can calc the angle you need to turn to traverse to that point. That doesn't mean it's there as one point or the other may be innacurate enough to throw off the "true" bearing and distance of the other.
There may be angle points in between that don't show up, that's why you need all the adjoiners latest surveys, and the coords on all known points calc'd.
This is just information that will hep you talk to the surveyor.
I'm here fer yuh.
Unfortunately, I'm not liscenced to work in New Yawk, and I damn sure can't understand how ya'll talk...
Thanks, I'll do my homework.
Maybe a way for you to get a "free" survey.
Since you said the tract has never been surveyed, and is only described by adjoiners, you own a "remainder." Now with that said, technology has improved vastly over what it was when chaniage was used for distance measurememt. Lines adjoining your place may be only to the nearest 1', and if older, may be only to the nearest 10' rounded off.
So you don't know if you have 49 acres, 39 acres, or 59 acres, BUT yer being taxed on 49. I've worked on jobs that have sq ft prices nearing $500 where .01" over 50' makes a big $$$ difference. So we did a lot of surveys to update and "correct" the size of high-dollar tracts, and/or ROW encroachments.
So, get all your info together, make the sketch, and go to your taxing authority and ask, "how do ya'll know I've got 49 acres that yer taxing me on?" If they don't know, then you deserve TO KNOW, and it's their responsibility, IMHO, to provide you with that information. That being said, if you have more, they could ask for arrears on the unpaid taxes.
That's just the roll of the plumb-bob...
That's a good point. I don't think back taxes should be me problem,I've
only been here a year or so. Don't know about down there, but in this neck of the woods
getting the town to pay for anything is near impossible. Blood from a stone.
The squeeky wheel usually gets greased.
And then re-mounted...
Tom, henly is in an area of NY that is depressed and has been for years. The land is not valuable enough for most people to care. That being said, before I bought the property I would have had it surveyed..
Well,I never... Yeah, I should have, but the way I see it we bought 30 and maybe it's
50. To be honest they marketed the house and not the land. The building
alone was comparable to the selling price (at the time).
We are the rare folks who make use of a wooded mountainside on a
daily basis.
Sometimes I laugh when people assume that all of NY is like the city and the island. Oeople are a little scarce where you and Steve live.
I am not putting it down, it is a very pretty area, just a little sparsely populated.
I bet people would be shocked at how little it costs to own or buy that 30, maybe 50 acres!
Hell, I'd be depressed if'n I lived in New Yawk too.
All them Yankees and Giants hangin' around....
Not where he lives. He is real close to the baseball hall of fame. Lots of other teams represented there!
My baseball creds must not be in order.
I thought the Giants were football or something. It is true we live in a very rural area, and property prices
are lower.
It's about 1,200 to 2,000 an acre around here.
A modest home on a few acres can range from 100,000 to 200,000. We bought at the height, so I'm not telling.
Baseball and football. He was referring to football, I think.
Have you seen prices going down? The opposite around here!
No, every things very static. There's a Handyman special I've been keeping my eye on but
it's just sitting there. I'm very curious how the Gas drilling will effect things long term.
I mean how do you price something like that? So, Mohawk valley is going up? Sometimes I swear NY has nothing to do with the world at large.
3% last year. My house went up close to 10%. Why, I have no idea.
Of course that is Zillow, don't know how accurate they are.
A little hint, find out who everyone uses. There is a small chance he might have surveyed the land already!
One more thing, have ytou sold your gas rights yet?
Edited 1/25/2009 7:39 pm ET by frammer52
No, we aren't all that interested.
We have a farmer down the road that is trying to get
neighborhood organized, so we are supporting his efforts.
If it comes to pass, we'd rather just take the royalty check and forgo
the well on our land.
I know the fealing. i have heard the horror stories about the drilling, and wonder if it is just the same old people that don't agree with anything new.
I went to some town meetings where the Gas representatives
gave some talks.
Of course they said every thing was perfectly safe bla bla bla... What they point blank refused to divulge was how deep they will
"Frac". That could be very important in relation to the water table.
Second they refuse to say what chemicals they intend to use in the fracing process.
The chemicals are only used at that time, but the amounts of water
involved are staggering. I'm not against it myself. These things are part of life and you
deal with them the best you can.
Do I wish it wasn't an issue? YES!! All in all many people will do well by it. Just not those who already signed away there land for $5.00 an
acre (seriously a bunch already have) or the unfortunate ones who's
wells are contaminated.
"You may or may not have 49 acres, and you may have more."That is my case. It is what was left out of a 40 acre tract long ago. Then in a previous generation, the owner gave it to his daughter as a wedding present, and he blazed trees to mark the bonds.Then she sold off various portions over the years, and the tax man kept subtracting two acres and five acres, etc from the original.So when I bought, the tax card showed this as being 3.5 acres. I knew that was wrong, and did my own calc, coming up with 6.5 acres based on the math of the described meets and bonds.Then when my surveyors corrected everything, it came out to be 8.2 acres.
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LMAO.
Man, now you see the allure of surveying 'cause you can find "gold" in "vacancies," like in the Panhandle of Texas where there were old surveys that were incorrect and oil companies were leasing for thousands of dollars a month, and new "leases" were being found that were 20' wide and ten miles long.
Of course, slant drilling was illegal then...
It's slowly changing, but lots of land in Colorado gets sold without a survey ever having been done.
Damn. People would go to jail here in Texas if that happened. Our Standards and Practices REQUIRE you to monument all corners, or physically locate and describe the same. Plus the survey has to "close" to certain limits, and since the advent of laser range finders/GPS, it can be as much as 1/100,000 feet. With chain and transit, it was 1/5000. That's 1' "error" in 5000' total traverse.
Some counties/cities require the corners to be tied to the State Plane Coordinate system, and the local GIS database (Geographical Information System). That way any corner's coords are available to anybody that is interested.
See, we ain't as ignernt as ya'll Colonradans think we is....
funny!
Up here some pieces haven't been set to rights since
King George's land grant.
LOLI thought you'd tell me a version of that. Since I've sold land to a number of people from Texas, I've heard all sorts of stories about "how it has to be done". <G>Then there's the land sold without access...
"Version?" Do I detect a note of skepticism here?
Where's that swearin' Bible...
No. I think it's more likely that you know the real story and what I've been told before are the versions from those with little experience in the matter.
If you know where the corners are, there mabe be a trick you could use to get mid points. Equipment; three people, three cell phones and two very bright flash lights. In the dark, have two people stand at the known corners and one in the range mid way. have the mid way guy turn on his flash light as well as the far corner guy. By cell phone have the middle guy walk to align the beams. Tag it. mid guy continues toward either corner and marking when he gets the word his is aligned.
Not the best, but if you are just looking for general idea...
good idea, but I don't think it would work for me.
It's a long line with gullies and rock outcroppings. I'm thinking of getting a GPS unit and just plotting
it out the best I can.
Should be able to tell if the road is mine or not. I know I could find my way with a compass, but not
close enough to put up a marker.
I'm thinking of getting a GPS unit and just plotting it out the best I can.
Now, realize that civilian GPS is limited to 3m accuracy (that's 1.5m, 59", about 5' plus or minus). Most navigation units (not dum dum dashboard untis) use mathematical summing to get accuracy to about half that, plus/minus .75m, around 30"). Military gps will go to 1m, about the width of a person, call it 20" plus-minus. Plenty good enough to generat "eight place" coordinates for military use.
So, a handheld unit (cheap as $40-50 on ebay, you shop right) will get you close enough to turn on the metal detector if your notes indicate an iron rod or magnetic nail or pin.
My now ancient Magellan 320 will give my driveway's location to fractions of minutes of arc. But, I'll use the known benchmark for my lot if I need real precision.
Given that you probably have some long lines to lay out to encompass 49 acres, what you may want to do is to find places that do have good lines of sight, and from those intermediaries, you can measure over to the actual extents of the lot. Sometimes the toughest part about having rented a dumpy or y level was in deciding where to put the instrument (and how many times). Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
It's only important concerning that one
logging road. so, maybe +/- 5' would clear it up. then of course I have to hope the neighbor doesn't
freak out.
Mine is much wetland, dense forest, and an original line that traversed a ravine diagonally...lots of fun to try dead reckoning or line of sight guesswork.
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My dad used to because he was a logger. He'd sometimes get the ole original survey notes to help him. I think I still have a few chunks of dead trees that had survey markings on them. Haven't ever seen anything chiseled on to rocks though.
That's known as "orienteering", and it's a sport.
It's known as orienteering when it's a sport, yes. I'm not interested in the competition aspect of it and I'm not interested in looking for markers set only for the sport.
haven't done that, but have been taching my boy and my wife to read a compass.
This past summer me and the boy spent a day "dead reckoning".
there might be better ways to get yourself unlost in the forrest, but I learned dead reckoning in flight school and it's always made sense to me.
best part this past summer was watching my then 6 yr old explaining it to his Mom!
better part was her understanding it better from his explanation than mine.
some kids get to play with Dad's gps ... my boy get his own compass and flashlight.
Jeff
Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
thinking I'll have to remember and take this a step farther this summer.
especially on the camping trip with my nephew and his kid.
I can set out the day before from our camp site and leave "treasures" for the kids to find along the way. teach them to use a range finder as part of the game.
might also be a good test for the walkie talkies Santa got the boy this year ...
"base camp ... we're lost!"
Jeff
Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
When you leave treasures you can also leave directions to the next one.
What happens with this method is that they learn to get it right the first time because they all depend on the one before.
In orienteering we would come by teams that were completely lost because they didn't find the first one or skipped over one.
You can make the last one real big so it is worth the effort to get the ones before right.
I learned this in class recently. Understanding is based on understanding underlying principles that support it. If you skip one you really won't get the following ones.
This is especially important these days with instant access to info through the Internet.
People go right to the end without the foundational principle supporting it. So their understanding is shallow.
Besides, it's fun.
Anybody play around with sort of stuff?
No so much--the gross errors tend to cause infestations of lawyers and similar vermin <g>
Now, within establishable metes (i.e.. unconstested markers, pins, and the like), yeah, well, that's different. Laying off a diagonal or two from known points to establish other lines & points, that can be a good day outdoors.
Now, I do have a bone of contention in that I've not seen properly closed metes on a land survey in more than a decade. Back when I was schooled on these things, one was to have a Point of Beginning, and label that on the survey. The metes and bounds were to then traverse right around the site, and close on that POB. Fat chance of that, anymore. Most of the annotation is inverted, which makes laying out a traverse from the annotation more than tad frustrating. More so in the field for laying out a line along its reverse, than the problem in cad of dragging the line over to where it ought to be.
Trick of all of this is finding a comfort zone with the numbers. Angles are given to a precision of 1 second of arc, or 1/60th of 0.016º and distances to 1/100 of a foot, or not quite an 1/8 inch. Now, whether or not a 5/8" diameter iron rod can be hammered into place to match that can be debated (and occasionally is). Whether the person actually reading the numbers off of the laser theodilite used is checking them against a common-sense model of actual conditions is also debatable. I've not seen recent eveidence that the people taksed out to transcribe the generated numerical model on the survey file are double check at all.
But, that's me; others differ.
I swear that when I read your posts you "sound" like Maurice Minifield from Northern Exposure.
C'mon now, and fess up.
May I please have your autograph?...The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it. -Mark Twain...Be kind to your children....they will choose your nursing home....aim low boys, they're ridin' shetland ponies !!
you "sound" like Maurice Minifield from Northern Exposure
Who dat? Never heard of 'em.
Iffin I'd been on tv, shouldn't I be getting residual checks?Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
It is a show now in syndication. Maurice, a show character and a character in the show was a former NASA astronaut who made good and took his fortune to Alaska.
Kind of a renaissance man, and his scripted answers to many questions "sounded" a lot like some of yours.
<<Maurice Minnifield (Barry Corbin) is a patriotic ex-astronaut and millionaire entrepreneur, owner of the local radio station KBHR and newspaper, as well as fifteen thousand acres (60 km²) of local land. Determined to make tiny Cicely the next boomtown, on "the cusp of the new Alaskan Riviera," Maurice arranges to bring Dr. Fleischman to the town, which previously had no permanent physician. >>
...The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it. -Mark Twain...Be kind to your children....they will choose your nursing home....aim low boys, they're ridin' shetland ponies !!
That's why we always shoot "feet & meters," and "double the angles." If what shows up in the FB matches the data recorder print-out, then the problems lie with the orifice rats with their A&M degrees.... ;-)
That's why we always shoot "feet & meters," and "double the angles."
Yeah, but you're among, like, the last 25, 30 people old enough to remember how to "do it right." So, your experience is skewed.
I've seen a crew chief show up on site with a complete numerical model loaded up--but based on an erroneous assumption not checked on site. Had to point out that, yes, all those stakes jibed to 5 significant digits, but that we needed the piers to be plumb on 20'-0" centers, and not the 19'-11 3/8" we were finding on site . . .
Less nice was discovering that the part-time drafters last place I worked had inscribe3d an entire subdivision assuming that the lots had right angle corners, 'cause they looked that way. So, guess who found out the last site on the as-drawn was too tight because the sites were perfectly good rhomboids . . . ?Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Geez. Where did these drafters come from? Texas Tech? OU?
Didn't anybody ever tell'em to draw the subdivision limits first, then fit all the little lots in and make the roads run around'em? ;-)
Didn't anybody ever tell'em to draw the subdivision limits first
Precisely the problem. They were p/t'ers given OTJ under extreme time pressure. Most had little or no idea that the bearings had any real correlation to angles they understood. (Even less that you reallly need to choose one of the PL to align the building to, and not rotate "by eye". . . )
Not that p/t'ers are the only ones guilty of such. Had a boss use "close enough" once, it took an entire day to work out why one building overall was a brick short of the parallel other one . . . <sigh>Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
That's kinda like when you send a "cherry" construction inspector out to "supervise" a temporary off-ramp that is super-elevated on the "right-hand" lane (deceleration lane).
He got it backwards and re-marked the slope stakes "C-2.5' @ 25', instead of leaving them F-2.5' @ 25'.
We caught him before he'd had the entire 800 yards of fill and base dumped and processed. The 20-year blade-man said "hit jus' don' look rat...."
The 20-year blade-man said "hit jus' don' look rat...."
if it were not for the really good blademen out there, I'm not sure any of us would have any infrastructure at all.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Got that right. And the bad ones keep "Easy Drive" stakes in business...
"Played" with it professionally for thirty years. Still do an occasional fence line or finding somebody's corners, or a ROW.
I do 35 steps for 100', and 17-1/2 for 50'.
"Shanks Mare" and a rented metal detector is a damn sight less expensive than a GPS or a theo.
Reading old land grants and metes & bounds are a hoot. Especially when they're in varas....
>>Reading old land grants and metes & bounds are a hoot. Especially when they're in varas....I worked for a surveyor when I was a teen for 2 years. He showed me one set that said "In a northerly direction, go three cigarettes ona mule."Where there's a will, there are 500 relatives
LOL.
Saw one that said, "head west on a good walking horse for the time it takes to roll and smoke three cigarettes..."
As you couldn't erase any entries in FB's, I saw some ties to a corner once to a "3' diameter Live Oak Tree, bearing so-and-so, so-and-so feet." It was scratched out and dated a couple of days later and said that "lightning had felled the tree and the mules hobbled under it..."
I have to do that a lot. Add to that, the fact that some of the original surveys were done by amateurs too, it seems. here on the island, it used to be the old survey guys knew where all the markers were, but they have all died out and the new guys with GPS and digital and laptops find all the errors...
And even pros can make a mistake. I found an error in an easement I was conveying that read "Beginning at point A and proceeding northwesterly..." which should have been southeasterly. He was describing going into the lake!
I have to acquire permits at times on property with contested prop lines and when setback distance is an issue for an addition, I get deeply involved. One permit took over a year and a half due to neighbors raising one objection after another. Her final stroke was claiming that the addition would exceed setback allowances and she petitioned for a delay so she could get a survey to prove her claim.
once completed, it turned out that her own surveyor demonstrated that she has two feet LESS than she originally thought.
On another one, adjacent properties each were described by bounds that went clockwise around. The shared property line showed a different angle of direction on the two different deeds, creating a 2.5' discrepancy depending...but it was reconciled by other measurements and marker discoveries.
On my own place, when I had a survey done, I learned that I lost about 15' along one line, but overall gained almost two acres. I have a line that had been described as "following the drainage, more or less...." and that drainage is a seep through wetlands that ha moved back and forth with trees falling and floods over the years.... One defined point from the original going back 80-90 years was a pile of rocks near the roadway. That road was widened and moved about 40 years ago.
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Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime.
where ...
Excellence is its own reward!
I lived on a property once that was accessed by a road running through a neighbors yard.
Well, that guy fought it off and on for years till one of the lawyers
figured out it was the original road for the whole island!
Turns out it was still a public thoroughfare. He was not so happy.
It was a minor contention over a ROW thru mine that prompted my survey finally.Don't know how it goes in NY, but it sounds like it would be worthwhile for you to get a survey done and registered. Here, it is not merely having the survey done and paid for that means anything, it is the date it is registered at the courthouse that has some weight by virtue of precedence.
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Your right of course but until I
get our roof done the money isn't there. I haven't checked yet but 50 acre survey can't be cheap.
hell just google earth the county plot
Tried that. My lame HP desk top has the worst video card
out there, so no google earth. Now that you mention it, I'll get some one else to print it out for me!
interesting thread. If they are drilling for gas, you want that survey for your surface rights protection and mineral rights if you have them.My present property on the lake they shot one pin in 3 times and like mentioed earlier 3 pins about a foot apart. Also they said 10 feet of my property are in the lake. I cannot reclaim this due to provincal rules but big enough lot so don't matter much. Sure had a heated debate over that with the tax assessor as he came back 3 times to remeasure my boat house for 4-6 sq ft.Nothing will bring your neighbours out faster than a survey truck showen up!! I have noticed a crossed arm stance and a foot pointed down the line in question, next time you see it you will recognize the stance.As for the ortientering I was pretty good in Army Cadets but due to the passage of time have forgot most of it. My kids scout leader was trying to teach them about using a compass and was having a real bad time fiquring out north. I said "Stan first thing is go out side and get out of the steel building you are in" He looked a little sheep like.In 1986 an old family friend a real outdoors man my wife a, a new teacher friend of the old friend and I got permission to hike thru protected area in Prince Albert National Park in SK. We were retracing a diary from 1927 from the parks original residents, some relatives of mine. We followed old maps and cut lines from 1956. we made it to were we wanted and with amazing accuracy.
You kidding me?!!!?They don't have everything yet, and my place is half a mile up the road according to them
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Tom#### is the expert surveyor here.
That said, I am an avid amateur surveyor or that is my hobby.
The collection of "found" points 1 or so feet apart is known as a "pin cushion".
In boundary law, the ultimate boundary is defined by the monument. This can be a pile of stones, a piece of rebar, a rot-able wooden stake, a brass disk nailed into the sidewalk or whatever.
All the metes and bounds stuff is just a treasure hunt to lead you to the monument.
If you cannot find the monument, then you have to resort to the Sherlock Holmes mode and figure out where the monument should have been. Fences are not to be relied on. However, they may be considered to be accepted lines of occupancy if they today's surveyors cheat with wmeith digital transits and GPS devices. These can measure within ~5~7 seconds accuracy [one second is the diameter of a dime at a couple of miles] and also measure the distance to a couple of millimeters. The GPS can be accurate to within a couple of centimeters[?].
But the problem is that the modern surveyor is trying to retrace the footsteps of the original surveyor whose instuments would have been a transit accurate to maybe 20 seconds and distances we measured with steel tape through your ravines. Aside from correction factors to deal with the slope, there is also the problem of thermal expansion [of the steel tape due to the heat or cold at the time.
Thus the modern surveyor may proclaim that the monument should be "HERE" rather than "THERE" because his modern instruments more closely follow what is stated on the registed plat.
For compass readings, be advised that there is an annual variation and what the compass resisted at North 10 years ago is no longer North today.
~Peter and Cat, the Cat human
"For compass readings, be advised that there is an annual variation and what the compass resisted at North 10 years ago is no longer North today."LOL, all those GPS satellites are moving the magnetic pole, ain't they?
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The "magnetic" North Pole drifts over time. Magnetic North differs from "true" North by a certain amount, referred to as magnetic declination. Here is a calculator from NOAA to figure the magnetic declination for a particular date at your location.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomagmodels/struts/calcDeclination
Yeah, I know - anyone who goes into the woods needs to know the declination in that area.I was making a joke
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Exactly. That's why you have "seniority" of surveys. The older the better. However, "retracing" will just make a circa 1861 500' leg at S/30/W, a circa 2009, 501.668 at S/30 07 12/W and WILL be used to calc the area, and "hence" the area.
That's why GPS is so valuable, we don't have to rely on magnetic declination corrections unless oreinteering, and walking over bluffs... ;-)
My property in Central Colorado, which is unfortunately for sale now, comprises 9 mining claims from the 1880s. Place starts at the bottom near timberline and lies between about 11,800' & 12,800' -- steep as hell. The only survey ever done, if it really happened, was for the original patents. Everything else up there is now National Forest, with the exception of a few small inholdings like mine. Nobody knows with any accuracy just where boundaries lie. It's been glance-guesstimated that a survey of just my perimeter might cost around thirty grand.
Now, having had one surveying class in artichoke school about thirty years ago makes me an expert :D, so I made some effort, searched for any known adjacents -- none, and then downloaded topos & aerial photos, drew my lines in AutoCAD, applied declination corrections, and then overlaid the whole thing, keying on visible features. I think I got it fairly close, but haven't had much luck identifying old cairns or posts. Civilian GPS wasn't very useful, due to low precision.
The simple part is that each claim is 300'x1500', but then it gets tricky. The claims are not aligned with anything but the original miner's dream as to where gold lay, and my sketch looks like a bunch of popsckle sticks dropped from a plane. With overlaps, earlier/later claims, etc., it calculates out to about 74 acres -- with 40 corners! Now if you flattened the thing out, it might be a couple-hunnert acres :).
Some of the corners are located in places requiring a technical climb to reach, and some are in spots that are only snow-free for a little while in dry years. I really wonder just how vigilant the original surveyors were, what with the miners standing around with guns & all.
Anyway, it's a fun & challenging place to practice amateur skills, and can be had for a mere 110 grand -- survey not included.
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Edited 1/26/2009 6:30 pm by Ted Foureagles
Edited 1/26/2009 6:34 pm by Ted Foureagles
Those are called "points of convienence," like corners in the middle of a non-navigable stream. Usually accompanied by an explaination of why they weren't set.
Pencil-whippin' is still common when you gotta rappel to set'em...
Any of it ever prove up for gold?
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"Any of it ever prove up for gold?"
Not on my watch. I figured that the mountain had been beat on enough, and anyway about the last thing I wanted was a bunch of stinkin' money. Friend o' mine once took his fancy $50,000 sub-surface sonar or somesuch up there to play around. He hadn't yet figured out how to use the thing and came away frustrated, saying "Hell, everywhere I look there's everything"!
Those hills are still full of just about every mineral. Trick is economically extracting it. It's not easy land. The road up takes a good Jeep about an hour in 4-LOW for the top 8 miles in July & August. Part of the year, when the snow is dense, an experienced snowmobiler can get there, but more often will be held back by deep powder. I've snowshoed up several times and spent a few weeks in the old cabin. Most of us, at 12,000', wheeze like an old horse ready for the glue pot.
So yeah, there's probably lots of gold, and copper, and silver, and lead, and.... up there. Far as I know, nobody's tried working it in 125 years. I have the original mineral rights though, so if everything goes to Newark in a handbasket I guess I could try twiddling out some shiny stuff for a livin'.
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PS/Edit: Just realized that I didn't answer your question. My answer is I don't know. There are no records that I've seen showing gold taken from those specific claims back in the day. It was sort of a fast & loose time with no abundance of literacy or fastidiousness in reporting. Apparently, the area (Monarch district) paid-out well enough. I know that there was some criteria for establishing a claim that required mineral proof of some sort that it could be a paying mine. I have no idea how credible those proofs were.
Edited 1/26/2009 6:35 pm by Ted Foureagles
"Kyptonite, man!" "We need Kyptonite, and qwickwy."
Elmer Fudd doing Lex Luthor...
Now Kryptonite I can get ya' in quantity. Transportation cost is a bit steep.
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I stayed on a claim up above Central City/Blackhawk for a couple months back in about '71. Lot of folks maintained the claims to keep control on the land which was trending to become more valuable to develope for tourism than for mineral.
I don't recall the details now.I think an original claim had to be worked for X number of months continuously, and a certain grade of ore had to be shown.
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I was reading the quarterly newsletter from the Minnesota state engineering board today and thought of this discussion. They had a recent case where a company here was offering services to the public to go out, find and identify property markers and corners. The problem was this company didn't have any licensed surveyors on staff, which the board took a dim view of...they ended up with a cease and desist order, and had to pay a fine of $2500. The whole story is here: http://www.aelslagid.state.mn.us/TheLocatingCompany.pdf
Years ago the State of Texas would give an Civil Engineer (certified) a RPLS license to any who applied for it. Didn't have to survey a lick, just apply. Additionally, if you were in "responsible control" of a field party, or parties, you could get your certification also, by being "grandfathered."
All that changed in the '60's when more and more busted surveys around oil leases ended up costing the State millions.
Now, it doesn't matter who you are, you gotta pass the test to be licensed, CE degree or not.
However, with a license, an engineer or RPLS may supervise any number of parties and sign and stamp their work.
I loved having shave-tail CE's spend three months on a survey party...
I loved having shave-tail CE's spend three months on a survey party...
It was probably good for them to get some real world experience. That's always been a problem with engineering school, they don't necessarily teach a lot of practical knowledge.
That's a definite A-Men...