Tired of poor surveys

[Engineer]

Just a humble chime-in here, since a great deal of my work is surveys of forested lands and lines.  We generally place corner markers of 5/8" rebar, and flag witness trees.  If a corner's in the middle of the woods, we will usually blaze and paint witness trees and indicate size and species on the map.  In most cases, the owner WILL NOT pay to have the lines blazed and painted.  I can't do it for free.

I have had success using cheap floor enamel (oil-base) from any home center or even Wal-Mart.  I told the paint guy to tint it as bright yellow as he could get it, and let me tell you, you could see that line for a quarter mile through the trees.

As far as boundaries are concerned, monuments such as pins, pipes, concrete or stone markers are referenced as corners as long as they are also referenced on a prior survey or deed.  If not, it's our discretion unless there is another overriding factor.  In the case where we have two properties with a fence or stone wall between them, and the deed of X says "bounded by Y" and the deed of Y says "bounded by X", then we use the wall or fence.  If one deed is vague and the other uses metes and bounds to decribe the line, than we use the metes and bounds and ignore the wall or fence (unless it's an agreed-upon boundary by both parties).  So the short answer to any boundary issue is - it depends.  My property is marked by stone walls, wire fence and iron pipes in all corners.  Can't do better than that.

[Ron Scott]

Swamp,

You must be using Nelson's Econo-spot paint at $8.18/gallon. It is a 2-3 year paint. Nelson's Boundary line paint is a 5-7 year paint at $17.46/gallon.

[Corley5]

The MiDNR uses Nelson Boundary for sale boundary lines as well as property lines.  It's good stuff and last a long time.  The redlines are still visible around some 10+ year old sales  We use the cheaper stuff to mark trees.  The last batch of boundary paint we got had boundary spelled as boundry :  Somebody missed that ;D

[DanG]

Maybe you guys can help me with a situation I have.  My south boundary is in dispute. The "traditional" boundary was established 30 years ago by previous owners of both properties. Monuments were in place on all corners when I bought the place. Previous neighbor passed away and his widow sold part of the land to a relative, who then died, and it reverted back to her, then she died, leaving the whole mess to her grand-daughter.(they had a couple of bad years. :-/)  During all this, their place was re-surveyed, by the original surveyor, and he moved the line 13 ft onto my place. Shortly before that, the east neigbors sold out, and the same surveyor re-marked my southeast corner in it's original location. Now, that surveyor has lost his license and left the area, leaving me with nobody to file an appeal with. Neither the neighbor, or I, want to pay for a new survey, and, frankly it isn't bothering either of us. But, it could be a problem, down the road, if either of us sells out.
Any ideas on a recourse? We're talking about 13' along a 1600' boundary, which amounts to less than 1/2 acre. Land value is less than $2000/a, so it isn't worth a whole lot of expense. Both of us value our neighborly relationship more than that, so there won't be a fight unless one of us sells.

[SwampDonkey]

Ron

Its log marking paint, probably the difference there.  And its $8.00 per spray can, not per gallon. CDN prices. My Tremclad is good paint, I can find trees spotted over ten year ago with it. But of course depends on the age of the line trees and species. Poplar and fir grow and heal fast, it would be pushing it to expect for than 5 years on them. Better trees would be hardwood, hemlock, red spruce , black spruce and especially white cedar that are slower growing and live the longest. But we have to use what we got available on the lines.

I agree with Engineer about marking the lines. That's what happens in my kneck of the woods. The landowner sometimes doesn't give it much thought about the work involved in brushing, blazing and painting the lines. And 9/10 landowners won't bother to do it themselves. Usually lines are marked only prior to harvest in most cases. I was on a lot today that had pretty sparse ribbons or blazes. With the GPS I did find some evidence, but not enough to do a comfortible reconnaissance job on. I was cruising the lot and had to traverse a field with the GPS also. Geometry was crap this morning but by 10 am I had a solid lock with under 4 PDOP even under thick balsam fir thinning (12 m tall). I couldn't believe the snow depth, its almost nothing. Going to be one DanG dry spring.

Ok, getting away from the topic again ;)

[Frickman]

DanG,
If it was me, I'd shake hands with the neighbor and agree to never say anything about it to anyone. If the two of you are in agreement on where the line is, leave it at that. Folks notice anytime a surveyor comes out, and you might open a whole hornets nest of problems if you did something right now. Even if you resurvey it now, down the road someone might contest it and you'd have to do it all again.

I've got a gripe about surveyors, at least some around these parts. A property owner will hire them to find and mark all the corners and flag the lines, and the surveyor will try to do the whole job with one role of flagging tape and a can of spray paint. And he'll use dark blue or green too. He'll mark everything with about one inch of tape or a dot of paint, instead of leaving a long tail of ribbon to see. About a year or so ago I looked at a property that had just been surveyed and I had to hunt half the day for tiny pieces of dark blue ribbon. For the prices they charge they could buy a couple rolls of bright orange ribbon and use some of it. OK, time to get down off the soapbox.

[Stan]

My longest boundary is with the Forest Service, and they keep it marked pretty good. That makes me happy cause I can't stand on the side of that hill.  :-/

[Josh Walton]

Dan G. Talk to a land Surveyor and see if they do boundary line agreements. In some locales this is common and in others unheard of. Basicaly you and your neighbor agree to the disputed line and put it in writing. It would be worth a call to find out. Most of the frustration about poor surveys, at least on the first page seem to relate to line maintenance. In my area, I wouldn't consider this a primary job of a surveyor unless a client speciffically asks for it. I need to qualify that statement because customs and survey requirements vary so differently from locale to locale. The orginator of this post staed he couldn't find any line evidence from a survey done in 1982. That survey is 22 years old , paint fades, tree die and rot and deer eat flagging, most seasoned party chiefs would have trouble finding clues and thats what there trained to do. The survey MUST "look good on paper" because that is how a survey is documented. The next surveyor can use the 1982 survey and find your lines. Like in your profession, a corner or line is determined by reviewing the facts and making an educated opinon. Every surveyor has an opinon and often they differ even with the same measurements. Hope this helps.

[Sawyerfortyish]

I went to look at a tract of timber that the property owner had surveyed 2 years earlier. We couldn't make head or tails out of the survey couldn't find any markers.So my brother has a friend that surveys for the state take a look at it. First words out of his mouth was this survey ain't worth the paper it wrote on it does't close. He set up some instrument on this survey map measured angles and distance. He said that all surveys will come around in some shape back to the starting point on paper. This one didn't if you used the angles and measurments written on the paper they wouldn't come togeather. The landowner had to go back to the surveyer he used and get him to correct the map. After that we were able to locate all the lines . Man i'm sure glade i got another surveyer involved the lines were nowhere near where the owner thought they were but he knows now.

[jrdwyer]

As a forester, I don't expect property lines to be readily visible in the woods 20 years after a survey. Evidence of past cutting yes, but flagging or wood stakes or painted trees, no. But I get very frustrated when surveyed corners are not documented in such a way as to be found later. A surveyor who references a historical stone in the woods as a corner but does not place a steel pin or steel stake next to it or does not use bearing trees adjacent to the corner for reference is doing the landowner a very minimal service.

In this specific survey, the distance and bearing to the NE stone corner (in question) was only calculated in one direction, from a pin in the NW corner. But alas, the NW pin is in a thick grown-up field of young trees and briars and I could not find it even using a metal detector. If it's there, its skinny rebar below the surface with no above ground marker next to it. The other direction to the NW corner simply listed the historical (deed) information for distance and bearing to a documented section center stone. The Forest Service thought enough of this section center stone to reference it with an aluminum bearing tree marker 3 years prior to the 1982 survey. Still there and still ledgible. Anyway, it sure makes me wonder what I would fine if I went out with a ProMark2 GPS and checked the corners myself. But $5K is a little out of my budget right now.

Hats off to the surveyors and Forest Service employees who reference their corners so that those of us who come later can find them without using a total station.

[SwampDonkey]

jrdwyer:

You don't need a $5000 GPS to find lines and corners. I use a $1800 GPS ( with vertex averaging) to find lines and I download GIS shapefiles onto it to help me search. Its not even a DGPS and I find marks in the woods where my GPS says they are. Sometimes I'll come across a bad GIS map, its not the GPS's fault. And I know the map is wrong because of the evidence in the field such as road intersections, stream crossings and cut boundaries. There are 2 sources of the data, one from DNRE (with roads, stand boundaries, streams, silviculture, power lines layers.. etc) and one from Service NB (property lines layer and highway layer). Thales Navigation's Mobile Mapper with its Office software may be an option for you. You can read some literature on it at my site. Its a 12 channel WAAS receiver.

http://www.klondikekonsulting.com/Website/gps.htm

and scroll to the bottom and there are links under special interest.

cheers

[OneWithWood]

Tuesday I walked my property with the district forester and a state biologists in preparation for a field day planned sometime this fall.  Both gentlemen expressed accolades for the way my property lines are marked.  The steel fence posts with 2" pvc slid over the posts are easly visible.  The white posts really stick out in the woods and I have painted the tops of the posts with flourescent pink marking paint for increased visibilty when the leaves are out.  The corners are identified as corners.  My classified wildlife, classifed forest and Tree Farm System signs are attached to each post also.  This method of marking lines after a survey has been suggested to other land owners by the district forester.  

[jrdwyer]

SwampDonkey,

Thanks for the link to your website. A lot of good information. The rugged Panasonic handheld looks like a decent field computer. Does its GPS unit receive well under the trees without a seperate antenna? And does Microsoft Pocket PC work better than the old Windows CE? I am upgrading my equipment right now so this is timely.

[SwampDonkey]

jtdwyer:

I use the Panasonic GPS offered by Panasonic Canada (I'm sure they have it in US also). I use it under canopy which is up to 10 meters tall with foliage. In fall and winter you can use the unit in mature hardwood stands. Cedar stands are difficult to maintain a good fix though.This is the case even for Trimble's units. There is no antenae option on the Panasonic gps module.  But Sokkia.com has a WAAS enabled embedded GPS  option you get installed in your Panasonic unit, it has an antena port. Its rather expensive for a WAAS reciever though. Purchase the Panasonic HPC with their GPS  from Sokkia. I'd recommend Thales Mobile Mapper unless you want a WinCE device to use for collecting cruise or site data. I beleive it has an antenna port also.  It also comes with its own desktop software. With the Panasonic option you'll need to purchase ArcPAd from ersi.com (download a full working demo for both the desktop and WinCE unit - 30 day trial) or Sokkia's own mobile GIS software. Arcpad will also work with the Sokkia GPS and its highly recommended.

Pocket PC and WinCE are different OS's, they even look different on the screen. WinCE looks like the screen on your desktop computer. I've never encountered any problems with the WINCE OS and I've never used a PocketPC. Both use stylus pointers, but the Panasonic unit is the only ruggedized HPC with a QWERTY keyboard. There is alot more software for Pocket PC though. But all mobile GIS programs work on WinCE devices. I use SysWare's VisualCE and ReportCE for WinCE to make database forms for data collection and to synchronize to the desktop PC database. I don't think you can get a ruggedized PocketPC yet, although you can buy cases. These cases however do not accomodate the GPS module which sticks out of the CF slot. The Panasonic or the Trimble units are ruggedized to keep out moisture and dust, but not submersible. Mobile Mapper is submersible to 30 meters I think, but it uses a  proprietory OS

I am working on a pdf file of my services and it includes some screen shots of my Visual CE forms and desktop database forms I use for collecting cruise data and site data for management plans. Check my homepage in about a week for a draft copy. It'll be near the middle of the page with a clickeable link. It will contain alot of the content off my website but in one package with a few extra bits of info throughout.

cheers

[Darly]

It is better to have your lines marked well; but you cannot control what your predecessors in title did. In Florida, a fence line or a stand of timber can take precedence over a survey; as surveying techniques change, many Courts are reluctant to alter lines every few years.

[DanG]

Thanks to all of you who addressed my problem, which doesn't seem to really be a problem, at all.  The original iron stake is still on the fence line...I just couldn't find it among the weeds, last summer. The "new" line was only marked with some flagging on the fence, and a wooden stake. I think the "problem" was the result of a road widening project, some 14 years ago. The neighbor, whose property fronts on the highway, which was a little narrow dirt road, before, probably lost some footage, and the "surveyors" were apparently trying to recover his loss by encroaching on my footage. The wooden stake, and the flagging on the fence have been removed, and I DIDN'T do it, and the neighbor didn't do it, so the surveyors must have reviewed and corrected their work.

Welcome to the new faces that have showed up on this thread with some solid advice. It is appreciated, and I hope y'all stick around.

[Scott]

 We had one of our lines done about 16 years ago after some of our land was illegally cut. Up until now this line was really neglected. the past couple weeks i've been beating my way through the fir and spruce regrowth trying to find any remaining markers or sections of line. Anyone who has a line thats going down hill, get out there and fix it up while you can still find it! It'll save you a lot of trouble later on.

[Ron Scott]

Amen! to that. Once you have your lines surveyed, keep them maintained so you don't have to pay to have the surveyor come out and resurvey them again for you.  :-[

It's surprising how many forest landowners let their property lines go unmaintained to the point where they have difficulty finding them again.