Land Surveyor Forum

Replies

• 

  Chris Root March 16, 2009 at 10:36am

  Welcome Steve! I suffer the same malady after work, I just moved to the state of Texas a year ago, so I don't know anyone professionally here except those I've chatted with on this site I work for a major road and bridge builder, and not a Surveyor ... I am the Surveyor :) ). And my wife gives me a blank look when I start talking shop, her eyes glaze over and I could be talking about tap dancing pink elephants for all she knew.
  
  That's really awesome working on a 15th century hotel, I'd love to visit the UK and see all of the old buildings there. Really Europe in general, I'm a huge history buff and to see and touch such antiquity would be a dream come true.
  
  I'm also a big fan of Leica instruments, though I feel their GPS lacks in overall user friendliness compared to others on the market. But so far, and I've used most brands of survey equipment going back to the T-1 days, Leica has the best Total Stations. The best accuracy IMO, I've done first order work with them and had no problems getting the 3 millimeter accuracy (and better for the most part!)I needed every time. The durability stands out to me as well, I had an instrument man leave the total station (it was in the box luckily) on the tailgate of the truck when we took off for lunch. When I accelerated onto the road to get ahead of traffic, it slid off and rolled several times until it came to a rest on the other side of the road. Luckily a friend of mine that worked for another company was there as well, saw the mishap, and grabbed the box before it could get ran over by traffic. He brought it to me with a large smile, "Did you drop something?" He asked. Needless to say I was quite embarrassed and angry at the same time. We took the gun out and set up, checking every control point we had on the job ... there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. I told the instrument man, "Today is the luckiest day of your life." The gun withstood several bounces on pavement and still kept it's accuracy. The box did it's job very well.
  • Land Surveyor

    Steve > Chris Root March 21, 2009 at 4:08pm

    Haha! I've never had an instrument fall off the back of a vehicle but I know just how strong the boxes are... A couple of the juniors didn't have enough road signage when they were doing a road survey for a vision splay, so they decided to put the box on the verge with a hi-viz vest over it. Needless to say this wasn't their best idea (youngsters huh) and the box soon got hit by a HGV!!! The box went flying into the hedgerow, smashing on impact, the vest shredded, the lads baffled! Luckily the TCR was on the tripod and the box was empty apart from a mini-prism! The box only suffered a light crack on the handle. Amazingly robust all of Leicas equipment and accessories.
    
    The 15th century hotel was an interesting one, the walls weren't square, were leaning and were of changing thickness!!! The only thing that was "solid" was the elements of the timber frame, but even then they were nearing 500 years old and were warped and twisted!!! So it was a challenge, but luckily we managed to marry together the total station with the more traditional tape and disto data capture techniques and provide the clients with accurate plans. Do you carry out many measured building surveys in the US? It's something that nearly all land surveyors in the UK deal with, but in all the job advertisements I've seen for the US it's not mentioned... But anyway, below I've added a link so you can have a peek at the hotel in all its glory!
    
    Steve
    
    http://www.theswanatlavenham.co.uk/default.aspx
    • 

      Chris Root > Steve March 23, 2009 at 12:19pm

      We do measured building surveys in the US, but it's not very common. It mostly occurs in more rural areas where boundary lines go through walls such as condos, townhomes, and businesses that share a "party wall". The party wall is usually the boundary line, so to prove the condo or whatever it is, is within it's allotted boundary, we have to measure inside as well as the outside boundary.
      
      Another type of building surveys we do here is with a scanner. I left a company last year that did a lot of this, scanning Universal Studios:Orlando and Tokyo were two of the more high profile projects. It's high accuracy stuff, very interesting to see the finished product.
      
      Very cool hotel, I'd love to stay sometime :) I'm a big fan of medieval Europe, and that particular style of architecture especially. It's funny that the hotel was built in 15th century but that style of "Tudorbethan" didn't come about until late 19th to early 20th century ... it was ahead of it's time :) It had a giant comeback in home design in the 1970's and 1980's here in the US, and being that I was raised in the 70's and 80's, I came to be fond of it.