I agree, so many "field surveyors" these days get a recent survey of the property, they find rods with fancy caps sticking up out of the ground, tie those down and call it good. What if a survey party chief 3 surveys ago turned a wrong angle or shot a wrong distance when they set the rods, what if there is a rusty old wagon axle from the original survey buried in the ground a foot from a rod sticking up out of the ground? But no one has bothered to look for it since there has been a piece of rebar sticking up out of the ground near it's location for years. I have a tract of land outside of town that I was lucky enough to obtain a nice legible copy of an 98 year old survey, we take any possible new hire "survey party chiefs" out there, and see if they can retrace the survey, which includes some hack marks in a tree, bearings to a corner of an old farm house (still standing) ,bearings to a clump of oaks, etc. One recent applicant's resume said "Crew Chief" at another surveying company, when asked if he could retrace boundary lines with a copy of an old metes and bounds, he asked me if I was going to upload coordinates into the data collector so he could stake them out, because he did not know about bearings or azimuths, etc. Come to find out, his entire surveying carreer spanded 4 months, 2 as a rodman then was promoted to "crew chief". He is now our newest rodman. If people continue training button pushers, there will be very few actual "field surveyors" left in 20 years. I believe the button pushers also lead to some of the problems other surveyors run across in the field, and lead to poor opinions of as to where a boundary corner is. Give them a transit, chain, compass, and some of Darrel Shine's literature. I do my best as time allows to teach my guys (and myself) fundamentals, retracement steps, abstracting information from previous deeds, look for things like boundary line agreements, and don't trip over a rod sticking out of the ground and say "there it is", and then tell the responsible surveyor that you searched , and that is all that was there.
Contrary to popular belief I do not believe Land Surveyors are iron rod and iron pipe finders. Rather I believe we are charged with locating the original boundary we are retracing. We are also charged with bringing evidence to light of alternative boundaries that may have superseded the original boundary or conflicts that may arise from interpreting an adjoining description in a way that creates a boundary at odds with the original boundary.
Many Land Surveyors fail to take in to consideration all the evidence available and this is why they arrive at poor opinions as to where a boundary is located at. My favorite story is that of a question which appeared in the Texas State specific portion of the NCEE exam. The question goes "You are retracing a description that calls for a point (no monument mentioned just a point for corner) as a terminus of a leg and you travel the bearing and distance called in the leg and the point falls south of a rusty old pipe 1 foot. It falls east of an old fence post 7 tenths of a foot and it falls 3 tenths of a foot north of a shiny new 3/8 inch iron rod. Where is the corner?" This is all the information you are given to answer the question with. You would be surprised how many people got this question wrong.
Mr. Hunter I have seen a l of it myself. I have written a number of things about it. While I do set monuments very close to existing iron rods and pipes I find if the monument falls within the standard of tolerance it is on the corner. This is not to say that I do not weigh any of the evidence found near the corner. It simply means that I believe what we found is either goat stakes or replacement monuments set in error. There are instances where I will change the distance or bearing to fall on an existing monument there are other times when I will not. It depends on the evidence and the known facts.
It is becoming overwhelming how many double pinned corners I am coming across in my neck of the woods, at first I thought these newest ones may have of had a pipe driven beside them to protect the corner, but alas, the last surveyor found the iron rods, then set iron pipes right beside them and made his calls to the pipes with references to the rods. One was a tenth different, the other was six hundreths. Just don't know about some people...................
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I agree, so many "field surveyors" these days get a recent survey of the property, they find rods with fancy caps sticking up out of the ground, tie those down and call it good. What if a survey party chief 3 surveys ago turned a wrong angle or shot a wrong distance when they set the rods, what if there is a rusty old wagon axle from the original survey buried in the ground a foot from a rod sticking up out of the ground? But no one has bothered to look for it since there has been a piece of rebar sticking up out of the ground near it's location for years. I have a tract of land outside of town that I was lucky enough to obtain a nice legible copy of an 98 year old survey, we take any possible new hire "survey party chiefs" out there, and see if they can retrace the survey, which includes some hack marks in a tree, bearings to a corner of an old farm house (still standing) ,bearings to a clump of oaks, etc. One recent applicant's resume said "Crew Chief" at another surveying company, when asked if he could retrace boundary lines with a copy of an old metes and bounds, he asked me if I was going to upload coordinates into the data collector so he could stake them out, because he did not know about bearings or azimuths, etc. Come to find out, his entire surveying carreer spanded 4 months, 2 as a rodman then was promoted to "crew chief". He is now our newest rodman. If people continue training button pushers, there will be very few actual "field surveyors" left in 20 years. I believe the button pushers also lead to some of the problems other surveyors run across in the field, and lead to poor opinions of as to where a boundary corner is. Give them a transit, chain, compass, and some of Darrel Shine's literature. I do my best as time allows to teach my guys (and myself) fundamentals, retracement steps, abstracting information from previous deeds, look for things like boundary line agreements, and don't trip over a rod sticking out of the ground and say "there it is", and then tell the responsible surveyor that you searched , and that is all that was there.
Contrary to popular belief I do not believe Land Surveyors are iron rod and iron pipe finders. Rather I believe we are charged with locating the original boundary we are retracing. We are also charged with bringing evidence to light of alternative boundaries that may have superseded the original boundary or conflicts that may arise from interpreting an adjoining description in a way that creates a boundary at odds with the original boundary.
Many Land Surveyors fail to take in to consideration all the evidence available and this is why they arrive at poor opinions as to where a boundary is located at. My favorite story is that of a question which appeared in the Texas State specific portion of the NCEE exam. The question goes "You are retracing a description that calls for a point (no monument mentioned just a point for corner) as a terminus of a leg and you travel the bearing and distance called in the leg and the point falls south of a rusty old pipe 1 foot. It falls east of an old fence post 7 tenths of a foot and it falls 3 tenths of a foot north of a shiny new 3/8 inch iron rod. Where is the corner?" This is all the information you are given to answer the question with. You would be surprised how many people got this question wrong.
Mr. Hunter I have seen a l of it myself. I have written a number of things about it. While I do set monuments very close to existing iron rods and pipes I find if the monument falls within the standard of tolerance it is on the corner. This is not to say that I do not weigh any of the evidence found near the corner. It simply means that I believe what we found is either goat stakes or replacement monuments set in error. There are instances where I will change the distance or bearing to fall on an existing monument there are other times when I will not. It depends on the evidence and the known facts.
It is becoming overwhelming how many double pinned corners I am coming across in my neck of the woods, at first I thought these newest ones may have of had a pipe driven beside them to protect the corner, but alas, the last surveyor found the iron rods, then set iron pipes right beside them and made his calls to the pipes with references to the rods. One was a tenth different, the other was six hundreths. Just don't know about some people...................