Metes & Bounds.

[imwjl]

A tangent in our what to do with cabin thread is it being suggested and some parties explicit asking for an up to date surveying job. Now I know why and how all sorts of things get fought with real estate matters. Why the septic people mandate modern surveying. Upon reading:

Commencing at a point 80 rods East and 15 rods and 10 links North and 550 feet East of the quarter post between......

That aside, I had some great time wasting tangents on old mapping and real estate. A surveyor seems to have a more interesting job than a lot of people might realize. I look forward to learning how text close to 120 years old will match up with a modern CAD file and where the stakes will be in the ground.

 

[Preacher]

Yep, I had a house that once had an "old oak tree" as a corner marker. Luckily the old oak was still there.

 

[Telekarster]

Yep. A friend of mine is getting a whole house generator installed and his county has a requirement for an up to date survey before they'll give him a permit for the work. I don't know why they'd want that for a generator, but I suppose there must be some reasoning behind it? Either that or they're just messing with him LOL!!

 

[Marc Morfei]

Surveyors have various ways to figure that stuff out. Sometimes they pull the deeds from neighboring properties to see if the boundary descriptions are any better. (The boundary should be the same for both deeds.) More often than not they look for markers left by some previous surveyor. A surveyor told me you'd be surprised how often they find something, if you get close to where you think the property corner is and start poking around.

When there is no good record of a property boundary, they have a way to deal with that also. Because once the "metes and bounds" are recorded in a deed, then it becomes the legal record of a property and is very difficult to disprove.

 

[Marc Morfei]

Yep. A friend of mine is getting a whole house generator installed and his county has a requirement for an up to date survey before they'll give him a permit for the work. I don't know why they'd want that for a generator, but I suppose there must be some reasoning behind it? Either that or they're just messing with him LOL!!

Just making sure you're actually putting it on your property, and not your neighbor's.

 

[Buckocaster51]

When I was on the city council we oft had to deal with structures built on city streets of the wrong lot.

 

[trapdoor2]

Took me a while to decipher our survey from 2014. Finally grokked the directions.

Ours is corner-staked in heavy iron rebar. Easy to find.

 

[mr natural]

I wrote this those legal descriptions and drew the surveys (and plats and ALTA surveys and easements) for 3 years. Good experience. Got my foot in the door at my current job.

 

[fasthand]

I spent many years as a young man into adulthood working for my father land surveying
I worked on many lot, highway, farm, large airports I even worked for the engineering firm in Boston’s big dig
I had good eyes was an instrument man on the crews over the years.
Learned about using solar and North Star references the math was way beyond me but good experience nonetheless.
My training in measuring and drafting as well as knowledge of blueprints led to be a packaging and display designer for the last 36 years much warmer occupation in February lol

 

[imwjl]

When I was on the city council we oft had to deal with structures built on city streets of the wrong lot.

If not be on the city council - thank you - everyone should do as I did and say yes when appointed to committees or just volunteer or be aware of their city hall. I'm sure that explains a pragmatic part of you that I sense.

For all, I'm actually serious about giving some time like that. It was a wonderful experience for growth and understanding. If you give locally and know your mayor etc.... you'll be able to feel better about the world and people. You really can make a difference.

 

[trapdoor2]

I wrote this those legal descriptions and drew the surveys (and plats and ALTA surveys and easements) for 3 years. Good experience. Got my foot in the door at my current job.

I surveyed and staked for a 50' X 50' hangar when I was 16. Used an old transit, taught myself, etc. When the real surveyor arrived, he was happy with my work and just translated my stuff into official survey-speak on the plat. My Dad nearly bust a button.

When we finished the hangar, it was dead square and dead level. Still standing!

 

[mr natural]

I surveyed and staked for a 50' X 50' hangar when I was 16. Used an old transit, taught myself, etc. When the real surveyor arrived, he was happy with my work and just translated my stuff into official survey-speak on the plat. My Dad nearly bust a button.

When we finished the hangar, it was dead square and dead level. Still standing!

The engineers let me design a housing development myself. It was never built because the builder went bankrupt in the housing crash around 2008 and the property has been in legal limbo ever since.

 

[Kandinskyesque]

Now and again, I like to dig out the very first book I bought for university.
None of it is that relevant anymore is these days of satellites, GPS and total stations.
Maybe after the apocalypse I'll be King of the World with my theodolite.
I'll just need to check that pencil still fits behind my ear.

 

[Buckocaster51]

“When building it is almost always easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Something Artie said to me during a council meeting.

 

[Stubee]

I started learning survey terminology back when my Dad inherited my grandfather’s lake cottage. He told me that if you read back far enough you’d find the parcel had been purchased from Native Americans, and that piqued my interest. I learned more when I bought a house outside of town, and more yet with a trout stream parcel. The basics are pretty useful.

I think I’ve personally hired only one surveyor. I owned 21 acres on a trout stream I decided to sell. I built a cabin on the first piece I bought and later purchased an adjoining 10.5A piece with a heap of stream frontage. My neighbor to the N was on a 5A piece as were two more guys just past him so I didn’t feel bad about cutting my piece up a bit. I did want to maintain the northern beauty of the pieces.

I drew up a detailed overlay on the original survey of the split. I wanted to do a piece with my cabin, an adjoining piece that was nice and high and a last piece that was larger but too wet to build much on. All pieces had bountiful beautiful & usable river frontage. A surveyor went out there & roughed out his work but when I saw his ribbons it was obvious he didn’t understand at all what I’d planned. So I paced each piece off using three colors of survey tape and my compass—this was 32 years ago— and told the surveyor what to look for. He then got it right. That told me he maybe hadn’t done much new plot surveying?

I used the info when looking at parcels being sold for delinquent taxes etc, too. Like many skills mine are now rusting a bit.

 

[Harry Styron]

I was the legal editor for book on surveying riparian boundaries in Missouri that has just been released. Determining property lines along meandering streams is very complicated.

 

[David Barnett]

I was the legal editor for book on surveying riparian boundaries in Missouri that has just been released. Determining property lines along meandering streams is very complicated.

What happens when the stream changes path?

 

[David Barnett]

We get fun stuff like the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of the south half of the southwest quarter of Section 36, Township 04N, Range 14W.

 

[telleutelleme]

The Sabine River separating Texas and Louisiana has been in dispute for a long long time. Texas adopted multiple land grids and the legal descriptions based on them have been the subject of many court cases. Metes and bounds, if the physical features still exist are often the best description of a boundary. Coordinate reference systems are conflicted and with the newly emerging dynamic datums will only get more complicated.

 

[Harry Styron]

What happens when the stream changes path?

If it changes through accretion (gradually), the boundary moves to take in the previously submerged dirt. If it changes through avulsion (suddenly), the boundary remains in the same place.

There are many other rules and corollaries relating to whether a stream is navigable or non-navigable, whether the same owner owns both sides, whether the stream shifted because of manmade modifications or natural forces, etc.