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No, no lat/long. Metes and bounds or distances and bearings. Hire a forester to check the boundaries for you, it's cheaper than a surveyor and they're not going to do more than make sure things appear to be where they're supposed to be according to the deed. It ain't rocket science.
You could also hire a guy down at the home depot even cheaper.
If there's a concern that the boundary lines themselves are being altered, you need to get a surveyor out there. With a recent survey having been done, a retracement/cutting out the line won't be very expensive.
As far as what was removed, the flagging being taken down isn't a big concern, but the blazes being painted over can be. Blazes that aren't referenced in a deed can be used as evidence of a boundary location, though the corners are what control. Painting over them isn't as bad as defacing them, but it does make them much harder to find in the future. It's at the least unethical.
Have you talked to your neighbor at all? Depending on the size of the parcel, it might just be a situation where he was tired of seeing all those bright marks from his back porch, and he'd be more likely to come to a compromise with you instead of going straight to litigation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Submariner
Our deed was written in 2005, no Latitude / Longitude.
Good thing too. Lat/Longs or Coordinates are terrible things for writing a deed. They have intrinsic error, and are subject to all sorts of other factors that can cause problems. A description of bearing/distance also is subject to error, but given correct controlling calls to physical features or monumentation, or reference to other lines, greatly reduces that error.
One thing though is that if deeds were written with Lat/Longs, it would create a huge amount of work for surveyors, as property owners would run right out and "stake" their boundary using their trusty garmin, with no regard for projections, the precision of that device, or any of the other factors that can cause problems with that method of describing land.
When people ask for a lat/long for a property. I will either give them a lat/long of one corner or the center of the property from Google Earth. I have a GPS that reads down to 1/1000 of a mile or 5.28 feet. Many surveys of large lots are "Sub-meter" surveys. That means the corner is within one meter of the actual location. That is adequate for many woodlot surveys. Loggers are supposed to stay 10 feet away from the boundary which is why you see so many straight lines of trees on Google Earth.
When people ask for a lat/long for a property. I will either give them a lat/long of one corner or the center of the property from Google Earth. I have a GPS that reads down to 1/1000 of a mile or 5.28 feet. Many surveys of large lots are "Sub-meter" surveys. That means the corner is within one meter of the actual location. That is adequate for many woodlot surveys. Loggers are supposed to stay 10 feet away from the boundary which is why you see so many straight lines of trees on Google Earth.
The center should be safe, just for location or discussion purposes.
The issue with giving them a corner is that there are a lot of factors that can degrade the advertised precision of your GPS unit. I have a unit that's good to 8mm +1ppm when provided RTK vectors, according to the manufacturer. This is what you'd get under perfect conditions for horizontal positioning, but in reality, you're unlikely to get much better than 1cm in the horizontal under normal field conditions.
When dealing with a handheld GPS unit, you're +/- 10M most of the time, getting down to +/- 1M using WAAS or other external correction, again, under ideal conditions.
The thing to consider is that if you have a physical corner that was set to coordinates within 1 meter of the actual location, using equipment for the initial survey that has inherent error, and you're trying to establish the location for the corner using equipment that has inherent error, it's possible that those error sources are compounding rather than canceling. When you start adding in GPS "slop" from multipath, satellite geometry, or poor atmospheric modeling, you could easily be 20 to 30 feet away from the actual position. Then if you start adding epoch dates and projections into the mix, you really start seeing shifts.
All of this ignores the many legal aspects that come into boundary location such as priority of calls, written/unwritten rights, and the like.
Just as an example, we had someone use a handheld sub-meter GPS unit to establish their own corner at elevation 8500 using a lat/long from a 25 year old document. They set the point and ran a fenceline using that as the position, thinking that a 5/10 foot bust wouldn't be an issue. They ended up over 250 feet away from the actual corner, which was there; they just assumed it wasn't since their GPS didn't lead them right to it.
I don't say this to suggest that using your GPS for rough overviews or for establishing cut lines over portions of property well away from boundaries is a bad idea, but I would say that it's generally a better idea to have a survey done and lines cut if you're going to be getting anywhere close to a parcel line.
Again, what you described doesn't raise any particular red flags with me, just trying to keep some thoughts flowing for others reading the thread. It's a valuable service to those looking to keep track of cut lot sizes and plan ahead, when done by someone with the knowledge that you have.
A forester can find a property line but really only for the purpose of ensuring their management is on the correct property. A forester can't claim to be a surveyor and to hold up in court a survey needs to be done by a surveyor. Speaking as a forester myself, I would never touch a boundary dispute job. Period. I'm not a surveyor and it's illegal and unethical for me to claim to be one.
Very good advise from Darrett and artichomesteader. My DeLorme PN60 claims to read down to 1/1,000 of a mile. That is 5.28 feet and if I have a fair view of the sky it repeats very well. I was brininging people from a beach in Cherryfield out to an island for a one week conference. I knew I might need to do it in fog so I saved several waypoints, well away from ledges and rocks. At the last point near the beach, the GPS said, "You are 16 feet below sea level. Are you sure you want to save this waypoint?". I entered that I did.
My iPad has a pretty good GPS. I can show somebody where we are standing on a Google Earth satellite photo. Then I can tip the iPad up and show him what the horizon would look like if he cut some trees. Pretty awesome stuff. It would have been nice to have a GPS when I was in the Mekong Delta 45 years ago.
very good advise from darrett and artichomesteader. My delorme pn60 claims to read down to 1/1,000 of a mile. That is 5.28 feet and if i have a fair view of the sky it repeats very well. I was brininging people from a beach in cherryfield out to an island for a one week conference. I knew i might need to do it in fog so i saved several waypoints, well away from ledges and rocks. At the last point near the beach, the gps said, "you are 16 feet below sea level. Are you sure you want to save this waypoint?". I entered that i did.
My ipad has a pretty good gps. I can show somebody where we are standing on a google earth satellite photo. Then i can tip the ipad up and show him what the horizon would look like if he cut some trees. Pretty awesome stuff. It would have been nice to have a gps when i was in the mekong delta 45 years ago.
You could also hire a guy down at the home depot even cheaper.
If there's a concern that the boundary lines themselves are being altered, you need to get a surveyor out there. With a recent survey having been done, a retracement/cutting out the line won't be very expensive.
As far as what was removed, the flagging being taken down isn't a big concern, but the blazes being painted over can be. Blazes that aren't referenced in a deed can be used as evidence of a boundary location, though the corners are what control. Painting over them isn't as bad as defacing them, but it does make them much harder to find in the future. It's at the least unethical.
Have you talked to your neighbor at all? Depending on the size of the parcel, it might just be a situation where he was tired of seeing all those bright marks from his back porch, and he'd be more likely to come to a compromise with you instead of going straight to litigation.
Good thing too. Lat/Longs or Coordinates are terrible things for writing a deed. They have intrinsic error, and are subject to all sorts of other factors that can cause problems. A description of bearing/distance also is subject to error, but given correct controlling calls to physical features or monumentation, or reference to other lines, greatly reduces that error.
One thing though is that if deeds were written with Lat/Longs, it would create a huge amount of work for surveyors, as property owners would run right out and "stake" their boundary using their trusty garmin, with no regard for projections, the precision of that device, or any of the other factors that can cause problems with that method of describing land.
You guys are funny, and clearly don't understand GPS. Great for finding things, but error is the reason DGPS came into existence. I have found GPS as much as 300 METERS off. Good thing it wasn't a night sail. That and the system is shut down infrequently. Our government does not WANT you to be able to pinpoint a location at times.
As to the "Home Depot" comment, I think I stated something like a forester could check the lines, but that was about it. Nothing about getting into Court (which I also have a little knowledge about). Having been a forester for Scott Paper years ago, and having gone through the UMO surveying program, I know it is permissible to do boundary work (or used to be). I used to do it privately all the time. When following a deed with old stone walls, wire fences, a staff compass and a hip chain, I could close a survey 1/5000. And I'm no surveyor. I was simply saying call someone who has some knowledge to have a look rather than run right to a surveyor - they tend to be pricey. Sounds to me like someone re-marked the line, or was setting up for a timber harvest. I re-do my lines every couple of years, and STILL had a timber trespass where the skidder jumped over the wire fence and blue flagged line.
But if you use the guy at Home Depot, more power to you.
A forester can find a property line but really only for the purpose of ensuring their management is on the correct property. A forester can't claim to be a surveyor and to hold up in court a survey needs to be done by a surveyor. Speaking as a forester myself, I would never touch a boundary dispute job. Period. I'm not a surveyor and it's illegal and unethical for me to claim to be one.
Yeah. No kidding. But the OP was simply wondering whether what was done changed anything. Hire a surveyor for $3000 to check the work, or hire a Forester for $250 to confirm everything appears to be in order. I used to be tasked with boundary work all the time, but NOT DISPUTES. Nobody ever said a forester could perform legal survey work under their RPF ticket. If you can't drag a hip chain and staff compass and tell if someone moved a line, you might not want to claim you're a forester, either. Period.
You guys are funny, and clearly don't understand GPS. Great for finding things, but error is the reason DGPS came into existence. I have found GPS as much as 300 METERS off. Good thing it wasn't a night sail. That and the system is shut down infrequently. Our government does not WANT you to be able to pinpoint a location at times.
As to the "Home Depot" comment, I think I stated something like a forester could check the lines, but that was about it. Nothing about getting into Court (which I also have a little knowledge about). Having been a forester for Scott Paper years ago, and having gone through the UMO surveying program, I know it is permissible to do boundary work (or used to be). I used to do it privately all the time. When following a deed with old stone walls, wire fences, a staff compass and a hip chain, I could close a survey 1/5000. And I'm no surveyor. I was simply saying call someone who has some knowledge to have a look rather than run right to a surveyor - they tend to be pricey. Sounds to me like someone re-marked the line, or was setting up for a timber harvest. I re-do my lines every couple of years, and STILL had a timber trespass where the skidder jumped over the wire fence and blue flagged line.
But if you use the guy at Home Depot, more power to you.
Sounds like you're talking about back when SA was still turned on. Today, unless you have some massive sources of error nearby, you won't generally be off by that much. For recreational use, you're probably in decent shape. That said, if you read what I wrote (and you quoted, so I assume your comment was directed toward me), I was the one warning against the use of handheld GPS to determine property locations.
A forester can check the lines if the property corners are evident and there are blazes existing. If you're in a situation where you have a deed but have no obvious boundary evidence, then the price of a recorded survey is a small one. Of course, there's nothing wrong with starting with a forester. He should be able to tell you if it looks like it's a good idea to get in touch with a surveyor.
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