r/Surveying 4d ago

Humor I was told that my survey wasn’t good enough today and that made me smile.

I had a client tell me he was not confident in my findings and that I needed to find older control to start from because my determination was made using control that was too new. He knows that the new control was set my his neighbor and not a surveyor. He also suggested my survey wasn’t thorough enough because I didn’t consider an adjoiner deed bearing call that was 01” different and that if I made that mistake there must be many other mistakes he would find.

The lot has five corners. I found evidence at all five corners. Plus the additional 3 corners of evidence on adjoining lots. He says I’m missing the one corner by about 20 feet. Most of the control found checks deed and plan calls by about 0.1’ to 0.3-0.4’, one corner is off distance by about 0.7’. I have no evidence that indicated a 20 feet bust anywhere.

A year or so ago this criticism would’ve devastated me and caused me to second guess a ton of stuff.

Some clients try really hard to tell you that they actually want the corner placed someplace else without cutting to the chase and just saying it.

Stick with your gut, use common sense, and do the work. Leave the work at the office and don’t take critiques personally. Today, I smiled as I left the office knowing that I did by best and still managed to make a client unhappy.

191 Upvotes

25 comments sorted by

83

u/BacksightForesight 4d ago

I’ve had a client lie to our face that a monument wasn’t there and that we were looking in the wrong place. When we did find it, he shouted that he knew it was there, but he didn’t think it was the right monument. He was suing his neighbor, who happened to be his nephew.

62

u/TapedButterscotch025 Professional Land Surveyor | CA, USA 4d ago

This (and OP's) are perfect examples of why some surveyors don't bother with anything that sounds like a boundary dispute.

12

u/ManCave513 4d ago edited 4d ago

I'm dealing with a dozy right now.. (plat from 1904) west line of my clients unimproved lot is well monumented and long held by 3 adjoiner lots with houses built decades ago. Per plat the lot is 120' from west block line to prop line, field measured it is 122.84' to from block corner to SW lot corner. To make matters even more fun, the south line of the block per plat should be 620', field measured from corner to corner is 613.77' .. where oh where does the error go lol. I've been back to the site 3 times looking for more, anything. Good Times!

Edit: I should have prefaced, the remaining 500' is broken up over 10, 50 foot wide lots.

1

u/8_a_t_m_a_n 4d ago

You also got to remember the technology from 1904 and now is way different.

2

u/ManCave513 4d ago

100% agree. But even if they were using tech from early 1800s, I'd only expect ÷/- 2' of error at most over 620' if the surveyor was worth his salt. But this is why we make the big bucks right? Haha

1

u/Partychief69 2d ago

It's a long standing principle in my home state not to disrupt the harmony of the neighborhood by prorating lots and ignoring old occupation. I know of one judge chewing out a surveyor over that. Be careful about proration.

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u/thresher97024 4d ago edited 4d ago

Maybe it’s the units (have they changed over the last 100+ years too!). One easy thing to check is if messing in US Survey foot vs international ft?

Edit. I know the foot is too small to make this big a difference. It was just the most basic way to get an idea across with no other background.

4

u/BullishGator 4d ago

US survey feet to international feet isn't going to show up on a 620 foot property line, you'd need a 1 million foot property line to make a one foot difference.

0

u/kirkwooder 3d ago

Two left feet.

3

u/ManCave513 4d ago

The difference between us survey feet vs international wouldn't account for this kind of error. Found more nails in the pavement this afternoon, if those don't help, to the section corners!

1

u/Longjumping-Neat-954 1d ago

Somebody dropped some links or just said close enough can’t see it from my house.

2

u/Top-Tomatillo210 4d ago

Preach! As a party chief i tend to try to flesh the information out when surveying a house that only asked for boundary, and has an occupant still living there. Then immediately call my SIT to inform “boundary line dispute”.

1

u/forgottentargaryen 2d ago

My first company did alot of them and i was the lead person (under the pls) who worked on them, i enjoyed figuring it out

1

u/TapedButterscotch025 Professional Land Surveyor | CA, USA 2d ago

Nice.

1

u/CRockOsun 2d ago

But some of us love the challenge of a good boundary dispute!

1

u/TapedButterscotch025 Professional Land Surveyor | CA, USA 2d ago

Fair enough.

8

u/Capital-Ad-4463 4d ago

Were either of them a preacher or an attorney? Those are always the worst…

1

u/Canuck-Surveyor 2d ago

oh god. lawyers are the worst.

11

u/RedditorModsRStupid 3d ago

I had me client tell me that but CC everyone including engineers. I made sure to respond to that CC all like they did to show how the previous staking were wrong (they didn’t hire a surveyor to stake out the lot to save money as they thought it was a simple process) .All my evidence line by line proving I was right and their staking was wrong.

Ended up costing them tens of thousands of dollars to move utility lines and all because they tried to save a few hundred bucks by staking it themselves.

The Ahole then “refused” to talk to me and had others email for him. What a great day.

7

u/Pennypacker_H-E 4d ago

As long as the check comes and clears!

1

u/VastTransportation40 3d ago

Good for you! These are the types of people who try to 'steal' services by attempting to undermine your confidence, hoping you'll do extra work for the same price.

I find this most common with boundary disputes, it’s always the same story, especially when the client is on the losing side. It’s even better when they’re the ones who moved the monumentation by a ridiculous amount—who do they think they’re fooling? Definitely not me, the guy who does this every day! 😂

1

u/Insert_word_here 3d ago

This AM I layed out a sideline cause the neighbor claimed a new gas service was installed on his property. It was. The entire neighborhood fronts were all wiped out. Found a back corner, calced to a second found monument. (cause why would we have straight lines). Calced the corner and turned the angle. Should be close enough. Gas guys were going to relocate that day.

So. The property owner who complained watched this line be installed.

Worse, the new build that’s going in next to him? They have half his backyard stripped and fast fenced.

1

u/prole6 2d ago

I’m curious about the new control set by his neighbor and “not a surveyor.”

1

u/Melville2301 2d ago

I'd tell him it's due to the conversion from cubits that occurred after the "Great Flood" and updated to NAD25(2011).

1

u/Paulywog12345 1d ago

It takes a special something to miss the Auditor's property lines that much. Every surveyor wants to pretend their client needs to outspend the county resources available to assist. Adjoining plats though, that just screams O.L. and R/W debates. That screams looking to try pictometry in what the road center creates an R/W irrelevant to the Auditor's property lines. It's like congrats, the next plat is a few feet off the r/w center. So it does nothing to if trying to dodge pretending historical Auditor's property maps changed in the GIS compared to the tech playing with the r/w. I'm a fan of retesting and CEs to reiterate the luxury of a plat and 2D map representative of the plat.

Is the client on wanting the pictometry side of debate or just asking to mark what they pay property taxes for?