Survey vs. GPS Boundary Locating

To use a GPS unit for appeoximating a point, NOT surveying, you will need to find at least two surveyed points in the vicinity of your site and then get he map prepared when they were set. Then you can begin your calculations to get 'close'. Forget lat and long. Depending on where you are in the US, get the correct public database maps. Section Maps for instance. Then get all the nearby surveys that are recorded as public records.

Then you will likely discover that while your legal description may say your property is a 1,000' square, the previously established surveys of your neighbors left you 995', or 1007', or ___, for your property to fit in. The previous surveyers have reconciled all the data of record and now your property is 995', or 1,007'. I know of several properties in WA, that are 50' smaller in one direction than their legal description says.

If you owned a GPS unit capable of 0.0000001' accuracy, to be silly, it would not be capable of setting a property corner and may not even get you close enough to find the true corner set by a surveyor.

GPS is a great tool/toy but it cannot replace a survey.

I think you are asking because there hasn't already been a legal survey done? In that case, no GPS most certainly does not take the place of a survey, and there is every practical reason to do a survey and not try and use GPS. At the very least I would make it a part of my offer to the seller, that a legal survey be done and marked, then you can re-inspect.

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Idleness is leisure gone to seed

We hired a surveyor to shoot in some staff gauges. He said they were accurate within 0.01" too both in elevation and location. He also said he spent 3 or 4 years getting his degree. The unit he was using cost $20,000+. It actually tracked him as he moved with the rod.

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"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Good point. Approval of the boundary should be treated the same as a building inspection as far as purchase contingencies you would have to remove for the deal to proceed.

Trick will be who pays and when. Survey of rural prooerty will most likely start at a few thousand and go up from there. I've quoted some over $50,000, and we lost money at that.

There is a corner just down the road from my DS's lot in town. When you look on the county property map it shows 8 pins. All placed by different surveyors. The city engineer (a liscenced surveyor) was going to GPS survey all the fire hydrants and water valves in town. He set up on the official survey marker at the High school steps and then went to the other 3 corner markers. He surveyed for 2 days until he realized he was set up on the wrong marker at this main set point. He had to move over and redo everything he had done. The county surveyors just set their corners in new subdivisions, some 5' from the original corners and fences. All the new surveys drift to the SW, getting farther from the originals as they go out. So there are no mans land between the old fence and the new fences. Some houses are now within a foot of new property lines, not good at all. There have been many people go to the county and get their property lines readjusted to the old survey lines because the codes say there has to be 5' setbacks....James

A gps system accurate enough for sub centimeter accuracy is not something the average homeowner could afford. An rtk system requires a base and a rover to to be accurate, a handheld gps simply is not accurate enough and can be off as much as 30 meters.

As far as surveying, a surveyor is licensed and when performjng a survey he will research the property and adjoiners to determine his survey accuracy.

Trees, buildings and reflective surfaces kill gps accuracy and even an rtk system using Russian satellite s cannot fully overcome these obstructions.

The last survey quality gps I purchased for my fathers land surveying and civil engineering company cost us $40,000 each (we had 2) one had russian satelite option which cost $4000 extra. Our first gps was as accurate but would have to occupy points for 30 minutes to an hour and the data had to be post processed once collected.

As another poster said, newer gps systems utilize subscription based services for base access using cellular or radio, though expensive it removes the need for a base station onsite.
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Yes....

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A 300' steel tape and a Suunto surveying compass with NE, SE, NW and SW will be more accurate in finding corners than any handheld gps.

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If you are just trying to find an old corner on a few acres:

All measurements are horizontal but don't worry too much unless you are in steep country.

Same with 'north' versus 'true north'. It matters, but not much in a few hundred feet.

Larger parcels are where it starts to matter and recovering an old corner gets harder.

But first - just go walk around where you think the corner might be. You will perhaps find "occupation" like a fence, edge of mowed areas, fallen down fence posts, rebar, wood stake, plastic flagging, metal fence post where no others are, etc etc, that will lead you to the true corner. Or ask a neighbor - you can be sure they know where they 'think' the corner is.

Recorded surveys will describe the corner that was recovered or newly set. Check your courthouse, DNR etc for maps.

Good luck!

having had to re "place" a fence that was not accurately on the border when a neighbor did a survey..trust me..you wanna do it right the first time

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Brenda Groth
http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/

Neighbors always know where they think they know their property is! They usually think they have more property than they really have too!

Corners can also be rocks, trees, axles, and other weird stuff...I've seen just about everything!

River boundaries can make property lines change, sometimes a surveyor will set a corner with an offset to center of river since the river can change over time.

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Aint that the truth! One of the strangest "corners" I ran up on during my years in the game was "a place in the woods where Lazarus Jessie once stood". When the surveyor showed up to start the survey, and all the neighbors involved were there, he asked them if anyone knew who Lazarus Jessie was... nobody had a clue, he then asked if any of them knew where that corner was.... they all chimed in..... Yep, its right over there, and all pointed to a spot of ground in the woods! There was no marker of any kind, just a bare spot in the woods, but they all agreed that spot was indeed the corner in question. I have often wondered what made that spot any different than any of the other thousands of places some old man may have stood upon a hundred years ago. Another corner I wasnt involved with but heard about. "A place in the old road bed where Fred fell over dead". Again, there were no markers, but everyone knew where it was!

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

Funny you should ask...

We are in a property dispute right now.

Our land was owned by someone who decided 30 years ago to divide it into parcels of acreage. None was surveyed; he just drove posts. We bought a 20 acre piece and have been here 2 years.

Our barn has been here 26 years. There is a garden that came with this land.

There are out-of-staters who own adjoining property.

Suddenly, after the original owner died a few months ago, THEY decided to survey it and have tried to steal our barn and our garden. PLUS they wanted us to put in ingress/egress from our property to the back of theirs, even though they have road frontage.

We are now trying to settle out of court, but it will cost us to REPURCHASE what we already bought.

If it had been surveyed from the beginning, it would have saved us heartache and protected out emotional, mental, and physical health. Both my husband and I have been sick over this.

Please have a survey done.

I've used GPS surveying to do some planning maps and approximate acreage, but I'll hire a professional surveyor or locate the corner pins before I drive any fence posts.

I took GPS readings (+-10 feet) of the known corners, then imported those into Google Earth. I then used the measuring tool and the tax map to approximate the other corners. I then put the approximate corners back into my GPS and took a walk to them. This also allowed me to approximate the neighboring land which I'm renting but don't have a survey on. I'm not building any structures on the rented land, and there is a tree line between our hay field and the neighbor hay field, so there should be no great dispute over who's hay I'm harvesting.

I know of two property disputes within a few miles of my house. One built a shop only half on his own property and when a new owner did a survey it was found out, they fought for years in court but in the end the shop had to come down.

Another was the same exact thing. New owners did a legal survey and the neighbors had built their fence and driveway on the land they were buying, the neighbors had to move their entire driveway.

The last is a personal friend that are in the same position as Countrygal. They bought a place that had not been legally surveyed, just staked, as did the other 3 people who bought land from this person. No one has legal property boundaries and they can not use the 3 acres they thought they bought. They don't have the money to fight in court.

This is only a few people in my limited world.

Get the survey.

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Idleness is leisure gone to seed

I buy timber land and seldom have it surveyed. Instead I take the deed to a friend that has software program that he uses. He inputs the the info from the deed into the system and then runs the program to see it the ends close/meet. The program computes the acres within and that is what I am willing to pay for. If the ends do not close then I insist the seller have a survey. Having the data on the deed to close is an easy way to determine is the calls are correct. Over time, my findings have usually shown the area defined on the deed to contain more land than less land.

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Agmantoo
If they can do it,
you know you can!