Author Topic: re-newal of boundry lines (Read 2865 times)

keppoch · « **on:** March 22, 2009, 03:24:28 pm »

what would be the going rate to charge to re-new a klm. of boundry line or a mile which ever is used more often

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #1 on:** March 22, 2009, 04:08:46 pm »

Retrace? or flag, repaint and brush old evidence? You do know only a registered surveyor can retrace lines eh? We had a discussion with NB land surveyors a few years ago about that. They were prepared to string anyone up by the boot laces if someone tried a retrace that wasn't registered.

Anyway to fresh'n up an existing line and brush it out 2 meters wide it's around $0.50 a linear meter and just following old evidence with flagging is around $0.25 a meter. Most property lines are in sorry shape, so it's best to see what shape the line is in with the understanding this is a service call for $75 like any repair man would charge to show up. If it don't need retracing then go ahead. Brushing is a lot easier if you use a brush saw in the spring before green-up. I've had retracement done here on the farm for $750 for 2 miles by a surveyor with GPS and his axe man. Of course I am assuming your not a registered NB land surveyor.

sprucebunny · « **Reply #2 on:** March 23, 2009, 07:32:49 am »

Where are you, keppoch

Would a Forester please comment on American rules about boundary renewal ?

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #3 on:** March 23, 2009, 08:34:18 am »

I believe he is from NB, as he is a student of the "Ranger School" as eluded to in another post. But, he'll let us know some day.

http://www.forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,36669.msg530084.html#msg530084

Hasn't been answering back much yet. He was on right after your post sprucebunney.

BaldBob · « **Reply #4 on:** March 23, 2009, 01:52:31 pm »

Quote

Would a Forester please comment on American rules about boundary renewal ?

The rules vary by state, but most require that all "official" retracements be done by a licensed surveyor. I am unaware of any specific requirements for who is allowed to simply freshen up an existing boundary line.

Rick Alger · « **Reply #5 on:** March 23, 2009, 07:10:27 pm »

I'm not a forester, but I have refreshed existing boundary lines here in NH without being strung up.

Texas Ranger · « **Reply #6 on:** March 23, 2009, 07:14:28 pm »

In Texas you can redo old lines, but not create new ones, or "modify" old ones. Done a few over the years. Also hired surveyors for the real bad ones.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #7 on:** March 23, 2009, 07:15:18 pm »

Retracing means marking out by a survey , with survey grade instruments, because there is no existing evidence or not enough evidence to follow with certainty.

Ron Scott · « **Reply #8 on:** March 23, 2009, 07:49:58 pm »

Using Michigan law, only a professional surveyor can do anything with establishing or reestablishing a corner or boundary line. There is no basic problem in foresters locating and refreshing property lines for the purpose of their forestry in logging work, however, when foresters express comment that they can provide boundary or corner establishement, they have violated Michigan law.

Clark · « **Reply #9 on:** March 23, 2009, 09:51:42 pm »

I don't know what the going rate for putting a line back in or "refreshing" one, but...

With today's GIS and GPS technology most anyone can possibly make a reasonably accurate line. Many county's now have the lat and long coordinates for every known corner. Plug those into your GPS, find one and then do a "Go To" the other corner and put up ribbon in between. Should give you a line that is reasonably close. If this is for forestry work and the timber isn't real valuable it would probably be good enough.

Clark

keppoch · « **Reply #10 on:** March 23, 2009, 11:06:54 pm »

Hello Guys,sorry for not getting back, I`am from nova scotia and a forest technician, the reason I am wondering about the price of boundry line renewal is I was asked to flag out a excisting line for a person so he could cut it.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #11 on:** March 24, 2009, 07:10:10 am »

Be careful man, there's been a number of lads in your position technicians/foresters that got hauled to court for trespass because the loggers cut to the line and it was over on the neighbor. Sometimes the logger influenced the location of that flagged line to.

Make sure the guy next door knows about your activities.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #12 on:** March 24, 2009, 07:14:57 am »

Quote from: Clark on March 23, 2009, 09:51:42 pm

I don't know what the going rate for putting a line back in or "refreshing" one, but...

With today's GIS and GPS technology most anyone can possibly make a reasonably accurate line. Many county's now have the lat and long coordinates for every known corner. Plug those into your GPS, find one and then do a "Go To" the other corner and put up ribbon in between. Should give you a line that is reasonably close. If this is for forestry work and the timber isn't real valuable it would probably be good enough.

Clark

Yeah and you'll also find that there is a legal notice that their maps are not regarded as legal evidence. Mostly what you will find is a GIS map on paper or in digital form. The evidence on the ground, especially a baseline that a 100 or more woodlots but up against is "the" line. I've seen those maps off the baseline by 100 meters in some areas.

Here is such an example.

The yellow line is the surveyed and painted line maintained by the government, which is also the baseline and the pink line is what you get from the land registration office, off by 75 meters. The landowner also owns one more lot to the NE, that's why his road goes over that pink line. So much for those who maintain the GIS.

Stephen Alford · « **Reply #13 on:** March 24, 2009, 08:26:40 am »

As others have said, alot of people can run a straight line using a compass most of the time but it is just not in the right place. The error then gets compounded as successive lines will be run using lines that are already wrong. The best plan is to have a surveyor and work with them ,very educational. Some early settlers here piled rocks on the line to form dykes that delinate property lines. The size of some of the rocks and dykes are amazing.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #14 on:** March 24, 2009, 11:03:42 am »

Rock lines and cedar rail lines were very popular around here to where the Scottish settlers took up land grants. Those fence rows go down through the woods to. And a surveyor will most generally go by historical evidence and monuments on the ground, not a line drawn on a map.

stonebroke · « **Reply #15 on:** March 24, 2009, 11:13:16 am »

In NYS Rocks walls are considered absolute. They just don't move.

Stonebroke

Clark · « **Reply #16 on:** March 24, 2009, 01:11:36 pm »

As you'll notice, I said lat and long coordinates of every known corner. Once you find the monument, running the line should be relatively easy, especially if you are going to another known corner. Common sense must prevail in these situations: putting in your own corner based on lat and long coordinates would be fool hardy as would following information which is 75-100 meters off.

Clark

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #17 on:** March 24, 2009, 02:09:57 pm »

Consumer GPS devices also have drift in their positions. So, lat/long this morning at 9:30 am could be 25 meters away tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 pm. I've seen it. A piece of thinning was measured with a Garmin, same shape and almost identical in area as with a higher accuracy Trimble. The GPS maps where brought into a GIS and the Garmin shape was 25 meters over the property line on the neighbor's lot, where as the Trimble was right on the mapped line. In the field both GPS traverses came to a blazed property line on one side and a public road out front. As stated, same shape and area, just not same place on the GIS. If it ain't survey grade, your putting yourself into a precarious position if what you believe is the lat/long, but the GPS puts you off the mark.

Ron Scott · « **Reply #18 on:** March 24, 2009, 07:30:22 pm »

Yes, a survey grade GPS such as the expensive Tremble models is necessary for professional survey work.

We can often relocate an reestablish an existing survey line depending upon the amount of reliable evidence that we have such as the original survey notes, certificate of survey, documented registered corner locations, etc.

If we can't retrace the original or previous registered surveys and corner locations with certainty, then it is a job for the professional surveyor.

Always manage to your property line, but always know where it "legally" is.

Black_Bear · « **Reply #19 on:** March 29, 2009, 09:31:45 am »

Clark is correct when he wrote that it is fairly simple to ribbon a line between monuments using navigation grade GPS. It may take 1 or 2 passes up and down the line to straighten out the kinks, especially on longer lines, but most foresters or loggers I know can adequately ribbon a line between two points.

But, this same attitude has also created a fair amount of work for the local surveyors. If you haven't performed the legal research how can you be certain the monuments you use are the correct monuments? I've seen inexperienced party chiefs use the wrong monument (in both cases it was an old pipe) because they assumed that the first monument they came to was marking the deeded corner. Unfortunately, he didn't see the nice rebar with a land surveyors cap that was at ground level and only 30' from the old pipe that some kid probably stuck in the ground while he was playing cowboys and indians. Not sure how the coordinates were generated (survey, tax mapping, landowner submission??), but I never instantly accept the first monument I find. Take a look around the area and see if anything looks suspicious, or if you can find other evidence. Ultimately, the monument found in the field will be described in detail in the creating deed.

The presence of stonewalls and fences can also confuse the issue, especially here in New England and upstate New York. In many cases the fences and stonewalls are considered monuments and serve as the best evidence to the original line run by the original surveyor. Other times the fences are there to simply keep the cows in the pasture and they hold no weight when analyzing the boundary issue. I've also found barbed wire with a metal detector that was 8" under the surface in Maine, and this wire turned out to be the best (and only) evidence to a line that had no other physical evidence. The deed bearings and distances from a known monument led us to the general area, and a 1950s era survey showed a fence meandering along the line, so we began to look for barbed wire.

Also, judges may not give much weight to a blazed line, especially if it hasn't been relied upon by the landowners and/or the blazes are not mentioned in the creating deed, or if other evidence (monuments) suggest that the original line is different than the blazed line. The weight that a judge gives a blazed line may vary from locale to locale, and may depend on local common practices, both past and present.

I work for a forest management company. We recently had to send a cease and desist order to a neighboring forestry company that had granted an easement for a substantial powerline project. The powerline company hired a surveyor to establish a straight line, running essentially north-south, between monuments that were miles apart. We own the land to the west. The cutters ignored the lead based painted trees that were anywhere from 5-40' easterly of the straight line and cut them down. But, they were doing what they were told to do. I'm not sure how this situation will play out, but I know tensions ran pretty high when we found out they were cutting the blazed trees that had been there for 40+ years. And, the kicker is, the adjoining forestry company agreed that the blazes marked the possession line that had been honored by both current owners AND the prior owners. IMO, that's poor communication and project management.

I guess my long winded message would be that the landowners are essentially responsible for what happens on their land and around their boundaries. But, if you act in a professional, or not so professional, capacity and cause harm to an adjoining landowner, then the client will more than likely come after you for damages. I'm not saying that you have to hire a surveyor for every job associated with working around or on a boundary line, but be careful, because what seems certain can become uncertain rather quickly if you don't weigh all the evidence, including written evidence. And when the neighbor has to hire a land surveyor to clean up the mess, the professional service fee is not cheap.

Ed

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Author Topic: re-newal of boundry lines (Read 2865 times)