(800) 853-2651
SHOP NOW

OT land surveying

S

steve-in-ga

Member
This is farming related but not tractor related. I'm getting ready to put up a field fence. On one side of the field, the property line is a long straight run (about 1200 feet) but I cannot stand at one point and see the other. There is a hill between the 2 points so I cannot just run a string between the 2 points to get a straight reference to run the fence. I'm looking for suggestions on how I can find a point on the property line at the top of the hill, which is in the middle of the fence run, that I can use as a reference to run my fence. I'd rather not call a surveyor to come out and mark the point as that will cost several hundred dollars and take a while to occur.
 
when i have done surveying and had an object on line and couldn't see thru i would use an offset parallel line and set stakes off off that
 
You can rent a surveyors transit. Go to the top of the hill, pick a spot to set up. Site to your first endpoint, then swing around 180 deg and take a look. If you are pointing at your other endpoint, you have found your mark. If not. Mark that position for reference. Move in the direction needed a suitable distance and repeat.
You can also do it with a good compass. Your survey documents should tell you the exact azimuth from point a to point b.
 
Don't know about GA, but in NY the county courthouse has a website where property lines are shown via overlays from Google Earth or other satellite setups. Any smart phone with GPS or a handheld unit like a Garmin can get your points within inches of where a surveyor's marks. If you need it dead on the money, then that's a job for a professional surveyor, but in most cases it will be VERY close. I've done it dozens of times on a number of different properties, and I could often walk the GPS to the spot, look down, and be standing over the surveyor's stake.
 
How much will it cost you to find out you were wrong. When mom died we had to have a survey done of her place. The survey of today did not match the one of 1940. The 1940 one must have been done by a drunk. We ended up having a judge throw out the 1940 one. Then a new one was done. Everyone was happy with it.
 
What kansasred said would work but each time you move the transit you have to go through leveling it again and how many times do you want to do that. If you know the distance between the end points use the transit to measure the angle between the two legs and calculate the distance to the line.
 
I agree with using the transit, but how high is the hill? If you could get up high enough to see over the hill, 1200 ft is not very far, on a calm day you could stretch a string that far. Maybe set up some scaffold or a stepladder, and use a plumb bob down to the survey marker.
 

Maybe a surveyor way back sometime planted another stake at the top of that hill. Hopefully iron.
Looking at a GIS website via your county property appraisers website or county website, you might be able to use some features on the hill like rocks or trees, etc. to get real close.
With or without a stake already up there.
 

How come you could not go to top of hill.
Set up a scoped rifle or a cheap laser pointer, on a tripod.
Then sight one down hill stake and swing it exacty 180 to other stake. Move side ways until both stakes are in sights.
 

I'm got new fence to put up and have a hill in KS to deal with. Well more like about a 25' rise. I suppose every property line in GA has a hill in it.

Where a tree has grown around on marker, I can offset about 6'. I've also tried running a laser at night. Have a star spotter that would probably laze for a quarter mile except for the hill. Once a laser is set up, I can mark the post placements very easy. Lasers don't go through dirt is the problem and can't guarantee stakes are perfectly vertical.

I've used construction transits. You know it is level when you can swing from one corner of a building and back and hit the starting spot again. They are available and cheap since most have gone to lasers.

I'll check on a surveyor's transit which may be the same as a builder's. Guess I'm kind of a rear end about accuracy. Can you accurately swing a transit around exactly 180 degrees exactly? I'd hate to think my line was more than an inch off for a 1320' run. I'd still put the fence in a little from the line but still nice to know how far inside it is. In some places, the fence becomes the property line so you have to be careful where you put it as much as I'd like to be able to run a mower on both sides and be on my property but then the pheasant people don't want fence lines mowed.

I think anymore if the county commission had to settle a fence dispute, they would send out the county surveyor who would be using his dgps or whatever to find the lines. They probably wouldn't even come out.

Most cities and counties have all properties laid out on a GIS system that you can access online usually through the assessors or treasurers offices. You can turn on satellite view with the line overlay. That can get you close. But they can be off of the property pins as well. Problem is that the width of the line can be a foot on the ground but it will get you close. Even a pencil line on a topo map is a few feet wide on the ground.
 
If you know someone with auto steer on their tractor they could set point A and point B and drive a straight AB line between the two. It would take about 10 minutes. It is amazing how crooked some "straight" fences are when you compare them to a true straight line. ADB
 
Having a straight fence and one that is on the property line are two exclusive goals. I have never come across a straight property line, even here on the open prairies of ND. The advent of GPS in tractors makes it painfully obvious.

That said, the rotary laser level I have for building would layout a straight fence that far no problem. It can be turned on its side so the laser line is in a vertical plane. Set it at the top of the hill and mark the end point accordingly.
 
True about property lines being off. I have a property line fence that is supposed to be due north/south. I set my auto steer for zero degrees and in a quarter mile I was off seven rows.I'm sure the fence was influenced by the ditch at the bottom of the hill but I thought that was quite a ways off. I think the true property line is probably much straighter than the fence.
 
I had problems with a neighbor that had tore out the fence when he was renting my land. He no longer wanted to rent at a higher rate so he decided to put in a new fence to where he claimed where the old one was. I stopped that. I told him that it had to be surveyed and if I was wrong then I pay, but if he was wrong he paid half. Yes he was wrong, not happy. I got a phone call from him when he received his part of the bill saying that he did not order that survey. I asked him if he put the fence in according to survey he said yes, I then told him he pay his half. He did. That situation was just one of the set backs with this guy that had farmed this land for over twenty years. This same guy has five feet of my property in another area that can not be changed because of an old fencing law is what I understand here in IA.

Hire some one to do your survey if this fence is a fence between neighbors.
 
Go to your local coop or other fertilizer custom appilicator. I have done it for farmers . you mark your A point on one end drive to other end mark your B point.that will give you a line they can drive with auto steer or just flag spots
 
Can you put a tall, brightly marked pole at one end, then climb on top of your tractor at the other end and see it?

Do you know anyone who has a drone?
 
Is there a high point where you can see both ends? If so, then run a line from one end to the high point, then run another line from the other end to the high point.
 
With all the little farms around me being turned into housing developments it has become really obvious how many property lines that the previous owners thought were right, are not. Lines that were established by a handshake between farmers are now pretty regularly causing issues when a developer has a survey done and a line is off by several to many feet.

One of them is tied up in court with the developer owning someones driveway. The folks using and thinking they owned the driveway all these years are trying to claim it theirs due to use and maintenance. The developer does not want to give it up as it affects his lot layout and might cost him 3 lots which sell for about $150k each.

Moral of the story: A proper, accurate survey might not be a bad thing to have.
 
How tall is the hill? Could you paint the end of a 20' pipe and put it on one corner and see it?. You could then use a cheap transit level and flag everywhere you are going to put a fence post.
 
Phone or handheld GPS will get you within 0-20 feet without you having any idea how accurate it is at the moment.

If you buy an RTK base station and correct you can get under an inch with a good quality gps receiver getting the updates.
 

A 1200 foot property line could turn into a big deal. The pro survey is simply part of your cost of doing your business and there is no reason not to do this correctly and stay out of court (or worse, depending on the adjacent owner).

Beware any rube goldberg advice you get here.
 
Who is the adjacent property owner? Doesn't take much of a legal skirmish to equal the cost of a survey. And if you have a legal skirmish, the first thing you'll have to do is get a real survey anyhow, because the courts won't recognize a home brew deal.
 
(quoted from post at 16:25:19 12/21/20) Who is the adjacent property owner? Doesn't take much of a legal skirmish to equal the cost of a survey. And if you have a legal skirmish, the first thing you'll have to do is get a real survey anyhow, because the courts won't recognize a home brew deal.
Click to expand...

Courts won't allow any survey done prior to the filing of said lawsuit. At that point you could get five surveys each done by a different surveyor and still not all will all stakes in the same spot.

Ever found a surveyor that has a guarantee that will back you in court if sued for a faulty property line?
 
Bought some land a few years ago and the guy I bought it from wanted to put a fence line in between the 2 parcels. He had it surveyed with a marker at the top of the hill so he could get it in straight. Fast forward 8 years and the guy dies and his estate wants to sell his parcel. Auctioneer calls for a survey and the new one shows that there was an error in the first survey by 26 ft. on one end. So the fence while in straight is actually that far over on his side by that much creating a pie shaped wedge. Turns out the road that runs along my side of the property had a crook to it at that same end and when they surveyed it originally, they measured from the road right of way giving me my full amount of acres but moving the line over on his side by that much. The original plat actually shows the crooked road right of way.. The new owner said he was ok with the fence being where it was as he didn't want to move it and I wasn't going to either. He just ended up paying for about 1/4 of an acre of ground that is on my side of the fence. Even surveyors can get it wrong.
 

That was a problem with the old transit and tape measure approach. That's why I don't trust one to rotate 180 degrees and be spot on although ought to be within a couple inches. Although you could run stakes down hill both ways from the top and then go back shoot them from various spots all with transit or a laser. Keep the stakes perfectly vertical. More work but they can be moved till they line up both ways.

Getting the line and fence line straight is probably the best anyone can do. If the pins are off then a licensed surveyor would have to fix everything.

A lot of lots in subdivisions were staked out by tape once one was off they can all be off. Pins in front of my house measure out at 74' 9 1/4" for a 75' lot. Neighbor next door has 75' 3" between pins. Neighbor on other side has a concrete drainage with no pin to be found. So we don't really know if my pins, her pins, and someone on down either way are off. Not going to worry about 2 and 3/4 inches but a new buyer might. I knew the original surveyor and never heard any rumors that he wasn't sober, during the day anyway.

Road right of ways is a different issue. They have the road ROW 60, 80, 100, 120 or whatever they platted. However they didn't always put the centerline of roads in the center of the ROW. Any measurements coming off of a road or street may not jive with the property lines. Farm ground around here wasn't pinned at the section corners and the section corners aren't always in the middle of an intersection as the township maintainer is always moving the road a little every time he blades one side and then does the opposite side the next time he blades.
 
Have you talked to the other property owner ?
Maybe he will tell you as long as its close its ok with him .
Just a thought .
 
"That's why I don't trust one to rotate 180 degrees and be spot on"

For accuracy in a situation like that, you should use a method called "double centering". Take a backsight with the plates locked, FLIP the scope and have your helper mark your foresight. Then ROTATE the scope for a second backsight. (Ignore the degrees - they are not needed in this situation) After getting your second backsight, with the plates locked, FLIP the scope again and have your helper mark shot number two. There will now be two marks on your helper's stake. Split the distance between your helper's marks and set a tack. You will be as accurate as you can get with the equipment that you are using.
 
Steve, I've staked at least a dozen fences in situations like you're talking about. The very first thing that I always did was make certain that the property owners knew I was not going to court over a disagreement. I also insisted that both property owners be present and agreeable. If there was a disagreement, I would refuse to help them. The property owners first had to jointly show me the points that they wanted me to use. After having done all of that, it was usually a fun few hours getting a nice straight line established for a new fence.

If you can rent or borrow a decent transit, you can set up on the hilltop and "wiggle in" between the two end points. You just pick a spot that you think is on the line and set up the transit there. Take a backshot and flip the scope and see how good you guessed. If you're in the middle of a 1200' survey and you missed by 10', move the transit in the logical direction about 5' and try again. It might take you three or four tries - maybe more, but you'll eventually get wiggled in between your end points. When I DO get wiggled in, I have both property owners look through the transit at the two end points so that they are comfortable with what is going on. There's a real satisfaction in seeing a new fence that is as straight as a rifle shot.
 
Great idea to get over the hill, in my book.
I own my own transit and grade pole. Fortunately, I'm a flatlander but grades are still important to assure drainage.
When I had the 17 acres there is a ridge that runs NE-SW across the middle. Water runs either SE or NW. My house is to the NW.
When I did some fencing, I had my survey monuments readily visible. I set my transit 2" on my side of the boundry. My son would hold a T-post with a level to hold verticle and I would have him move left or right as necessary. We built a 535'fence and one 600'fence that way. No one argued except me. A neighbor was letting his manure pile accumulate against MY fence. Resolved. Also, he cannot legally attach to my fence without written permission.
When I built a 700 foot 22' wide paved private road, the county required proper grade and drainage ditches along both sides of the road. This was engineered by a professional and built by a qualified contractor. Yahoo! Cost! But, I sold lots that paid for it.
However, I had to get a variance on the grade requirements because the county road commission had a culvert passing under our north-south public country road that was too shallow to drain properly. My engineer had not caught that.
In another situation, property to my north was being converted to a county park. The seller was required to regrade the property from his illegal "sand mine". When it was "supposedly" done, we shot the grades. His grading would dam up water and back up on my property. NOPE! He and the county wanted to argue with me. HA! I have a transit! I shot the grades! OK. It was regraded.
That used transit was one of my best investments. I still have it and I will not part with it.
 

Hello PJH. I follow you on the "wiggle in" procedure you wrote for Steve. By gradually moving the transit horizontally you will eventually get the transit over the line and it would sight in the stakes over the two end pins when rotated 180. I suppose you could move past the line horizontally and see if you went too far. Also I further suppose you could basically triangulate to the pins by looking at the angles when you are say 10' or 20' or more on either side of the line and still reproduce the center line on top of the hill.

What I don't quite follow is the "double centering" unless you are also referring to also doing a vertical center since you are marking to 3 spots on the helper's stake which I presume is a vertical stake. With that information you can also determine the change in elevations of the pins and the hill and all along.

Once a person has a transit on the line then it would make sense to have the helpers drive stakes every so often to make it easier to run a string line or laser for a series of fence posts.

Then you have to sort out with the neighbor on if you are putting the fence right on the line or just off the line so it is clearly on your land.

Then you have to know the law in your state. In KS the general law is that you are required to fence out someone's cattle. That never made sense to me. Some places follow the free range rule. That said if you have cattle/horses in your fenced field, you can be held liable if you don't build and maintain it tight in accordance with the standard which is usually 4 strands of barb wire with posts spaced a rod apart.

I watched a week old calf run into and through a 5 strand barbed wire fence with tight wire along a state highway where the wire spacing was 12" so even a good fence doesn't always work.
 
I wouldn't trust the county GIS data to be accurate. In my case, the county says the property line runs down the middle of my driveway and through the center of my garage. I have a surveyor coming out to see where the actual line is. The fencing has been in place for 15 or so years, but no one, apparently has looked at the surveyed property lines. And, I can't make heads nor tails of all the legal description of the property. I.e, "the southeast quarter of the southeast quarter. . ." etc. Hence, the surveyor. zuhnc
 
bc - the double centering is for alignment only.

If you think about how a transit is built, the scope is supported by a "tower" of sorts on each side of the instrument. If those "towers" are not perfectly built (and they are not) the crosshairs of the scope will not be absolutely perfectly centered on the instrument. So - when you look at your backsight for shot #1, imagine your scope has a built in lean of just .001 inches to YOUR left. That's a minute amount, but it magnifies when you flip the scope to give your helper a point. His #1 mark will be shifted to HIS left a little bit. (Remember - he is facing you) Next you rotate the instrument to take your #2 shot. By rotating the instrument, your built in lean is now .001 inches to YOUR right. When you flip the scope to give your helper his #2 shot, his #2 mark will be shifted a little bit to HIS right. That's what we call a split. You have two marks on the top of the stake, so you divide the distance between the marks by two and drive a tack at the midpoint between his #1 & #2 marks. I must say that this would be a high and unnecessary level of accuracy for most fence work.

It is a little confusing to explain, but basically what you are doing when you double center is you are compensating for the built in error that every transit leaves the factory with. Transits have a lot of adjustment points on them, but I have never seen one that was adjusted so well that it would not split on a double center.

When I staked fences for neighbors and friends, I tried to get them to have the tee posts scattered along the line. Once you have the transit set up, you can align the posts as they drive them. They are always surprised when I ask them if they want the nub side of the post on the line or the back side of the post on the line. They are thinking "within an inch or two", but we have the capability to be right on the money.

I want to stress again - this is THEIR fence line. They chose the points to start and end from. I'm just connecting the dots.
 
John, I spent 35 years fooling with a transit. I was a route surveyor doing construction staking for the Illinois DOT. I loved nearly every minute of it.

A transit is a valuable tool to have around!
 

I follow you PJH if rotate means to rotate the transit on its axis on its base 180 degrees but you need to explain what flip is. By flip do you mean to pull the transit out of its base and reinsert while pointing in the opposite direction, or to unscrew the transit base {with transit attached to its base) from the tripod and rotate the base in the opposite direction 180 degrees, or else mean to rotate the entire tripod 180 degrees.

So what I was thinking about with the vertical centering is wrong. I guess you can still shoot elevations with the helper walking down the hill, have a long pole, or use the stadia lines on the transit to calculate the elevation.

I've used them around construction for shooting elevations and it isn't rotated more than 45 degrees or so. If you rotate it back and the cross hairs land on the same level at the start then the transit is level. If not then adjust the leveling screws till it does read the same after rotating it.

Guess I didn't realize that a precision built instrument could be tilted just a little bit. Suppose adjusting on leveling screw to compensate would totally mess things up when rotating 180 degrees. Have to wonder how accurate the instruments were around 150 years ago and how accurate the chainmen were walking along yelling chain, stuck, out, set a point, and tally.

I'll have to watch the auctions and pick one up. Everyone seems to be going to these total station type measuring devices so I see transits at auctions except they want to sell like 3 together instead of one by itself.
 
bc - by "flip" I mean the action of turning the scope tube upside down. Think of the scope focus knob being on the top of the scope tube looking at the backsight. Then when you "flip" the scope, the focus knob will be on the bottom of the scope tube and you have to reach in under the scope to focus it.

Look at this picture - the transit scope is pointing straight down in the storage box. The transit can be used with the focus knob on the top of the scope tube or on the bottom of the scope tube. The scope focus knob is the large brass knob in the center of the scope tube.
K&E transit
 

Thanks. I understand now kimosabe. The transits I'm thinking of don't have that tall tower which allows the scope to flip. I can see why the flipable ones may need double centering.

If I look around to buy one, is it worth the extra bux for a flipable one? Looked at a couple on Amazon, a White for instance, but it isn't flipable and the 20x to 32x ones don't go out beyond 300' according to the reviews but I'd think any scope would go a quarter to half mile or more. One review showed the cross hairs all out of kilter. These are really made for construction but still ought to work.

The county surveyor is supposed to email me the coordinates for the pins around out section at the farm. KDOT has put their survey posts along US hwy 56. I want to replace the fence along the highway and also have a hill/rise to deal with. Since one of their markers is just inside some cedar trees, I have to offset by 6' or so.

Bet you have walked many miles over the years surveying highways marking and staking every hundred feet. Seems like KDOT does multiple surveys. First stakes show up in the ditch by the edge of the highway and then later by the edge of the road and paint marks on the edge, and then they are on the centerline. Then after paving it seems like the centerlines are marked again before prepainting & painting of stripes and lines.
 
bc - on the subject of the fence that you want to replace along the highway - I can't speak for Kentucky, but over here in Illinois I have marked right-of-way many times for people who are wanting to build a fence. There was no cost to the property owner. The property owner would place a phone call to the district office and the order would be passed down to me. I always liked those little jobs. I got to meet many very nice people.

You can find some real good deals on used transits. There was a pretty nice looking one on Craigslist a few months ago for around $25. I personally would prefer a nice old K&E transit like shown in that photo, but I am most familiar with them, having spent many hours using them over the years. If you are making long shots, you would appreciate the accuracy of the higher cost transit, but if you are mainly using it for construction and leveling, a builders level or "dumpy" level would be adequate. We never used our transits for leveling, although they did have a level vial on the scope tube.

It's interesting to note - I have had several people bring transits to me that they had bought at an auction. At least three or four "needed the crosshairs replaced". You need to know that there is a crosshair focus adjustment on all of the transits that I have fooled with. It will be somewhere near the eyepiece - where you look into the scope. Sometimes the eyepiece will twist to focus the crosshairs, and sometimes it will slide like an old telescope. With that focus adjustment, you can throw the crosshairs out of focus so badly that they can't be seen. There is also a tiny little "shade" that will slide across the eyepiece on the K&E transits, and at first glance will make someone think something is wrong with the instrument. I think the auction transits are fiddled with and either accidentally or on purpose made to appear that the crosshairs are "gone". I can see where that would make a transit sell cheaper if interested parties thought that it might be broken. I like to think that it was accidental, just to give humanity the benefit of the doubt.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
Boundry Problem
Replies
9
Views
1K
Fixingfarmer
Fixingfarmer
S
Chisel plow point ?
Replies
8
Views
456
Fixingfarmer
Fixingfarmer
stevieb49829
Moose fence update
Replies
5
Views
295
stevieb49829
stevieb49829
S
Chisel plow ?
Replies
6
Views
831
paul
P
J
Jubilee spark to center post not to plugs
2
Replies
22
Views
470
wore out
wore out
Tractor Parts Tractor Manuals

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Copyright © 1997-2024 Yesterday's Tractor Co.

All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of any part of this website, including design and content, without written permission is strictly prohibited. Trade Marks and Trade Names contained and used in this Website are those of others, and are used in this Website in a descriptive sense to refer to the products of others. Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy TRADEMARK DISCLAIMER: Tradenames and Trademarks referred to within Yesterday's Tractor Co. products and within the Yesterday's Tractor Co. websites are the property of their respective trademark holders. None of these trademark holders are affiliated with Yesterday's Tractor Co., our products, or our website nor are we sponsored by them. John Deere and its logos are the registered trademarks of the John Deere Corporation. Agco, Agco Allis, White, Massey Ferguson and their logos are the registered trademarks of AGCO Corporation. Case, Case-IH, Farmall, International Harvester, New Holland and their logos are registered trademarks of CNH Global N.V.

Yesterday's Tractors - Antique Tractor Headquarters
Website Accessibility Policy

Back
Top