bull dookie land surveying (NOT legal, but approximate)

[Three Valves]

Skip the mumbo jumbo and burn down the offending deer blinds.

Messege sent.

[windshieldbug]

An OK strategy assuming Google keeps its view updated, but I've noticed quite a delay in looking at our property...

[Donn]

I don't think he expects to be able to see his markers from space? rather just using whatever existing landmarks for reference data in the image.

Seems to me the thing that could go wrong here is if they don't map the image data to geographical coordinates with sufficient accuracy to do this. I could sure believe that. Combined street and satellite data often puts road images somewhat off where the street data says they should be, for example, which tells me that at least one of the two data sets wasn't designed for fine detail reference. Might be able to do better with a compass and a tape.

On the other hand, if the line you end up with suits you, then you have a line and a story. Under some circumstances, errors in these matters can lead to loss of property via "adverse possession", but it doesn't sound like that's a risk here.

[bort]

Why not test it out on something known first? You've got that pond (or some other fixed landmark), so do some measurements based on your system, and see how close you can get to approximating the boundaries of that. No need to start in the middle of the woods and then try and figure out if it's going to be accurate.

[Donn]

If a set of points lined up, I think it would confirm that the data is precise enough, but wouldn't prove that it's accurate.

If you have a ground reference you can check it against, I'd guess you could just take any offset from that and apply it to all the map points.

[Dan Schultz]

Have fun getting through a woods or up/down hills with a tape measure to get the length of a straight line!

I have a piddly little 1/2 acre that's a trapezoidal shape. Two original survey stakes are present (or I guess they are 'original') but two sides of the lot are actually supposed to be on the centerline of two roads. Those roads have moved a bit in the last 100 years to the point that my existing house/deck won't even fit on the original plot plan on one side. Other parts of my lot are adulterated by utility right-of-ways that have expanded over the years.

The bottom line these days is that I probably don't have absolute control of anything that I'm paying taxes on!

[alfredr]

My own personal experience trying to locate certain points in the woods with my telephone as GPS is that it can be difficult to get a good enough signal through the trees to be very precise. Having the leaves off should help though. If your phone has a compass feature along with its GPS feature (mine does), you may be able to use that and a second person (your wife sounds like a good one to have along) to position her, to drive a stake, at the heading that your survey should tell you, from one of your corners, and work your way across from one corner to the other. You could do this from both ends, if you don't end up quite at the other corner, and then refine your line of stakes to straighten it out. as you would also have to do with your proposed method.

Doing it both ways, i.e., getting coordinates and trying to locate them on the ground, and going on a heading from a known point, would give you a check on both systems, and should get you a line pretty accurate on the ground. Please let us know what you do and how well you think it turns out.

[alfredr]

Are there no remains of fences along that side? In the good old days when everyone had livestock, there would have been fences approximately on the property lines.

[tbn.al]

There is no livestock in TN, only deadstock.

[alfredr]

If you have a survey from when you bought the property and know the locations of the two end points of that section, then you should only need a compass to follow the heading given from one point to the other. A tape measure would be to let you know when you went far enough, but you already know the end point. Planting stakes as you go along, will allow you to sight along them to get the line straight, as you are planning to do. A second person, the faithful wife, will be helpful, as suggested above. Really there should be no need for modern technology.

The only challenge should be in reading your compass heading precisely enough and staying on course. That is where backtracking from the second end point, and further back and forth as necessary, will help straighten the line. Have fun whatever way you want to do it. A couple of hours in the woods on a nice day with the wife and life is good.

[alfredr]

On my 20+ acres, I mostly have old fence lines that, according to my survey, are reasonably close the property lines. My problem is losing track of the corner pins. Once the flagging tape disintegrates and they get covered with leaves and other debris, they are hard to find, even when I am sure to within about 3 feet where they should be. I did get a 6 x 6 post planted at one corner that I thought would be most important, the inside corner of a 2 acre cut-out. Can't find the pin at the front corner of that; my little metal detector finds other things, but not the pin. I need more time to spend on it.

[iiipopes]

When my grandfather purchased his farm some (mumble) decades ago, among other repairs, he had to replace a broken down corner fence post. He wanted to see just how close the fence post was to the original government survey marker. Not the "orange flag" or the "orange painted stake," but the original "rock with the X." So when he dug out the hole to replace the corner post, he kept digging. Yes, he was exactly on top of the rock with the X. To make sure it was protected, he covered it back up exactly as it was, as you are supposed to do, then still staying below the freeze line for the bottom of the hole, formed and poured the corner post as a two-foot diameter concrete pillar. It is still there, and so at least the corner of that particular section, township and range is exactly as first surveyed.

[southtubist]

Go and get your self a truck bed of horse apples. Those are seeds for bodock (Maclura pomifera), and when planted close they become an impenetrable wall wood and thorns. Walk down that line and stomp one into the ground every few inches. Within a few years you'll have an unkillable hedgerow that a tank couldn't get through.