Help with land surveying!!

[GreenBlood10]

I am in need of getting one side of my yard surveyed for a future fence to be put up. I called a local surveyor a few months ago and was quoted $800 to have the yard surveyed. I really don't have $800 (or $400 at that) to get the yard surveyed and was hoping someone on here would be able to help with a good local recommendation or if someone on here was capable of doing it.

Edit: The size of the entire lot is .28 acres


Any help would be great!

GB

[Bobthetomato]

Most subdivisions have pins or other markers placed into the ground at the corners of the property. you might try looking for them and using a line a sight to see where the border is. The only other cheap way you might get it done is go to a trade school or community college that teaches it and hire students. The only down side is you will not have the work stamped by a professional land surveyor.

[P89]

You don't need a survey for a fence...unless your boro is really whacked out.
Go to the court house, look up your tax id #, locate on a tax map, get copy of tax map, try to locate two metal pins and use line of sight, call your zoning officer and get a permit. Your zoning officer should be able to help you out, contact him/her...all municipalities work a little different.

[chauncey]

if you have to hire a surveyor, find the survey provided when you bought your house - as required by every mortgage company - and hire the same surveying firm, again

a lot of the $800 is research and field data collection that they need to require to "check in" the markers on your property.

if they have surveyed the property previously, and already have that information, it will make the survey job quicker and consequently less expensive.

i am a commercial Project Manager, and used to work on a survey crew

[phillykev]

if you have to hire a surveyor, find the survey provided when you bought your house - as required by every mortgage company

I didn't have a survey done when I bought my house. The mortgage was based on the legal description in the deed.

[JWS]

Carefully read your deed and get out the tape measure and a compass

[GreenBlood10]

Thanks for the responses guys. I contacted a couple of surveyors and one told me that since it is a fairly new (1993) development then I should be able to locate the pins on the corners using a ferrous metal detector.

Now I just need to borrow someones metal detector.

The deed idea, using a tape measure and compass, was brought up as well.


I'm gonna see if we can come to an agreement on where it is and use some evergreens as a fence.

Let's see how this works out.

GB

[Sandcut]

The deed idea, using a tape measure and compass, was brought up as well.

Just remember that the bearings used in a survey are taken using a quadrant compass (0*-90*) and not an azimuth compass (0*-360*). If you don't know what this means, I'll explain.

On an azimuth compass, all bearings are taken in relation to North, which is 0*. East is 90*. South is 180*. West is 270*. On a quadrant compass the bearings are taken in relation to how many degrees east/west from north OR south.

The bearing will look like this when written N30*E. This means 30* east of north, which would also be 30* on an azimuth compass. Southeast would be 135* on an azimuth compass, but would read S45*E (meaning 45* east of south.) A reading of 214* on an azimuth compass would be the number of degrees west of south (180*). So 214-180=34. This would be read as S34*W.

340* would be N20*W (360-340=20)

Just remember N and S are 0* and E and W are 90*. After all, a compass is really only a protractor.

I hope that helps.

[psu54ff]

If you still need help. I may be able to give you a hand. I have my bachelors in surveying engineering and am a land surveyor in training. Either way your best bet is to get a metal detector and see if you can find your monuments.