[GTALUG] Surveying

[Russell Reiter]

I thought I'd add my two cents on how a pole length factors into this
thread and a couple of planning issues people might be interested in.

On 4/20/16, Stewart C. Russell <scruss at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2016-04-20 09:06 AM, phiscock at ee.ryerson.ca wrote:
>>
>> … a remarkably strong case can be made for
>> the weird units of measurements used in the past - rods and chains, for
>> example.
>
> Yeah, spent a bit too much time around plans and surveys.
>
> The basis of most land measurement is Gunter's Chain
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunter's_chain>, a 17th century invention
> that made it easy to measure out distances and acreages. One chain is 66
> feet, and there are 4 rods (or poles, or pikes) to the chain. There are
> 100 links to the chain, so it's vaguely base-10 too.

Interestingly a rod length of 16ft 6in squares out to an acre and it's
purpose was for scaling the lumber on a property. If you have ever
seen old footage of west coast logging you will see a man hopping
around on piles of logs with a "story pole" 16ft 6in long. Apparently
in the late iron age this was a metal rod of this length. In later
wooden construction this iron rod became a hardwood pole.

Also this length became a standard of measure in balloon frame
construction of the day and is possibly named because the structural
members stretch from the sill to the rafters of a two story structure.
I only heard this anecdotally from carpenters I worked with who had
done balloon framing in the past.

>
> The original reason for the 16th and 17th century English mania for
> survey was the valuation of lands seized from the Catholic church by
> Henry VIII. It also helped with land valuation for Enclosure, and the
> end of the Commons.
>
> Many land surveys are done in metes and bounds, which are a series of
> vector measurements from a point (usually a defined survey point; if you
> ever stumble over a low square metal peg half-buried, it's likely a
> survey marker) to define a land area. Annoyingly, in the US, most of
> these measurements use US Survey Feet, which very slightly different to
> the 12 × 25.4 mm feet that we might know.

One of the earliest American land scandals involved the meets and
bounds descriptions of lands alongside it's first railways. Alternate
plots of land were deliberately miss-described in those meets and
bounds records and the term checkerboard land fraud was born.

Canada uses a land registry system and some lands, which were divided
under part lot control, have those original meets and bounds
descriptions as part of the record. This is the Torrens Title system
of which Canada was an early adopter.

Now with computer automation of records so prevalent we are moving
towards a a Land Title System consisting of Land Title Consent
Qualified and Land Title Absolute documents which supplant the long
chain of deeds, leases, and mortgages and which trace owners and
leaseholders back to those original meets and bounds descriptions.

These days indefeasible title does not have to be searched back to the
beginning, just to the last registered transaction, but be sure to
check your title for any notations under the Plan Boundaries Act. Just
like computer bugs/features old stuff can come back to haunt you.

>
> Tiny aside: My wife's great-great-grandfather surveyed the Santa Fe
> trail for the carters, who felt that the US government was underpaying
> them for the distance. Somewhere in the family vaults is the chain that
> Martin O. Jones and his team dragged from Independence, MO to Santa Fe,
> and proved the carters right.
>
> units(1) has many interesting asides on measurements.
>
> cheers,
>  Stewart
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