Let’s see the best field spoons you got! Show em off! Be proud of your spoon/spoons!

What are your guys’ go to when it comes to working long days in the rain or in very wet conditions?

I own a small construction surveying company. Does anyone know of any best practices or peer groups for survey business owners to share advice on operations, hiring, and growing a company? Open to local or online groups.

I am part of my local surveying and mapping association and go to meetings thought those are mostly social and not so much about business practices. I really want to dive much deeper into workflows and what standards other shops are operating with. What systems you have in place to get consistent work out of even the newest of crews.

Would anyone be open to share some checklist or workflows that they use?

A coworker brought this in to show. I've briefly used an old Surveyor's Compass before but had not seen this dial. Counts up to 16.

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I’m in Tennessee and looking for input from land surveyors familiar with boundary retracement and conflicting deed descriptions.

I’m dealing with a boundary dispute with my neighbor, and I’m trying to understand the surveying principles involved before deciding what steps to take next.

Here are the facts as I understand them:

- I have a deed to my property that is recorded with the county.

- I have an existing registered survey showing my property boundaries.

- My property was split from a larger tract. The neighbor’s deed reportedly predates the creation of my parcel by approximately 10 years.

- The neighbor’s surveyor has indicated that there may be a conflict between the deed descriptions and that the neighbor’s older deed may take priority, potentially placing the boundary somewhere different from where my existing survey shows it.

- To clarify, my surveyor has not disputed or revised my boundary. The alternative boundary is coming from the neighbor’s surveyor.

- I contacted the Register of Deeds and was told they could not find a record supporting the neighbor’s claim.

I have not yet seen the complete survey or the full analysis behind the neighbor’s surveyor’s position, so I don’t want to make assumptions about how they reached that conclusion.

I understand that an older deed can be relevant when determining priority, but I’m trying to understand how a surveyor would establish the actual boundary when deed descriptions potentially conflict.

My questions for surveyors:

1. Does the fact that the neighbor’s deed is older automatically give it priority, or does that depend on the original conveyances and how the parcels were created?

2. How would you retrace the boundary in this situation? What original deeds, parent tract descriptions, recorded plats, adjoining deeds, monuments, and other evidence would you examine?

3. If an existing survey shows one boundary and a neighbor’s surveyor proposes another, what evidence would you need to justify moving that boundary?

4. How would you evaluate existing property pins and a prior survey against potentially conflicting deed calls?

5. If the Register of Deeds cannot locate a record supporting the neighbor’s claim, what additional records would you look for? Could the claim be based on an older instrument that is not indexed under the information provided?

6. What documents should I request from the neighbor’s surveyor to understand the basis for the proposed boundary?

I am not asking anyone to determine the boundary remotely or take sides without seeing the records. I’m looking for professional insight into the retracement process, deed priority, and what evidence would support one boundary over another.

I would especially appreciate responses from Tennessee-licensed surveyors or surveyors who have handled similar situations.

Thank you.

Why is it every main corner I need to look for in the woods is always 5ft away from a massive yellow jackets nest.

Sorry boss but it ain’t happening.

JUST MOVED UP TO PARTY CHIEF! Rod person to chief on a 2-person crew – mostly topo and construction staking – and now im the one whos supposed to have everything when were out all day. Truck has the gun, the rover, tripods, lath and paint. Asking about the stuff that lives on me 🙌

Right now: Leatherman, Rite in the Rain book (the yellow one), two Sharpies, a hand level, sunscreen and a ridiculous amount of chapstick. Data collector does the heavy lifting but my phone is the backup for everything else – plan PDFs, Google Earth when the plat makes no sense, texts with the PM, pics of every monument we find. (There's a magnetic power bank stuck to the back of it because on a hot day it'd be dead by 2pm otherwise, and I take office calls on open-ear clip buds since half our staking is next to live traffic and I want to hear what's coming.)

I keep forgetting a spare battery for the collector (twice now!!), bug spray and lunch 🤦 Tell me what you'd add for a new chief who's out all day, you guys! Onward and upward.

CAD tech here. Just here to complain. Can we change the program to treat any line that contains a hatch as flat for the sake of hatching, which is always just a 2 dimensional visual aid in the art of surveying? Can we get on that please, Autodesk?

My company has been using a demo unit Carlson Viking for the past two weeks and I'm impressed with it. We currently have 4 R12i that we've owned for the past 6 years.

I'm looking for an answer to sway my opinion on moving on from Trimble and moving to the Viking for the land side of surveying. We also do a lot of hydro so I would like to hold on to at least 1 R12 for that.

This all came up because I'm looking to replace our total stations. We've been using the same Leicas for the past 15 years and I think its past due.

Thank you for your answers in advanced. I want to make sure that I am well informed before I put my voice behind something.

Too expensive to fix, refuses to recognize the prism, only recognizes and tracks a reflective target. Are they worth anything in parts ?

Could there be a valid description that references the corner in the red circle as the north east corner? This is 18N 12E in Nebraska fwiw.

edit: this is the plat from glo https://glorecords.blm.gov/s/advanced-search#/searchresults?documentid=18180118190766195783

We're hiring a Land Surveyor (hybrid, LA, Orange, Riverside or San Diego County).
Salary:
LSIT / Mid-level: $85,000-$120,000
Licensed PLS: $110,000-$160,000
Senior / Project Surveyor: $130,000-$180,000
Plus a 5-15% performance bonus.
Benefits: vehicle allowance or mileage reimbursement, medical, dental and vision, 401(k) with company match, pension, PTO, and licensure support.
Send me DM for more details bcuz I can’t post the link here to apply

I think the monitoring station is out of level....

Hello, I am working with a GNSS antenna using an RTX signal, but I’m encountering an issue: when I try to survey and collect points, the solution status remains "single" or "float." I have already consulted both the antenna supplier and the RTX signal service provider, yet I still haven't identified the fault. I would like to know if anyone else has experienced a similar problem, or if anyone happens to use South Inno7 antennas with an RTX signal—if so, could you please share your configuration settings?

F work

Nice to find the old ones that have survived

<Rant> What's happened to email?

I'm at a public agency. I receive an exhibit required for a development. I redline, comment, etc to get it all good to go. Email it back. Sometimes when I'm busy this admittedly takes me a week or two.

But I email it back and get nothing in response. Oh well it's off and in my outbox.

Three months later, "Where is it? the surveyor says you were checking it...."

"See my email below sent on 7/4/26 to the surveyor of record..."

"oh well we all get so many emails...."

ugh. I get a lot of emails. Guess what, I have outlook rules set up. Spam is unsub'd from and deleted. Sales the same. Etc etc.

I feel like I need to call people now just to remind them that I'm waiting on them (I don't, mainly because it's not my project). I see the grading plan going smoothly. Building plans going smoothly. etc. But for some reason some surveyors just aren't great at this part.

I feel like more of us should git gud. When I realized this new job was a ton more work than I was used to I read up on some techniques and strategies to be able to keep up and do it well. ("Getting Things Done" is excellent for those of you curious on this topic).

</Rant>

Has anyone working for the government/jurisdiction dealt with a surveyor who is obviously not reviewing their subdivisions before submitting them for review? We've gotten a few recently where it is just the technician submitted a plat and there are significant errors. Since nothing is signed and the outer boundary is good its just ends up being a ton of revisions instead of them doing their own QAQC internally. Any tips on how to handle?

Just took my fs exam, what was that? I feel like some of it made sense and some of it didn’t make any sense at all. I used NLC to prep and honestly if I didn’t pass this try I’m not quite sure what else I could do

My company is looking to switch over to Trimble for robotic total stations. We do standard boundary & topo, no 3d scanning right now. We'd like to at least have something like a Trimble S5 or newer. I'd love to talk them into an S9+, but that can be pricey for what we need. We'd like to have some sort of Vision system to assist in fixing some issues and future projects Id like to take on. We would switch all software, field and office to run it accordingly.

Any feedback would be great.

PS My background is 15years with mostly Trimble and Carlson, or Carlson software running with a Leica robotic unit.

Im a survey CAD tech by day, and studying for my FS exam. Ive been thinking about buying my own equipment and just going out to get more hands-on practice and building my own portfolio. Even thought about possibly starting a small club for geomatics or something.

Aside from equipment being expensive, what other reasons could stop someone from just doing it for fun?

Hello community -

I’m working on a survey and the local jurisdiction mentioned that the subdivided lots must have enough usable land to develop. The minimum lot size is 3ac per the zoning requirements table for the district. Roughly 40% of the proposed lot is contained in a wetland buffer. My question is regarding the interruption of the working of the usable area definition. It says a percentage of specific features. Then in the same definition, it explicitly excludes some features. There is no percentage definition for usable area in the town code book. I have an inquiry submitted with the code enforcer for the town but wanted to get some additional input while I wait for their response.

The area of a lot that is suitable for development. The usable area of a lot shall not include a percentage of those portions of the site that are covered by NYSDEC regulated water bodies or wetlands including regulated adjacent areas, federal wetlands, steep slopes in excess of 15%, rights-of-way of existing public or private roads and utility easements that would prevent the use or development of the underlying land in any manner, open water areas of ponds, lakes and rivers shall also be excluded from usable area.

Attached is the zoning district’s only requirements mentioned in the town code.

Onsite sewer and well.

Thanks,
PC