In the following sections I'll describe all three fundamentals of surveying as they might be carried out on the homestead. The more complex instruments needed for such work can be borrowed or rented from colleges, state agriculture departments, or blueprint companies (which supply professional surveyors). Other items can be bought inexpensively or improvised at home.

1. How to Survey
Land
By Aimee Gelwick

2. Precise land surveys depend on three fundamentals:
[1] The determination of distances.
[2] The determination of elevation.
[3] The measurement of angles.
Which of the three operations you perform first — or at all — depends on
the particular surveying problem at hand.
In the following sections I'll describe all three fundamentals of surveying
as they might be carried out on the homestead. The more complex
instruments needed for such work can be borrowed or rented from
colleges, state agriculture departments, or blueprint companies (which
supply professional surveyors). Other items can be bought inexpensively or
improvised at home.
How to Survey Land

3. The Measurement of Land Distance
To determine distances
accurately when fencing — for
example, or laying out garden
lots of equal area — you'll need
the following equipment:
[1] A set of 11 chaining pins.
These can be made from coat
hanger wire.

4. [2] A 100-foot steel or metallic woven tape. George Washington did his
surveying with a chain probably, a 66 foot Gunter's chain and the modern
version is, accordingly, called a steel chaining tape. You might substitute 100
feet of rope marked off in feet, with the first foot divided into tenths. Be
precise!
[3] Two range poles (any stick about seven feet long will do).
[4] A plumb bob on a string.
[5] Pencil and field notebook (found at college bookstores and blueprint
companies) to record your notes. As an alternative, use two pieces of lined
paper prepared (both pages have about 25 lines). The first page should be
headed with a legal description of the land to be surveyed, and its six
columns used to record numerical data such as distances between points,
elevations from range pole readings, and angles turned between points on
the transit. The top of the second page bears the names of the persons doing
the surveying, the date, and a note on the weather. The rest of the sheet is
used for illustration. A sketch map should be included to give an aerial view
of the tract, with arrows indicating north and south and labels showing
points, fences, roads, and other features.

5. Pencil — which won't smear, as wet ink does — is best used to record
your notes in case of rain when you're out in the field.
Let's suppose you want to fence part
of your acreage maybe section off
the back 400 feet for a small cow
pasture (in which case your problem
is to mark off a line parallel to and
400 feet away from the rear
boundary of the property). Or, if
your land holding is more extensive,
you might want to lay out an area
400 feet by 7,600 feet. In either
situation, the main objective is to
measure off a specified distance
from a known corner point or
points.

6. Place a range pole at the corner from which you want to begin, and set the
other pole at an approximation of the desired distance (to help keep you
heading in the right direction as you work).
Next, recruit the assistance of your Mate or a friend, and open the tape
between you to its full length. The person holding the Zero end is head
chainman (H.C.). His partner — the surveyor in charge of the 700 foot
end — is rear chainman (R.C.).

7. The H.C. marks the starting point with a chaining pin, arms himself with the
other 10 pins and walks toward the next corner of the area to be measured,
while the R.C. makes sure his companion takes a straight path toward the
range pole. When the tape is stretched to its entire length, the R.C. holds the
100 foot point exactly on the corner pin and pulls against his partner until the
measure is straight. At that point the R.C: yells, "Stick!" and the H.C. pokes
one of his chaining pins into the ground at exactly zero. The pair once again
checks to be sure the tape is tightly stretched between them, then repeats the
whole procedure until the entire distance from (the old, known) corner to
(the newly determined) corner has been covered. (After 1,000 feet there
should be no pins left, which is a good way to double check against loss of
markers.)

8. When you place your pins in the ground, incidentally, it's test to insert
them at an angle so that the tape can then be held directly over their
points of entry. Use chalk instead of chaining pins to mark pavement or
other hard surfaces.
Measurement between two trees, boundaries, or other points won't give
you such nice round numbers to work with, which is where the first foot
of tape and its smaller divisions come in. Let's say the distance involved is
about 56 feet. Place a pin at the 50 foot point, then use the first 6 feet of
the tape to determine the remainder. This gives you a figure accurate to
tenths of a foot: 56.3 feet, for example.
For very accurate work, remeasure the distance you've just stepped off by
starting from the finish point and then working "in reverse" back to your
original landmark corner. Record your findings on the first page of your
field notes and illustrate them with a diagram on the second sheet.

9. You'll need to use a plumb bob to help you determine distances accurately in
hilly areas. The device is suspended by a string wrapped around one of the
foot markers on the chain. if, for example, you must measure downhill, the
H.C. will hold out the tape as level as possible above the ground and set the
pin at the spot marked by the point of the plumb bob. For really steep
slopes, you may have to break your chaining length down to about five feet
at a time.

10. You cap also measure distances by counting steps when great accuracy
isn't necessary. First, though, you must carry out a pacing test on a course
of known length. Mark off 100 feet or more with a steel tape or rope (as
described in this section), walk from one end of the line to the other, and
record the number of steps you took. Do this about four times, add the
totals, and divide by four for an average pace factor. This figure is a useful
aid in 'making rough estimates of distance when you begin a
measurement of elevation or angle.
Article Source: MotherEarthNews.Com
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