California Surveyors Forums

In unincorporated Contra Costa Co., where I live and conduct a small portion of my business all building permits that add square footage, or any landscaping that must meet setback requirements requires a certification letter.

The letter must state that the formwork for the new square footage or whatever else is being constructed is positioned "in accordance with the approved plans and meets minimum setback requirements."

This is required for any and all construction that falls into the above categories.

Oftentimes I get requests for verification/certification for projects that are nowhere close to the minimum setbacks. True case in point: I had a project where the minimum setback was 20', and the project was over 100' from the property line.

Obviously you need to know where the property lines are to be able to write a letter regarding minimum setbacks. In the case mentioned above I can write this letter without taking any equipment out of my truck. Merely getting the underlying maps and pacing a few things off and I can state definitively that the construction is outside of the minimum setbacks.

Is this acceptable? Does one have to definitely locate property boundaries to make a statement that minimum setbacks are being met?

What would you do?

well, if you're being asked to verify that the house (or what ever item) is per the plans, don't you have to at least locate it in order to verify that portion of the statement?

in doing that, don't you have to locate a PL also?

or if on the plans it says its 99' from an existing block wall to the corner of the house, then just confirming those items would satisfy the letter?

The county does not require that you verify where the house is on the property, only that it conforms to minimum setbacks. Yes, you do need to verify the dimensions of the house, but that is easier done with a tape measure.

LMAO

A local big buck city requires surveyors certify setbacks, but if the plans show 6ft between the house and PL and setback is 5ft, no certification is needed.

Does one have to definitely locate property boundaries to make a statement that minimum setbacks are being met?

In my opinion, no. Unless the county's requirement specifies that a boundary survey be performed in connection with the certification letter, then it's up to the licensed professional to decide what steps he must take to make the determination of setback compliance. If, in his professional judgment, he can make that determination without performing a boundary survey in conformance with the standard of practice, then it's his prerogative to employ other means to that end. If pacing is all it takes, so be it.

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Why have a pre-82 or PLS prepare the certification in the first place? If anybody can guess it is good enough, then we do not need and surveyors at all , do we ?

If anybody can guess it is good enough, then we do not need and surveyors at all , do we ?

You can't certify to the correctness of a guess; it isn't one of the tools in the professional's toolbox. The county wants a licensed professional to take responsibility for setback compliance. Which tools he uses to arrive at his determination is a decision only he can make.

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I misspoke. I used a poor word choice. I ought to have used the word "Estimate".

I agree with Jim on this. The surveyor is qualified to observe what is proper evidence of the boundary, and then if appropriate, estimate the position of improvements relative to the boundary. Assessing what may be proper evidence of the boundary is the point at which all except for the surveyor fail to qualify to make any definitive statements about meeting setbacks.

When one considers that all measurements are merely educated estimates of the true value of the thing being measured, this is no different.

It's up to the surveyor to decide how rough or precise the measurements need to be to adequately estimate whether the setback requirements are met.

Some jurisdictions require a sketch with dimensions. The reporting requirements will of course have an effect on one's decision of what equipment and method should be used and how much surveying should be done. Some of these certifications may only require a clear line of site between the monuments along one line and the ability to reasonably discern that a particular distance is "about 100 ft" by applying nothing more than an eyeball to the problem, while others will require a full boundary determination and careful locating of foundations or construction stakes with survey-grade equipment.

I've submitted setback certifications that basically say "the existing foundation forms are a distance which exceeds the required setback of XX feet for this parcel."

Well yes, every different fact that one encounters in the course of the provision of professional service affects(or ought to) the decisions of the service provider.

The board rules define the aspects of responsible charge and one of these is making the choice of survey method.

"A licensee shall only express professional opinions that have a basis in fact or experience or accepted land surveying principles."

Certainly, one is consistent with board rules to express an opinion based upon their experience. "I eyeball setbacks all the time and I am a pretty good guesser when it comes to pacing off distances. Here is your stamped and sign setback letter, that'll be $50."

Would "eyeballing" the setback be identified anywhere as being consistent with "accepted land surveying principles"?

Evan, in the most hairsplitting sense you are correct all measurement is estimation , but I have never seen any error analysis on pacing. I have never seen any documentation proving the repeatable nature of pacing.

I wonder are you going to "eyeball" the monuments too? What do textbooks on boundary surveying claim surveyors ought to do in order to accept a monument?

I am expressing a conservative opinion here that suggests surveyors are hired because they have special training and experience and they will do something more than a lay person would or could do in order to certify a location.

I would not want to find myself in the position of having defend a certification that I just guessed at.

Having a certification that is based upon measurements that are repeatable and based upon methodology that are consistent with accepted land surveying principles, is actually what the clients wants and needs and protects the public.

I think it is a foolish practice to read local agency requirements with a mindset of finding shortcuts to cut survey cost for the clients. Clearly the setback certification is for the purpose of protecting the public via consistent land development practice and in some instances setbacks are critical to safety.

San Mateo County used to allow letters stating that the forms comply with setbacks as per plans. Now they want a letter that specifically notes a dimension from the forms to the property line. I think in a case like this, you need to determine the property lines. Most cases I've dealt with, the addition or new house,etc. is close to the minimum setback, so a boundary survey is necessary in my opinion. In a case like Dylan mentions, then a boundary survey may not be necessary. It depends upon on the professional. I think it's kind of silly for the building department to request a verification when the improvements are so far away from the nearest P/L.

[quote="dmi"]Havinga certification that is based upon measurements that are repeatable and basedupon methodology that are consistent with accepted land surveying principles,is actually what the clients wants and needs and protects the public. [/quote]

That’s why Iwould never guess, I would never make measurements by a means I cannotreasonably quantify and qualify. Undercertain circumstances, eyeball and pacing does meet the criteria of being basedon accepted land surveying principles and is entirely appropriate. Just because you do not know how to use acertain tool, do not assume that others do not or that the tool is not valid.

[quote="dmi"]Ithink it is a foolish practice to read local agency requirements with a mindsetof finding shortcuts to cut survey cost for the clients. Clearly the setbackcertification is for the purpose of protecting the public via consistent landdevelopment practice and in some instances setbacks are critical tosafety.[/quote]

It is alsofoolish to build an atomic clock when a simple sundial is all that’s needed. Your client is not properly served, nor isthe public protected by charging for efforts that far exceed the requirements. Part of the way a professional protects hisclient and the public is economically. One side of that coin is that you minimize rather than createunnecessary risk for your client. Theother side is that you go about minimizing that risk as efficiently as isreasonable. You harm the client byinsisting on an unnecessary level of service.

I think thatyou are viewing this issue solely from the perspective of an urbansurveyor. In such an environment, onemay never encounter an instance in which fairly precise measurements are notrequired, but consider this scenario…

A few years ago,I was hired for a setback verification for a new home on a 40 acre parcel (NE ¼of NE ¼, S 26). The foundation appearedto be about 300’ from the E line and about 250’ from the N line. The inspector already knew this and hadallowed the concrete foundation to be built (full basement, large house, lotsof angles). The bldg dept was startingto require setback verifications on all new construction, so to check the boxand paper the file, my client was required to obtain one.

The NE SecCor was monumented and there were sufficient records to indicate an angularrelationship of the W line of S 24 to N line of S 26. There were several record mons of asubdivision (in the SW of S 24) along the W line of S 24 within a few hundredfeet of the Sec Cor. This area,notwithstanding the subdivision, is otherwise very rural and prettyremote. To directly identify my client’sN line, I had to search for the N ¼, which was 1000’ vertically down a rivercanyon filled with poison oak, the edge of the canyon starting not far from thebuilding site. We spent a day lookingfor it, finding no evidence of it. Atthat time, I was thinking my options were either to possibly several dayslooking for the ¼, or go to the NW section corner to define the line. I was thinking in terms of a boundary survey.

A day later,I happened to be speaking to a pretty smart friend of mine (you’ve donebusiness with and have high regard for him) and described my dilemma. He then interjected a little common senseinto my thinking. “How far off would youhave to find the record angular relationship of the section lines for thefoundation to violate setback?â€￾

“About 40degrees,â€￾ I answered, “the foundation appears to be more than 200’ South ofline and the setback is 10’.â€￾

“Are youbeing asked to delineate the boundary? Do thelocal requirements require you to report by how far the foundation clears thesetback?â€￾

“No, I justneed to determine whether or not it does clear.â€￾

“If you havereadily accessible monuments on the adjacent section line that are undisturbed,why on Earth are you precisely determining your client’s N line? If you can determine the N line sufficientlyto satisfy yourself that the foundation is well within the setbacks, just doenough work to verify that and state that the foundation clears thesetbacks. Done!â€￾

I could haveturned that into a $20,000 boundary survey in order to find out the answer thatI already knew to the question “Does the foundation clear the setbacks?â€￾ As it was, I charged him for a day and a halfof fieldwork and a bit of time to write a short letter that stated thefoundation was clear of the 10’ setback.

My clienthad no plans to do anything more with his property at that time. How would I have been serving or protectinghim by selling him over $18,000 worth of services he didn’t need?

This is abig state with a wide variety of circumstances a surveyor can come across. Methods that achieve a particular goal in therural foothills may be totally inadequate to achieve the same goal in the urbanconfines of SF C&C, or even in the semi-suburban immediate outskirts ofPlacerville. Conversely, the methods requiredin an urban environment may be total overkill and rightly be viewed asnegligent or even fraudulent advice for unnecessary services in order tofurther and unjustly enrich the service provider. We all need to keep that in mind whenconsidering questions such as that in the OP of this thread.

Setbacks in ALL of the jurisdictions I have worked in have a relationship to BOUNDARY LINES.

You and anyone who wants can continue to guess and eyeball all you want, not me.

In problematic areas,the main source of boundary problems results from the failure of generations of surveyors to have conducted proper boundary surveys, because IT COST TO MUCH FOR THE CLIENT.

Brown suggests that to avoid liability that one ought to do MORE than the averagely prudent surveyor.

Not to worry Evan, I don't get these jobs anyway and therefore cannot abuse the public by wasting their money on a proper survey.

From Brown from E&P4 BL 4th. ed. page 466 Principle 3 :
"The surveyor has the following obligations to the public:(7) to produce a quality produce regardless of the price."

Brown BC&LP 5th ed. page 424

"1. Courts cannot establish boundaries where they wish, regardless of the evidence and testimony. There must be some foundation in evidence for a court to locate a boundary."

This is in part is the basis for my opinion. I remain unconvinced that pacing and eyeballing provide a sufficient foundation upon which to base a boundary location. I still maintain that pacing and eyeballing is nothing more than a mere guess. I fully appreciate and concede that in the case of Mr Page it is an educated guess.

I wonder is your standard error of pacing and eyeballing the same uphill through a forest of poison oak the same as it is on flat ground?

When was the last time you checked your eyeballing and and pacing against a calibrated baseline?

How does your eyeballing and pacing detect original duplicate corners?

How does your eyeballing and pacing detect whether or not a corner has been improperly set?

Can your eyeballing and pacing detect a corner that was set off a no reference iron pipe in the 1920's when the original 1866 corner is just of feet away?

Can your pacing and eyeballing detect a corner that was moved and reset decades ago because one the property owners didn't like the survey results?
I suggest your eyeballing and pacing are all crude and unreliable and that the lay public can come up with that type of answer all on their own. If all the local agency required was a crude approximation, then they could rely upon the representations of the contractor. They have done so in the past and time and again these representations have proven to be unreliable,owning mainly to economic considerations. These agencies have turned to licensed professional land surveyors in hopes that we would be more reliable.

I maintain the lay public has no interest in our crude but educated estimation. they will say they accept the approximation to save money, but they can make crude uneducated estimations for themselves and they really do not need us for that. If it cost the client $500 for an approximation,estimate or GUESS as to their building setback(boundary line reference) or $2000 for a proper boundary survey and establishing the setback thereto, then they will maintain till hell freezes over, that the approximation, estimation, GUESS, IS THE LINE because a surveyor said so and take the firm offering the $500 fee almost every time.

Dane, you appear to be basing your arguments on the notion that the location of the setback line has to be established according to the standard of practice for a property line survey before a certification regarding the relationship between the setback line and the structure under consideration can be made.

It's a reasonable notion when the structure is close to the setback line. However, as the distance from the structure to the setback line begins to increase, the notion begins to lose rationality. By the time the structure is hundreds of feet from the setback line, the notion is absurd.

It's all about error budget, and error budget dictates the equipment and methods that must be employed in order to obtain a competent result. When the error budget is huge, the tools can be crude. In the end, it's a matter of professional judgment.

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I do not question that you or Mr Page would dispatch this type of professional service properly. This is because of how you approach the problem. If I understand your approach, you concern yourself with what is required to make a proper representation of a particular opinion. This is an entirely different question than how much will the market bear for me to stamp and sign a letter that will get my client's project approved? So if the market will only bear $500 for this service when I know it take $2,000 to provide the service, then what am I supposed to do? Or what would you do?

So if the market will only bear $500 for this service when I know it take $2,000 to provide the service, then what am I supposed to do?

There's only one ethical way to handle that problem: explain to your client that the fee you propose represents the cost of providing the desired service, and if that cost doesn't fit his budget, you aren't able to help him.

If other licensees in your area aren't following adequate procedures -- perhaps as indicated by their willingness to do the same work for an unreasonably low fee -- it may be time to talk to your local PPC.

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Knowing the accuracy you need to use based on the type of survey you are doing is elementary surveying.

dmi- Do you set rip rap stakes to the same accuracy as property corners. Or rough grade stakes to the same accuracy as curb stakes.
A client wants a 25ft grid of a existing parking lot, are you going to pace the shots or shoot in every shot to the nearest 0.01ft. I hope if you answered yes to any of the above your client's have lots of money to throw away.

Just as above if a home is 100ft from the Pl and setback is 10ft you sure don't need to get out the $20k 2sec total station to certify that the home is outside the setback lines.

Now if I have to certify 5ft setbacks in urban orange county you can bet I will require that the property corners be in or I be paid to do a boundary survey.

Interesting discussion.

The main discrepancy between posters in this thread is that the question posed by the OP has been misunderstood. The question was not "How far from the property line is the building?" It was "Does this building meet setbacks?" There is a HUGE difference between the two.

In the former, distances and measurements are what the client is paying for. It is a QUANTITY issue. In the later, the correct response is "Yes" or "No". Any other answer is incorrect. It is a QUALITY issue.

Granted, if the building appears to be close to the setback limits, measurement may be necessary to prove the quality. However, as one of my mentors, Chuck Willess used to ask me, "Ian, Dang it! Are we building the Space Shuttle or an outhouse? Let's not waste the client's money."

The certification letter only needs to read that the building meets or exceeds current setback requirements. It does not need to say that the building is 5.018493223496' from the property line. (Exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

The highest hourly rate I have ever earned (and one that would make many San Fran attorneys proud) was a situation where I took the time to understand the client's question and ended up charging less than half what every other surveyor quoted. It was a quality issue and not the quantity issue everyone else thought. The client was very pleased, even laughed when we traded stories about the amount I charged. The result stood up to court challenge. Everyone but the guys who misunderstood the question was happy.

I tend to lean towards Dane's opinion here.

We insist on having an ad-hoc boundary scheme in the U.S. There is no continual effort as in other things such as public utilities.

Construction is probably the best time to survey the boundary because that is when funds are available. Like it or not, evidence fades over time and since we insist on setting invisible rebar monuments which disappear over time then we should be advocating for surveying like my Dentist advocates for occasional teeth cleaning. The Dentist doesn't say, "I can shine a mag lite in there and if they look clean then that is good enough." No he says, "we need to clean your teeth." I think we need to tell clients that surveying ultimately prevents expensive problems down the road, that is our purpose. Pay me today so you don't need dentures ten years from now or expensive litigation in the case of boundary.

I have seen this time and again, some surveyor tried to save the client money which ten years down the road the same problem blew up into massively expensive and time consuming lawsuit. An example, four miles of a meandering boundary created by a lot line adjustment. Surveying, monumenting and fencing the boundary was too expensive, naturally, so someone just cooked up a description. Less than 5 years later the developer adjoining plowed up along all four miles plus encroached with some vineyards. That lawsuit went on for 5 years, wasted hundreds of hours of staff time, cost in the millions. The AGs bill was slightly over the award amount. I could've surveyed that boundary in one week (a simple problem).

Our constant push to save money really doesn't save money. We need a culture of you need to do preventative maintenance on your boundaries just like your teeth, your roof, termites and all the rest. We always seem to be focused on trying to do the absolute minimum; I don't mean cutting corners but only surveying one boundary when we should take the opportunity to survey as many as we can.

Dave:

This is not a question of saving the client money. It is a question of performing the proper service.

If you hired a plumber to replace the faucet in your kitchen and he also replaced all the pipingin your house, would that be appropriate? We all know that the plimbing is going to fail someday. The plumber was just catching it early and saving you potential money and trouble when it failed.

No.

What if your dentist took out all your teeth and replaced them with implants at $1,500 per tooth? He's just saving youthe agravation of further dental problems. So what if it cost $50,000!

This is a question of not understanding the client's needs. Nothing more.

I understand that Ian; I'm just whining ;-).

It just seems like saving money never saves money in the long run. Parks did lots of projects where the building was hundreds of feet from the boundary and obviously we didn't survey the boundary in that situation.

A lot of times the situation is more akin to asking the plumber to put in a new faucet. The pipes are corroded and barely holding together. Somehow he manages to get the faucet installed without disturbing any fragile connections. I guess the average cheapskate homeowner would prefer that although the plumber advises they really should replace all the piping before something fails and they have water all over the place. Meanwhile if the Surveyor went into plumbing just to try to survive he would just write a paper description of what a new faucet would look like and give that to the homeowner along with an invoice. I'm kidding, really ;-).

"Obviously you need to know where the property lines are to be able to write a letter regarding minimum setbacks. In the case mentioned above I can write this letter without taking any equipment out of my truck. Merely getting the underlying maps and pacing a few things off and I can state definitively that the construction is outside of the minimum setbacks."

Is this acceptable? Does one have to definitely locate property boundaries to make a statement that minimum setbacks are being met?

What would you do?"

I think I understood the question. What I would do is conduct a proper survey where boundary lines are concerned. In my mind ,"Merely getting the underlying maps and pacing a few things off..." does not seem proper.
You will note that Dylan indicated one needs to know where the boundary lines are. If you need to know where the boundary lines, don't you conduct a survey. If you conduct a survey, don't you conduct a proper survey? So how is it a disservice to a client to propose to do a boundary survey when the facts of the situation indicate that is the proper action for the professional to take?

Dylan asks about," definitely locate property boundaries" Is approximate property boundary location now a part of accepted land surveying principles?

Ian, I am NOT discussing precision. I am discussing expressing a professional opinion that is based upon fact, experience, and accepted land surveying principles.

LB your examples are beside the point I an not discussing precision.

OK, I cant resist, It all depends on the situation, I tend to agree with Ian, if I have a client with 1000 ac, and he house will be in the middle of it, it would be a dis-service to survey 4 sections to establish a 25' building setback when it is obvious. Would it be a good survey? Yes. But why? In this case Google Earth might be the correct tool. Remember the PLS behind your name is to protect the public.