California Surveyors Forums

Good morning,

I will be helping a friend in the burn area with a survey of their property. I do not have experience surveying in Altadena. I familiarized myself with the DPW land records website and found great information in the area of work. Do those with experience in this area know if Altadena has a typical checklist of survey requirements? Or some other LA standard that needs to be adhered to?

Thank you.

In theory, it's just another reestablishment of boundaries. In practice, you may get more than the usual amount of redlines on your submittal, due to formatting and the like. In the case of post-wildfire retracement, it may be more a matter of "the more the merrier" as far as timely surveying goes for rebuilding efforts.

I take it that it may just be a Corner Record, as long as you don't encounter the dreaded 'material discrepancy'. That's where studying prior mapping activity in the area can help.

Please see the attached checklist. Also, the the following link:

https://pw.lacounty.gov/building-and-safety/plancheck/

Yesterday, I did a Ten Minute Surveyor video on this very topic. The intended audience of the video is the general public. I give the viewers a tour of the BPELSG website to confirm licensure and standing of the professionals. I cover the various scams i.e. record boundaries, two monument tangos, engineers and architects hiring unlicensed "surveyors" and the remedies to protect themselves i.e. require their boundary to be monumented by their land surveyor - complete with photos of tagged monuments for reference. I also covered the out-of-state carpetbaggers we saw move into San Diego in 2003 and Oakland in 1991.

I also, live and mid-recording, Googled "California Site Plans" and walked through a couple of the websites, my, my, my - the "platinum" site plan was $200.

The million dollar question of the day, why would a land surveyor be willing to break the law to save you, a consumer, money by setting a wood stakes rather than a tagged monuments? The cost of setting monuments at the property corners of a residential lot is nominal.

Friday will be the release of the Ten Minute Surveyor video "Episode 34: How much do California Surveyors Make? Public Agency QBS, and Defined Benefit Pension Points to Ponder."

DWoolley

Thank you for providing the submittal requirements, very helpful.

I was curious about resurveys relative to the burn areas of LA. My first thought, it is a good reason to disallow the use of "plastic caps" on surveys. My second thought is the importance of any remaining existing structures/improvements which could assist in reestablishing the old boundaries. This is a piece of cake in comparison to the areas effected by the "Great Alaskan Earthquake" of 1964?

I agree, I don't think plastic caps are a good monument in the deserts and foothills of LACo. We have already had the discussions of "lines of occupation" in the Alta Dena area at the office and the importance of original monumentation along back lines and tract lines. FEMA hasn't offered a dime for these services or to even help.