California Surveyors Forums

Today I did a simple layout - flat lot. Anyway, the concrete guys crew had been hanging around waiting on us so they could start trenching, I hate trade waiting on another trade to finish so they could start.

Eventually, hours later, the guy who owns the company shows up and he waits with his crew.

Everyone was cool, but I don't need distractions when doing layout. AS far as I was concerned, they could start tomorrow if that's how it went.

We finished around 1 PM and I told them they could start batter boarding away if they want. Man, 6 guys really got busy, real fast.

Someone set a laser level up and forms started growing out of the ground.
I asked the contractor what he used for a site bench, He shows me a copy of my survey with an offset lead/tag note colored in bright pink. But there was no elevation associated with it.. Just above the monument note was a simple spot elevation, which this guy used to grade the site. Now his subgrade is 5 inches high. He used an elev of 33.87, BW grade near the tag is 33.46. I have attached a pdf of the mess.

PS He also was the grading contractor

I don't think I've ever seen a spot elevation just floating somewhere. Usually the "spot" where the elevation was taken is denoted by a leader line or an X.

dedkad wrote:I don't think I've ever seen a spot elevation just floating somewhere. Usually the "spot" where the elevation was taken is denoted by a leader line or an X.

I'm used to seeing the same. Not that it was right for the contractor to assume, and he certainly should have checked the back of walk elevation before grading the site.

Some very old topo maps used the decimal point in the elevation as the marker for where the elevation indicated was taken.

Snapshot of the BM note on my survey

Paul showed it. Nothing "unusual" in how he labeled-marked the existing ground.

one thing for certain, the back of walk wouldn't have been 0.4' higher than his tag. Now that would have been unusual.

I like his note as well. All one has to do is get someone to read it.

That's contractors, find one point and run with it.
And rotating laser levels are perfect, never need adjusting.

Paul, nice presentation of drafting. Just curious, what do the lighter double dash lines on the front of walk side represent?

That's a substructure line