FAQ
General questions
What is a Professional Land Surveyor?
A professional land surveyor has typically completed a 5 year degree in Geomatics Engineering and at least two years of articling before obtain his/her license.
A professional land surveyor calls for accuracy, precision, logical thinking, sound judgment and a high degree of technical skill. Land surveyors must have special knowledge of legal, planning and engineering principles as they relate to surveying.
What services can a professional Land Surveyor Provide?
Lot surveys- A survey to determine the boundaries of a parcel of land, resulting in survey markers being set at all corners. A certified plan of the survey is prepared when required or requested by the client.
Surveyor’s Location Certificate – A Survey and plan are prepared to certify the location of buildings and other features on the lot relative to the boundaries. This survey may be necessary to obtain building permits or mortgages.
Subdivision Surveys- This is a certified plan illustrating newly created lots or alterations of the boundaries of existing lots.
Retracement Surveys- This survey re-establishes original old boundary lines and replaces corner markers that have been lost or obscured by forest utilization, construction activities or the passage of time. A certified plan may be prepared as part of the survey.
Topographic surveys- A survey locating natural and man-made features such as elevations, steams, buildings, municipal infrastructure, fences and trees. This is typically used by architects and engineers to design a proposed developments on the site.
What information do you as the Client need to provide the Professional Land Surveyor?
The purpose of the survey, deeds, plan of survey, abstracts of title and the location of known boundaries or corner markers will assist the surveyor.
List of Commonly used Technical Terms and Definitions
Monuments/Survey Markers - means a marker placed by or under the supervision of a professional land surveyor to define a point on the boundary of lands under survey; they usually consist of a round iron or round steel post with a length of 750 mm or more and fitted with an aluminum, brass or plastic identification cap indicating the Land Surveyor or Company.
Easements- Is the right of one owner of land to use an other parcel, it can either benefit a property or act as a burden. Some typical easements are a Right of Way which may allow a property owner a right of passage over land to travel over a property to gain access to another. A utility easement such as a power line this allows representatives of the utility company to erect and maintain the power line or an easement to use a well such as the right to draw water from a well.
Easements are not always obvious and can have drastic affect on the usability of the property and the value. A professional surveyor can identify easements affecting the subject property.
Encroachments are improvements (buildings, driveways, fences etc.) which intrude onto another property.
Property Migration - In 2003 the Province of Nova Scotia implemented a Land registry system to replace the Deed registry system that has been in place for over 250 years. To “migrate” one’s property from the deeds system to land system it requires the service of a professional land surveyors and/or a lawyer.
Title Search - A title search is a close examination of all public records to confirm that the seller is the legal owner of a property and to verify that there are no liens or other claims against the property.
GPS is a tool that surveyors use that utilizes satellites, which increases productivity and efficiency.
