Chains and Rods, etc

[jimstein]

Hi, I'm new here.

This thread made me laugh as it reminded me of a job we did once...

We were consulting on a cold storage facility at the Port of Los Angeles and we needed the volume (hight X depth X width) of the cold-storage area. So after asking the client for these measurements were sent over specs on the building.

The units of measure were...

Pallets of Bananas - in a hight X depth X width format!!!

 

[Wayne Tomlinson]

The old surveyors were just pretty good considering what they had to work with.

A chain is 66 feet. a chain has 100 links.
Whenever I have to work with a legal which has chains and links, I just put 66 in the memory of my HP12c, then go through the legal and multiply the chains and fractions by 66. The answer is feet.

I don't remember the factors, but the combination of rods, chains links etc all have a relationship which is rather simple (if you remember what they are) to calculate acres without using and dividing by 43,560. That is not too easy with just a pencil.

Wayne Tomlinson

 

[Wayne Tomlinson]

I almost forgot. The Wall Street Journal once in an article mentioned a legal description in Texas which began at the point where a certain person "used to tie his boat".

Can't get much more sure than that.

Wayne Tomlinon

 

[Ray Miller]

I remember back in the 20th century when they started use CSM pg and vol. for the legals.

Have you ever been out in the dark timber at about 10,000ft and needed to find boundry trees or rocks so you could get your line fence in. Keeping your cattle in off the BLM, Forest Services, BIA, Park Services lands. Trying to read an old suvey map from the 1800's.

Ever so offten those trees and rocks must have gotten up and moved.

 

[Don Jones]

Regarding chains

Land measurements in chains are easy to calculate. An example: a quarter section, or 40 acres, 1,320 ft. x 1,320 ft. = 1,742,400 sq. ft. divided by 43,560 s/f (number of sq. ft. in an acre) = 40 acres. Using chains it would be 20 chains x 20 chains = 400.00. Simply move the decimal one place to the left and you have the number of acres. A section would be 80 chains x 80 chains = 6,400.00, or 640 acres in one sq. mile, and so on.

 

[Don Jones]

Correction

I made an error in the previous post. 40 acres is a quarter/quarter section, not a quarter of a section which would be 160 acres.

 

[Joker]

Chains, rods, perches, and the like are how many surveys here still read. Beginning at the elm tree to the Ford axle (set) to the creekbed to the sweetgum tree, yadda, yadda. Often there is no mention of a road and sometimes there is no mention of a township.

 

[David Santacroce]

When One Is Surveying In The Northeast.

 

[Truett Neathery]

On the real estate license exam in CA!!

 

[Pamela Crowley (Florida)]

I got a real kick out of the old survey description of a property I owned in Michigan. The North side was "the center of the meander of the Muskegon River". BUT, that was written prior to a log jam that changed the course of the river!