Staking My Claim

The phrase “staking a claim” started out as a literal description of an activity: marking a piece of land with stakes.  Today, the figurative returned back to its literal roots.  This post is now at the northeast corner of my building lot.

The surveyors went further and put in marks for the corners of the house – actually, offset by 5 feet from each corner to allow room for excavation.  These days, surveying is mostly done with differential GPS (DGPS) which has such remarkable precision that the surveying team was able to determine which of several marks on a nearby manhole (within an inch of each other) was their previous measurement reference.  Taking advantage of this, they put in large (2″x2″) stakes for the house corner offsets, and then repositioned the point of the GPS on top of the stake so they could mark a specific point within that 2″ square and put in a nail at the point.

This then allowed me to run strings (which unfortunately are barely visible in the photo) to mark the actual location of the house.

Today I also received a new excavation quote which is $5,600 lower than the previous one and includes all the materials, which is a huge improvement.

Just as exciting, my friend an neighbor Steve took delivery today of his new tractor, with which he’ll be starting a farm on the east end of our community’s land.

There’s other exciting news on the horizon, but for today I want to get this posted.  Pun, as usual, intended.

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