Where is the Boundary on a Survey Plan?

Video transcription

Assuming you have a survey that you determine is decent to use, the first thing you're going to do is look and see / determine where the boundary is. And the boundary on a survey plan is always the thick, dark line. Look for the thickest, darkest line, that's going to be your boundary. 

Now, don't confuse the front boundary of the property with where the road is or the curb or the sidewalk is. That's not where the boundary is. Some people take measurements from the curb or the road all the way back and say, well hang on a second, this lot seems to be deeper than the measurements suggest. You're really not going to know where that front boundary is without help from a surveyor. 

Let’s also look into one simple thing that appears on all survey plans, and that is TIES. Ties are the measurements, the distances on the survey plan that tell us exactly what the distance is between the foundation of the property and the boundary.

Now, really important point here: You have to be careful that you understand what unit of measurement the surveyor was using on the survey plan. There are three different units of measurement, and you got to make sure on the face of the plan, you know which one it is, because they can have a drastic effect on your determination as to whether there's an issue or not. There is obviously imperial (feet and inches), there's metric (meters and centimeters), and of course, there's also decimal feet, which is whole feet and then a decimal value of the rest of the measurement (So 6.5 feet is decimal feet: It's the same as six feet, six inches in imperial).