Ludlow Engineering and Land Survey

What is an ALTA survey?

ALTA stands for American Land Title Association. The ALTA is a group that represents the land title and title insurance industry. In addition to ALTA, the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) also accepts and conforms to ALTA survey conventions. An ALTA survey is a survey done in such a way that it conforms to ALTA standards. The good thing about this is that most surveyors know and understand this format – so once you get used to reading an ALTA survey you will be able to do it over and over again on subsequent transactions.

What does an ALTA survey contain?

Like any survey, an ALTA survey shows the physical characteristics of the property you are purchasing. The first thing an ALTA survey will give you is a description of the metes and bounds of the property. In other words, the survey will give you the actual description (longitude and latitude) of the property boundaries. Most buyers perform their own survey for due diligence to ensure that the property they are purchasing is the size they thought it was.

An ALTA survey also shows improvements on the property, rights of way on the property, as well as any easements granted by previous property owners. For land that you are considering developing, this is incredibly important. If you have an easement granted to the power company that goes straight through the middle of the property, it may be difficult, or impossible, to develop.

ALTA Survey and Title Insurance

An ALTA Survey and Title Insurance go hand in hand. You need to have a current title commitment before you can complete and ALTA survey. This initial title commitment will provide the initial description of the property.

The title company, however, will need the ALTA survey to be completed to finalize the transaction. When a land title company provides title insurance to you, they are guaranteeing you that there are not any unknown encumbrances on your property. To make that guarantee effectively the title insurance company

will use a survey to help delineate where the existing encumbrances, improvements, and easements are located.

ALTA is acceptable to lenders

One of the most important things about an ALTA survey is that it is approved by a host of different groups for use in transactions. That means that your financial partner will accept the information from an ALTA survey as accurate and can use it to help them determine the financing you will receive. This convention will save you money so that you do not have to conduct a special survey for each of the parties involved.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space based navigation system maintained and operated by the Department of Defense. It consists of a nominal constellation of 24 satellites in high altitude orbits. Its primary mission is to provide passive, real-time, 3-D positioning,navigation and velocity data for land, air and sea based applications (both military and civilian).

GPS satellites orbit the earth every 12 hours at an altitude of 14,000 miles from the earth’s center.Each satellite is equipped with four atomic clocks, which keep the time to an extremely high degree of accuracy. They each broadcast their precisely timed radio signals through the atmosphere and onto the earth’s surface at the speed of light. The signals from each satellite arrive at any particular point on or above the earth’s surface at slightly different times.
A ground based receiver contains a sensitive antenna and a timetable for the satellites. It measures the time difference between the arrivals of the signals and compares it with the timetable. With the application of trigonometry, the longitude, latitude and altitude of the receiver can be calculated. Three satellites are needed to calculate the longitude and latitude, and a fourth satellite is needed to calculate the altitude. Additional satellites simply increase the accuracy.

GPS Receiver Categories

GPS Tracking is an essential element of Mobile GIS data gathering. Selection of the proper GPS receiver for a particular project is critical to its success. Receiver selection is to be based on the following criteria:

Application for which the receiver is to be used

Accuracy requirement for data being gathered

Operation environment

Cost

GPS receivers range from high cost, high accuracy geodetic quality to low cost, low accuracy resource grade or recreational models. District owned and operated GPS receivers can be separated into roughly 3 main categories:

Resource Grade (Level 1),

Professional Grade (Level

2)and Survey Grade (level 3)

Resource Grade GPS Receivers (Recreation/Navigation)

Currently several types of inexpensive resource grade, non-differentially corrected receivers are in use at the District. The accuracy of this type of hand held receiver is around 7-10 meters.Circular Error Probable (CEP) without differential correction. While accuracy for these receivers has increased since Selective Availability has been turned off by the Department of Defense, they are still not accurate enough to gather coordinates for input into the Districts numerous corporate databases that require high accuracy. These units, however, can be used for trip planning, emergency operations and navigation.

Professional Grade GPS Receivers

Professional Grade Online GPS Tracking systems are capable of achieving positional accuracy of less than one meter. The receivers also incorporate differential GPS corrections from government operated differential navigation reference stations or the WAAS for highly accurate coordinate data gathering.

Survey Grade GPS Receivers

Survey Grade GPS receivers are professional GPS receivers used by Surveyors for high precision position determination. Survey grade GPS receivers are extremely accurate and expensive systems that require long acquisition time for high accuracy data gathering. These systems are not covered in this document.

About the Author:
For more interesting information about GPS Tracking services and Online GPS Tracking application visit www.gpstrackingapps.com

Land survey services

Ludlow Engineering provides Quality Land Survey services in the States of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho.

Specializing in ALTA, boundary, Topography and others…, Ludlow can perform the very largest to the very smallest of each of these types of surveys.

Below I have included some information about an ALTA Survey and its functions.

ALTA Surveys

ALTA stands for American Land Title Association. The ALTA is a group that represents the land title and title insurance industry. In addition to ALTA, the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) also accepts and conforms to ALTA survey conventions. An ALTA survey is a survey done in such a way that it conforms to ALTA standards. The good thing about this is that most surveyors know and understand this format – so once you get used to reading an ALTA survey you will be able to do it over and over again on subsequent transactions.

What does an ALTA survey contain?

Like any survey, an ALTA survey shows the physical characteristics of the property you are purchasing. The first thing an ALTA survey will give you is a description of the metes and bounds of the property. In other words, the survey will give you the actual description (longitude and latitude) of the property boundaries. Most buyers perform their own survey for due diligence to ensure that the property they are purchasing is the size they thought it was.

An ALTA survey also shows improvements on the property, rights of way on the property, as well as any easements granted by previous property owners. For land that you are considering developing, this is incredibly important. If you have an easement granted to the power company that goes straight through the middle of the property, it may be difficult, or impossible, to develop.

ALTA Survey and Title Insurance

An ALTA Survey and Title Insurance go hand in hand. You need to have a current title commitment before you can complete and ALTA survey. This initial title commitment will provide the initial description of the property.

The title company, however, will need the ALTA survey to be completed to finalize the transaction. When a land title company provides title insurance to you, they are guaranteeing you that there are not any unknown encumbrances on your property. To make that guarantee effectively the title insurance company

will use a survey to help delineate where the existing encumbrances, improvements, and easements are located.

ALTA is acceptable to lenders

One of the most important things about an ALTA survey is that it is approved by a host of different groups for use in transactions. That means that your financial partner will accept the information from an ALTA survey as accurate and can use it to help them determine the financing you will receive. This convention will save you money so that you do not have to conduct a special survey for each of the parties involved.

Click here to contact us about an ALTA survey – Land Survey Service

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