Abbreviation in survey plan 4

[engtiuser2]

I like to understand the survey plan with some abbreviations which are unknown to me. Appreciate if someone can help with this. This survey was done in 1995 for a private property in Ontario Canada. The abbreviation that I am interested are: Fdn, Bk and Cop (or Cap). Please refer to the attached.

 

[racookpe1978]

Fdn is most likely Foundation, the bottom or lowest part of a sloped side of an irregular cast concrete wall.
Bk Back
Cap Top, or upper piece of two pieces of concrete. As if the upper piece sticks out over the lower part.

Perhaps meaning that the single plan view of the old property does not have perpendicular walls and edges of the pavement.

 

[engtiuser2]

Interpretation of Fdn being the foundation makes sense as the brick wall is very uneven and it may be the very bottom of the wall above foundation. The Bk being "Back" is hard to understand, can you explain why you think this interpretation is relevant?

Thanks.

 

[fel3]

Could "Bk" be brick? It's probably not Burger King

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"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[engtiuser2]

I was thinking about that as well, but the brick is really rough/uneven. It is hard to measure accurately.

 

[fel3]

engtiuser:

True. It's about like measuring elevations in a plowed field. Do you measure top of dirt clod or bottom of dirt clod?

I just did a quick Google search for abbreviation bk in surveying. I found lots of possibilities:
- bank (short for embankment)
- bank (i.e. "House of Money")
- back (as above)
- brick (as I suggested)
- barracks (soldier's housing)
- back stationing (this relates to measuring lengths along pipeline and road centerline alignments, but the full explanation is too involved to include here; fortunately, back stationing is obviously not intended here)
- block (I found this in "General Survey Instruction Rules," British Columbia Land Surveyors; I suspect it refers to a block of land)
- black (obviously not intended here)
- book (as in a surveyor's field book)
- book (as in a book of recorded maps filed with the local government)
- break (could have several meanings, but I suspect "discontinuity" is most likely)
- broken (this might be included in a description)

Overall, "back" appeared most often.

I hope this helps.

Fred


==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

 

[engtiuser2]

Thanks all for your response. I now have a pretty good idea about the survey.

 

[racookpe1978]

Well, I don't know about you (nor industry practice) but "I" always measure the top of the dirt clods. 8<)

(Then charge to go measure again after the first rainstorm.)

 

[IRstuff]

I was thinking that the 3D lidar would be trotted out and the area scanned and a root-mean-square value would be calculated

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[fel3]

TRUE STORY: In the early 1980s I designed six side channel spillways for an irrigation canal in central Wyoming. Their purpose was to discharge storm runoff that had entered the canal from overland flow on the uphill side. Wyoming law for storm runoff is strictly "catch and release."

At one of the sites, the surveyors hadn't provided enough topo to handle the length of the structure, which was over 100 feet long. I called the Lead Civil Engineer in our Denver office (I was in California) and asked him to obtain the additional topo. He told me he had a meeting with the client the next week and he would do the survey then. Rather than have our surveying subconsultant do the work, he decided to save a few bucks and take one of his drafters to act as rodman/chainman. He assured me that he and the drafter both had substantial field surveying experience.

Two weeks later I received a package in the mail with a copy of his field book and a bunch of photos. I flipped through the package, then handed it to my drafter to finish the topograhic base map for the site in question. About five minutes later he returned to my office and announced, "The new points plot about a foot higher than the original topo." We reviewed his work and sho'nuf, the new topo was about a foot too high.

I called the Lead Civil Engineer to discuss the situation. He assured me that they had started at the same bench mark that was used for the original topo, had properly leveled the instrument, etc., etc., etc. He even volunteered that they had completely swept the snow off the culvert headwall to expose the bench mark. It was January, you see, and the original survey had been done in September. I remarked that his photos showed about a foot of snow on the ground, so I asked him, "Did you survey Top of Snow?"

Dead silence on the other end of the line, soon followed by a masterful demonstration in the use of curse words.

My solution: subtract an arbitrary (but reasonable) one foot from all his elevations and use these "corrected" points to extend the contour lines on our topographic base map. This was an earthen canal with a fairly regular cross-section, but somewhat rough banks, so this method would produce good enough results for my purpose. In fact, I was mostly interested in the general alignment of the canal and not the modest irregularities.

==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill