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Posted on August 9, 2017 by j_keith

Welcome to Enterprise Land Surveying's website

This site is intended to provide you with information on Land Surveying in the Enterprise, AL, Coffee and Dale Counties, and Geneva County area of Alabama. If you're looking for an Enterprise Land Surveyor, you've come to the right site. If you'd rather talk to someone about your land surveying needs, please call (888) 936-8426 today. For more information, please continue to read.

Land Surveyors are professionals who measure and make precise measurements to determine the size and boundaries of a piece of real estate. While this is a simplistic definition, boundary surveying is one of the most common types of surveying related to home and land owners. If you fall into the following categories, please click on the appropriate link for more information on that subject:

Enterprise Land Surveying services:

I need to know where my property corners or property lines are. (Boundary Survey)
I have a loan closing or re-finance coming up on my home in a subdivision. (Lot Survey)
I need a map of my property with contour lines to show elevation differences for my architect or engineer. (Topo Survey)
I've just been told I'm in a flood zone or I 've been told I need an elevation certificate in order to obtain flood insurance or prove I don't need it. (Flood Survey)
I'm purchasing a lot/house in a recorded subdivision. (Lot Survey – See Boundary Survey)
I'm purchasing a larger tract of land, acreage, that hasn't been subdivided in the past. (Boundary Survey)

If your needs don't fall into one of the above, don't worry, we'll get to the bottom of it. CALL Enterprise Land Surveying TODAY at (888) 936-8426 OR better yet, fill out a Contact Form request to discuss your survey needs.

Topographic Survey Data Engineers Need Before Grading Starts

Posted on July 15, 2026 by j_keith

Topographic survey crew collecting elevation and drainage data on a construction site before grading starts for accurate engineering design.

Grading plans fail for boring reasons. Somebody designed a slope against elevations that were guessed instead of measured. Somebody forgot the retaining wall sitting right where the new grade needs to fall. A topographic survey exists to prevent exactly that, and the quality of the survey sets the ceiling on the quality of the grading design.

The pattern is consistent across projects. Weak field data doesn’t fail during design. It fails during construction, when the contractor discovers the dirt doesn’t balance and the change orders start.

What ground elevation data does a grading design require?

A topographic survey records measured elevations across the site, usually shown as contour lines and spot elevations. Contours connect points of equal height. Spot elevations pin the exact height at a specific location, which matters at pavement edges, structure corners and anywhere the design gets tight.

Density is the thing people underestimate. A survey with too few points smooths over the ground and hides the features an engineer actually needs. Slopes, ridges, low spots and abrupt grade breaks all have to appear in the data, because the earthwork calculation depends on them. Cut and fill volumes shift substantially when the surface model misses a swale or a hump.

So the shot density should match the terrain, not a template. Flat parking areas tolerate a wider grid. Rolling ground, steep banks and irregular sites demand tighter coverage.

Which site features affect grading beyond elevations?

Elevations alone won’t produce a workable grading plan. The survey has to map the physical constraints that limit where and how far a designer can move dirt.

Those constraints usually include:

Buildings, walls and foundations
Roads, curbs, gutters and pavement edges
Fences, driveways and site walls
Ditches, swales and culverts
Trees worth preserving
Visible utility structures, poles, meters and vaults

Each of these can pin a grade in place. A retaining wall fixes an elevation. A neighboring driveway sets a tie-in point. A protected tree limits how much soil the contractor can strip near the root zone.

The project scope should name these features explicitly before the crew mobilizes. Vague scopes produce vague surveys, and a second site visit costs more than a clear conversation would have.

Why does survey control matter so much?

Control gives the survey a known horizontal position and a known vertical reference. Without it, every elevation on the drawing floats. The numbers might look internally consistent and still sit two feet off the datum the contractor uses.

The surveyor should state the datum plainly on the drawing. Vertical datums differ, and mixing NAVD88 with an assumed local elevation creates errors that nobody catches until concrete gets poured.

Benchmarks belong on the plan too. The construction crew needs a physical point they can shoot from during grading, ideally one that won’t get destroyed by the first bulldozer through the site. Set it outside the work area.

When the engineer, the surveyor and the contractor all reference the same control, elevation disputes mostly disappear. When they don’t, somebody eventually rebuilds a pad at their own expense.

How does a topographic survey inform drainage design?

Water reads the surface, so the surface data has to be right. Field crews capture existing swales, ditch flowlines, culvert inverts, inlets, pipe rims and creek banks, because those points define how the site drains today.

Inverts deserve special attention. A pipe rim elevation tells the engineer almost nothing about capacity or slope. The invert tells them everything. Missing invert data forces assumptions, and assumed pipe slopes have a way of producing storm systems that don’t actually flow.

One limitation is worth stating plainly. A survey captures conditions on the day the crew worked the site. A blocked culvert, a dry ditch during drought, or seasonal high water can all misrepresent normal behavior, so field observations should be paired with rainfall data and drainage records rather than treated as the complete picture.

What digital files should the engineer receive?

A printed drawing won’t support a grading model. Engineers need survey data in a form their design software can actually consume, and this is where projects lose time when nobody discusses it upfront.

The deliverable usually includes:

A CAD file with layered linework
A raw point file with descriptions
Contour data at an agreed interval
Breaklines along grade breaks, ditch bottoms, curbs and walls
A digital terrain or surface model

Breaklines carry more weight than most people realize. They force the surface model to respect sharp changes in the ground instead of smoothing a curb into a gentle ramp. A surface built from points alone will misrepresent every hard edge on the site.

Agree on the file format, coordinate system, units and contour interval before fieldwork begins. That single conversation prevents most of the rework that shows up later, when the engineer imports the data and discovers the survey came in a coordinate system nobody else uses.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a topographic survey include?

The survey typically covers ground elevations, contours, buildings, pavement, drainage features, visible utilities, trees, walls and any other feature the project scope names. The scope drives everything, so a survey ordered for a small addition looks very different from one ordered for a full site development. Engineers who list their requirements clearly get usable data on the first visit.

Why do engineers need a topographic survey before grading?

The survey supplies the measured ground data behind every slope, drainage path, cut area and fill area in the design. Without it, earthwork quantities become guesses, and guessed quantities turn into change orders once the contractor starts moving dirt. Accurate existing conditions also protect the engineer when a dispute arises over site changes.

How do you choose a contour interval?

The interval is the vertical distance between contour lines, and the right choice depends on terrain and design tolerance. Flat sites often need a one foot or even half foot interval to reveal meaningful slope, while steep or rough ground reads fine at two feet or more. Set the interval during scoping rather than after the crew has already collected the data.

Can a drone collect topographic survey data?

Drones handle open, clear sites well and cover large areas quickly. Vegetation is the limiting factor, since photogrammetry maps the top of grass and brush instead of the ground beneath it. Ground control, field verification and the project accuracy requirements all still apply, and dense tree cover usually calls for conventional ground methods or lidar.

Does a topographic survey show underground utilities?

It shows visible surface features and any utility marks included in the scope, such as manholes, valve boxes and local paint. It cannot confirm the depth, size or exact path of buried lines without records research, a private utility locate or actual excavation. Treat mapped utilities as approximate until someone verifies them in the field.

Residential Land Survey Problems That Show Up After a Property Is Inherited

Posted on July 13, 2026 by j_keith

Residential land survey in progress on inherited rural property with a surveyor locating a boundary marker near an old fence and farmhouse.

Nobody inherits a survey. People inherit land, a folder of yellowed papers and a lot of family certainty about where the property ends. A residential land survey on inherited property tends to expose the gap between those two things fast. Fences sit in the wrong place. Easements nobody mentioned run straight through the back field. Corner markers vanished decades ago.

The pattern holds almost everywhere. The longer land stays in one family, the more the paperwork and the ground drift apart. A survey closes that gap before it becomes a lawsuit, a stalled sale or a house built three feet over a line.

Why do old records make a residential land survey harder?

Inherited parcels often carry deeds written decades or even centuries ago, and those descriptions lean on landmarks that no longer exist. A residential land survey begins with record research, so missing plats and vague legal descriptions add hours before anyone sets foot on the property.

Rural descriptions cause the worst headaches. They reference a big oak, a fence post or “the old Miller place.” The oak fell in a storm. The fence rotted. The Millers sold out and left two counties over. Surveyors rebuild these lines by pulling neighboring deeds, older plats and whatever the county recorder still holds.

Heirs can cut real time off the job by gathering documents first. Useful items include:

Deeds, wills and probate records
Old plats or subdivision maps
Past survey drawings, even faded ones
Tax notices showing acreage
Utility or right-of-way agreements

Even a grandparent’s pencil sketch helps. It can point a crew toward evidence they would otherwise spend two days hunting.

Why don’t family boundary lines match the deed?

Long use doesn’t move a written boundary. Families treat fences, tree lines and creeks as property markers, but those features rarely sit on the deed line. A residential land survey measures the record, and the record wins.

This surprises almost nobody in the profession. Land that passes through a will skips the one event that normally forces a survey. A sale brings in a lender, a title company and a fresh drawing. A funeral brings none of that.

So the crew regularly finds a fence several feet off. Driveways drift onto a neighbor’s parcel. A shed from 1978 sits right on top of a corner nobody ever checked. Adverse possession law complicates matters further, because decades of open, uninterrupted use can create a real legal claim in many states. The time period varies widely, so the family attorney reads that one, not the surveyor.

A survey won’t settle who owns what. It hands the family accurate facts and lets the lawyers work from there.

What easements show up on inherited land?

An easement gives someone else the legal right to use part of your land for a set purpose, and inherited parcels hide them constantly. A grandfather signed a utility agreement in 1958 and nobody has mentioned it since. A residential land survey shows recorded easements when the documents surface, along with visible signs of use out in the field.

Common ones include:

Utility lines, poles and buried cable
Shared driveways serving a landlocked parcel behind you
Drainage ditches and stormwater paths
Pipeline corridors and rights of way
Access roads granted to a neighbor generations back

Crews notice the physical clues too. Truck ruts across a hayfield, a buried pipe marker or a cleared strip through the woods usually means something is recorded somewhere.

These rights start to matter the moment heirs make plans. An easement can kill a house site, block a driveway or shrink the usable acreage right before a sale. Hand your surveyor the title work and any old agreements you turn up, because that paperwork decides what ends up on the map.

Why does rural acreage take longer to survey?

Country land takes longer because the crew covers more ground under worse conditions. Briars, creek crossings, steep slopes and grown-over logging roads all slow fieldwork, and a family parcel might run 40 acres instead of a quarter acre.

A crew can spend most of a day locating a single original corner. Iron pipes sink. Stones roll downhill. Trees swallow them whole.

Older parcels bring a second problem. Whoever wrote the original description worked with a chain and a compass, so those old numbers rarely close cleanly against modern measurements. The surveyor then reconciles neighboring deeds and older plats until the pieces fit together.

Owners can speed this up. Cut a safe path where you can, and share what you remember. If an uncle knows where the corner stone once sat, say so before the crew starts searching.

What can heirs do once the survey is finished?

A current residential land survey gives every heir one accurate picture of the same property. Boundaries, buildings, access points and easements all appear on a single drawing, which unlocks nearly every decision the family faces next.

That drawing earns its cost quickly. Buyers ask for it. Lenders ask for it. Builders want it before they place a house or cut a driveway. And a family splitting land three ways can’t divide anything fairly until they know exactly what they’re dividing.

It also cools arguments down. Memory makes a terrible surveyor. Once everyone reads the same map, the conversation shifts from what Dad always said toward what the record actually shows.

Match the survey type to the plan, though. A boundary survey answers a different question than a survey prepared for a land division, so explain what you intend to do with the property before fieldwork begins. Only a licensed surveyor can certify a boundary, and every state regulates the profession for exactly that reason.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do heirs need a survey right after inheriting land?

Usually yes, especially when the paperwork looks thin or the family plans to sell, build or divide. Anyone holding the land untouched, with clean records and no close neighbors, can reasonably wait.

Can we still use a survey from 30 years ago?

Treat it as a head start rather than an answer. Markers disappear, neighbors build, utility companies move in and most lenders will reject a drawing that old.

Will a survey catch every easement?

It captures whatever the records reveal plus whatever the crew can see outdoors. An unrecorded handshake deal from 1970 stays invisible, which is why title research runs alongside the fieldwork.

What happens when the corners are gone?

The surveyor rebuilds the line using deeds, adjoining surveys, surviving monuments and physical evidence left on the ground, then sets fresh markers you can actually find.

Why does country property cost more to survey?

Hours. Large acreage, heavy brush, rough terrain and unreliable old paperwork all stack up. A tight platted lot with clean records simply takes less field time.

Land Surveying Mistakes That Can Turn a Simple Lot Split Into a Delay

Posted on July 10, 2026 by j_keith

Land surveying provides the accurate property measurements and boundary information needed before a lot can be legally divided. A lot split should be straightforward. You divide one property into two or more parcels, submit the plans for approval, and record the plat. However, small land survey mistakes can cause big delays. Poor maps, unclear boundary information, or skipped research often lead to rejected applications and extra waiting. The good news is that these problems are preventable. Understanding what goes wrong helps keep your lot split on track.

Using Outdated Surveys Creates Lot Split Problems

Old surveys show property conditions from years ago. Land changes constantly. Utilities get installed. Structures shift slightly. Fences move. A survey that’s five years old won’t capture any of this. When you submit an old survey with your lot split application, city staff spot it immediately and send the plans back.

The delay stings. You’ll wait two to four weeks for a formal rejection, then another two to six weeks while a new survey gets completed. That’s time you didn’t plan for.

A current survey shows what’s actually on the ground today. Modern surveys use GPS technology and digital mapping that older work didn’t have. The accuracy is significantly better. City staff review current surveys faster because they trust the data. The map clearly shows boundary lines, utilities, and any discrepancies between the old deed description and what exists now.

Key reasons to get a new survey:

Old surveys miss utility lines, structures, and boundary changes
City staff reject outdated maps without exception
Redoing a survey after rejection costs $3,000 to $5,000 in additional fees and extends your timeline by weeks

Get a new survey before you even think about submitting your lot split plan. This single step prevents rejections and keeps your project on schedule.

Overlooked Easements Can Block Your Lot Split

Easements are rights that other parties hold to use portions of your property. Utility companies need easements for power lines and water mains. Neighbors need easements for shared driveways. Drainage systems need easements to cross multiple properties. These agreements are invisible on the ground but absolutely legal and binding.

If your new lot line cuts through an existing easement, the city blocks approval. Title companies won’t insure the property. Buyers will walk away. An easement violation can kill an entire subdivision plan.

Many people miss easements because they don’t show up clearly on old records. Utility easements are especially hard to find. They’re often underground with no visible marker. But they’re recorded somewhere, and city staff will find them during their review.

A professional land surveyor knows exactly where to look. They check utility maps, review recorded plats, dig into property history, and identify easements before you design the lot split. This research prevents rejection and saves weeks of back-and-forth with the city.

Common easement sources to watch for:

Utility power lines, water mains, and sewer lines
Drainage systems and storm water management
Shared driveways and access rights

Roughly 60 to 75 percent of residential lots carry at least one recorded easement. Most property owners never know about them until a surveyor looks.

Non-Compliant Lot Sizes Kill Your Subdivision Plans

Every city has rules about how small a lot can be. These rules exist to prevent overcrowding and ensure every parcel is usable. The minimum size might be one quarter acre. It might be one acre. It depends on where your property sits and what zoning applies.

Cities also require minimum frontage. A lot needs a certain amount of road-facing width. If your split creates a lot that’s too narrow, the city says no.

Then there’s setback rules. Setbacks are the distances buildings must sit back from property lines. If your new lot is small, the actual building area shrinks even smaller. Sometimes there’s not enough room to build anything practical or profitable.

Before you commission any survey work, you must know these rules. Call your local planning department or check their zoning code. Find out the minimum lot size, minimum frontage requirement, and setback distances. Then design your split to meet all of them.

Most municipalities require minimum lot sizes between one quarter acre and one acre for residential property. Setback requirements typically range from 15 to 50 feet. If you skip this research and submit a plan that violates zoning rules, the city rejects it. You redesign. You resubmit. Weeks disappear.

Know the rules first. Then split your lot to follow them.

Unclear Survey Maps Get Rejected by City Staff

City staff review dozens of lot split applications every month. They need maps that are crystal clear. They need measurements they can read without confusion. They need labels that make sense.

A sloppy map wastes everyone’s time. Faint lot lines. Measurements that are hard to read. Unclear labels. The staff member reviewing it has to squint and guess. They send it back with a list of corrections. You’re waiting another week or two for a response.

A good survey map shows everything simply. Lot dimensions are clearly labeled. Corners are marked precisely. Easements appear in different colors so they stand out. Existing utilities are easy to spot. The scale is obvious. The compass direction is clear.

Your surveyor should provide a map that’s easy to read on a screen and easy to print on paper. It should look professional. It should tell the complete story of your lot split without anyone having to hunt for information.

Bad maps create delays. Clear maps get approved. There’s no in between.

Catching Survey Issues Late Destroys Your Timeline

A lot split happens in stages. First you get surveyed. Then you submit plans. Then the city reviews them. Then you get approval. Then you record the plat. Each stage takes time.

If a problem with your survey gets discovered late in this process, everything stops. You’ve already waited weeks for the city to review. Now you have to go back and fix the survey. The surveyor redoes the work. You resubmit. Your entire timeline gets pushed back by months.

Common late-stage issues include mistakes in the legal description, miscalculated lot sizes, or property lines that don’t match the deed. These should get caught during initial field work, not during city review.

The solution is catching problems early. Work with a surveyor who does quality control before submitting anything to the city. They should review their own work, check all the math, verify the legal description, and make sure everything is correct before you ever file it.

Early quality checks save time. Many delays come from rushing through the survey and hoping the city doesn’t find mistakes. That’s not hope. That’s a delay waiting to happen.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a lot split?

A lot split is the process of dividing one parcel of land into two or more separate properties. Each new parcel can be sold, transferred, or developed independently. The city must approve the split, and a legal description gets recorded for each new lot.

Why is land surveying needed for a lot split?

Surveyors establish precise property boundaries, measure lot sizes, locate utilities and easements, and verify that proposed lots meet city requirements. A professional survey ensures all new parcels comply with local rules and can be financed and insured.

Can an old survey cause problems?

Yes. Old surveys don’t show current ground conditions, recent utility installations, or boundary changes. Cities require current surveys for lot split applications and reject outdated maps, which adds weeks to your project timeline.

What can delay a simple lot split?

Non-compliant lot sizes, unclear maps, missing easement research, inaccurate legal descriptions, and violations of setback rules all trigger delays. Most delays could be prevented with careful planning and a thorough survey before you submit plans.

When should I call a land surveyor?

Call before you finalize any subdivision plans. A surveyor can identify zoning constraints, locate easements, and verify that your proposed split meets city requirements. Early involvement prevents costly rejections and keeps your timeline moving.