Bye bye big city!

[scoti]

Yeah, we won't need any flood insurance. Because Land Surveyor. It's amazing to me how many people don't think about it/don't understand it. After learning what I have in my career, there's no way I would buy home with a storm inlet in front of it, much less one that backs up to a creek or drainage ditch, or has some other sort of drainage issue.

I looked @ a house over in Irving TX several years ago. It belonged to a friend of a friend of my x-wife/GF @ the time (x-wife almost became my 2nd wife.... Almost) .
It was a nice, moderately sized 3b/2b/2car attached w/a 1200sqft shop out back on a 1/3 acre 'corner' lot. I liked it but there was an open-air city drainage canal ~20 -30' from the driveway (90° side entry to the attached garage/straight shot to the shop entrance).

I walked the property & noticed the wood fence along the shop in the back-yard had a distinct line approx 1-2' up from the grass (as viewed from the edge of the canal/culvert looking @ the side of the shop). I looked @ the fence line facing the shop entrance & the line was also there just not as visually prominent. The drainage canal/culvert was one of many in that older part of Irving that's tied to the Trinity River running through near-by Downtown Dallas.

The guy swore he never had any issues but that water line was an immediate concern for me. If the water made it to that portion of the fence, the shop would have several inches of water inside of it. My 'X' & I went back & forth on that possibility but ultimately I had to pass even though it's super hard to find a decent (small) size home within the city limits w/a 1200sqft shop in the back yard.

Basically the driveway was about the same distance from the canal/culvert as in the image below.

 

[Texas82GP]

I looked @ a house over in Irving TX several years ago. It belonged to a friend of a friend of my x-wife/GF @ the time (x-wife almost became my 2nd wife.... Almost) .
It was a nice, moderately sized 3b/2b/2car attached w/a 1200sqft shop out back on a 1/3 acre 'corner' lot. I liked it but there was an open-air city drainage canal ~20 -30' from the driveway (90° side entry to the attached garage/straight shot to the shop entrance).

I walked the property & noticed the wood fence along the shop in the back-yard had a distinct line approx 1-2' up from the grass (as viewed from the edge of the canal/culvert looking @ the side of the shop). I looked @ the fence line facing the shop entrance & the line was also there just not as visually prominent. The drainage canal/culvert was one of many in that older part of Irving that's tied to the Trinity River running through near-by Downtown Dallas.

The guy swore he never had any issues but that water line was an immediate concern for me. If the water made it to that portion of the fence, the shop would have several inches of water inside of it. My 'X' & I went back & forth on that possibility but ultimately I had to pass even though it's super hard to find a decent (small) size home within the city limits w/a 1200sqft shop in the back yard.

Basically the driveway was about the same distance from the canal/culvert as in the image below.

You made a good decision by passing on it! Who needs a few inches of water in their home or shop, or worse, in their life? I guess someone has to live by the drainage ditch but it won't be me!

 

[Texas82GP]

We went back out to the lot last Sunday. When we tied (surveyed the position of) each tree while performing the survey a few weeks ago, we tied flagging around each as we went, to help us make sure we got them all. I wanted to get out there and pull all the flagging off the trees. Also, we decided to spray the Kudzu that is popping back up in the front of the lot where it was really bad before the underbrushing. Here's a couple of pics of the Kudzu, with Sean spraying in one of them......

We'll go back in a few weeks and see what effect that had. They've made good progress on the bridge. All of the structural steel is in and they've poured the concrete abutments at each end...

It will be interesting to see what kind of progress they make in the next few weeks. I'm guessing they'll be working on the roadbed next.

Here's a look at the creek bed to the south of the bridge, this is the opposite side of the low water crossing from the bridge...

Without getting down in there, my guess is that's a 48" pipe in the lower right corner of the picture, which is what is crossing under the low water crossing. You can see, the creek is always wet. I haven't seen it in a rain event, yet. Here's the other side of the pipe on the bridge side....

They'll dig all that out once the bridge is in service.

Progress on the survey, in the office has been slow. I got a monster head cold a few weeks ago and am just now getting over it. I'm behind in the office so there hasn't been much of an opportunity to work on it. I did get all the data reduced and was able to check the boundary. The boundary is in good shape, which is what I expected out of this new subdivision. I guess that's it for now friends. Hopefully we'll see some more progress in a few weeks. Thanks for following along.

 

[CopperNick]

You mentioned the resurgence of the Kudzu and the necessity to go out and physically attack it with some kind of spray. Does the subdivision place any restrictions on what type of killer chemical can be used on the stuff? Or is that something the county or state has jurisdiction over?? Being curious here because a lot of the good chemicals that used to be available simply by walking into your local Menards, aren't anymore or if still around, are kept under lock and key due to side effects like toxicity towards animals and humans (something about your kids glowing in the dark and being born with extra appendages)

If you can't permanently destroy the stuff, can you turn the property into a Kudzu plantation and figure out a use for it? Any valuable medicinal properties? Can it be processed for the fibers and them woven into ??? Goat food???



Nick

 

[Supercharged111]

You mentioned the resurgence of the Kudzu and the necessity to go out and physically attack it with some kind of spray. Does the subdivision place any restrictions on what type of killer chemical can be used on the stuff? Or is that something the county or state has jurisdiction over?? Being curious here because a lot of the good chemicals that used to be available simply by walking into your local Menards, aren't anymore or if still around, are kept under lock and key due to side effects like toxicity towards animals and humans (something about your kids glowing in the dark and being born with extra appendages)



Nick

That sounds useful. No wonder the govt put the kaibash on it.

 

[ck80]

You mentioned the resurgence of the Kudzu and the necessity to go out and physically attack it with some kind of spray. Does the subdivision place any restrictions on what type of killer chemical can be used on the stuff? Or is that something the county or state has jurisdiction over?? Being curious here because a lot of the good chemicals that used to be available simply by walking into your local Menards, aren't anymore or if still around, are kept under lock and key due to side effects like toxicity towards animals and humans (something about your kids glowing in the dark and being born with extra appendages)

If you can't permanently destroy the stuff, can you turn the property into a Kudzu plantation and figure out a use for it? Any valuable medicinal properties? Can it be processed for the fibers and them woven into ??? Goat food???



Nick

We had to deal with some kudzu problems in one of out east Cobb properties.

From our experience and research:

1) the roots run DEEP. as in up to 9 or 10 FEET deep when it's mature/established.

2) the roots store lots of energy. They develop tuber style thick pods.

3) burning only kills young plants that lack roots. The big tuber toots just sent new shoots.

4) glyphosate works, sort of. It's bad to breathe or get on your skin, and, kudzu likes a 30-40% concentrate to really kick its butt. Lesser stuff didn't do much, and it just crept around week barriers and came out the edge.

5) your best bet is to keep killing, and killing, and killing while hoping to exhaust the root nourishment supply. Problem is, if neighboring properties aren't killing their share, their deep roots are able to keep sending crap over into your property.

To solve a problem with a piece of neighboring forested land sending shoots in endlessly, we actually used a backhoe, trenched the property line, and buried a 10ft piece of aluminum roofing standing up then back filled for the offending 60 ft to the creek edge. Extreme, yes. But it grew so fast, and, we didn't want to keep using chemicals as stuff kept coming up from the ground. That was after 2 years killing what was already on our property. It did, more or less, solve it except for seeding issues, but, mowing took care of those.

Other option, funny as it sounds, it a pet goat or two. They're the only thing that eats as fast as kudzu grows it seems. Could be a restriction on those in your hoa though, but in the area we lived, even in the cities, where kudzu was a big problem all around metro Atlanta there were companies that would set up temp fences, and leave a crew of goats to eat the kudzu for a fee... and the cities were fine with it, even though zoning wouldn't allow permanent goats at those locations.

 

[Texas82GP]

We did some more survey work this past Saturday. I wanted to tie our survey to the City Benchmark referenced on the subdivision plat (map of our section of the subdivision that lays out the courses and distances for the individual lots and also for the streets). The Benchmark is the basis of the horizontal and vertical datum of our subdivision (everything in our subdivision is based horizontally and vertically from its published data). Since we were going back out there I took the opportunity to tighten up the onsite control and to establish a few temporary benchmarks. You could say some of this was a bit overkill but we needed to go out there to tie to the project benchmark (a point of known horizontal location and elevation to a high degree of accuracy - a reference monument) anyway. Also, we had to kill some time between our sets of GPS observations of the benchmark anyway, so we might as well do something productive. This way, the control that we've established is now very tight (very little error in the coordinates and elevation) and we established some control which is unlikely to be knocked out during construction. This way, if I need to give some control to a Contractor's Surveyor during the project or if I need some control for something in years to come, what I have will be good.

Sean wasn't as busy so he got some good pictures. Here I am, back where I started 20 years ago, holding the level rod....

Here's a shot of the Robotic Total Station setup on the tripod over a control point in front of our lot. The point of reference is a spike we set in the asphalt. It will eventually get paved over but should be undisturbed through our construction and well after....

The nearest City Benchmark is an aluminum disk on a piece of rebar, set in the top of an earthen dam just north of our subdivision and at the south end of the adjoining development. The adjoining development is built along a series of three man made lakes which were created by damming up the creek which runs through our development. Here's a shot of my colleague with the GPS unit getting data on the benchmark....

This spillway is the source of the water that runs down the creek through our subdivision...

This is looking past the spillway, where the water overtops a sediment trapping structure, down onto the riprap (rock). This is looking towards my subdivision.....

And here's the north end of the spillway, looking at the lake and some of the development. It's a nice area. I think it was built in the early 80's. It's held up well. The lots are small compared to ours but that's to be expected with lakefront lots.....

I should have the survey done and ready to give to the builder in the next two weeks. I'm going to stay late at work and put an hour or two on it each evening. I may come in on a Saturday or Sunday and bang it out. I want it done by Thanksgiving. We're moving forward with buying the house plans. We marked up a set with some changes we'd like yesterday. My sister-in-law is coordinating with the Architect for a price to make the changes to the plans. Then we'll decide to either do that or just buy the plans as is.

Sean and I were unimpressed by the effect of what we sprayed on the Kudzu the weekend before last. There was definitely damage to the plants but not substantial. We decided mowing is a better option so we bought a field and brush mower. It's the style that has what looks a bit like a weedeater head on it and takes the nylon line. It should be delivered tomorrow. We think it will be useful when we're living out there anyway so we figured why not. I'll post up some pics when we put it to work.

I guess that's it for now friends. Thanks for following along.

 

[Texas82GP]

You mentioned the resurgence of the Kudzu and the necessity to go out and physically attack it with some kind of spray. Does the subdivision place any restrictions on what type of killer chemical can be used on the stuff? Or is that something the county or state has jurisdiction over?? Being curious here because a lot of the good chemicals that used to be available simply by walking into your local Menards, aren't anymore or if still around, are kept under lock and key due to side effects like toxicity towards animals and humans (something about your kids glowing in the dark and being born with extra appendages)

If you can't permanently destroy the stuff, can you turn the property into a Kudzu plantation and figure out a use for it? Any valuable medicinal properties? Can it be processed for the fibers and them woven into ??? Goat food???



Nick

I'm not aware of any restrictions on what we can spray but we've decided attacking it mechanically and being vigilant is the better course of action. We will not be farming Kudzu!

 

[Texas82GP]

We had to deal with some kudzu problems in one of out east Cobb properties.

From our experience and research:

1) the roots run DEEP. as in up to 9 or 10 FEET deep when it's mature/established.

2) the roots store lots of energy. They develop tuber style thick pods.

3) burning only kills young plants that lack roots. The big tuber toots just sent new shoots.

4) glyphosate works, sort of. It's bad to breathe or get on your skin, and, kudzu likes a 30-40% concentrate to really kick its butt. Lesser stuff didn't do much, and it just crept around week barriers and came out the edge.

5) your best bet is to keep killing, and killing, and killing while hoping to exhaust the root nourishment supply. Problem is, if neighboring properties aren't killing their share, their deep roots are able to keep sending crap over into your property.

To solve a problem with a piece of neighboring forested land sending shoots in endlessly, we actually used a backhoe, trenched the property line, and buried a 10ft piece of aluminum roofing standing up then back filled for the offending 60 ft to the creek edge. Extreme, yes. But it grew so fast, and, we didn't want to keep using chemicals as stuff kept coming up from the ground. That was after 2 years killing what was already on our property. It did, more or less, solve it except for seeding issues, but, mowing took care of those.

Other option, funny as it sounds, it a pet goat or two. They're the only thing that eats as fast as kudzu grows it seems. Could be a restriction on those in your hoa though, but in the area we lived, even in the cities, where kudzu was a big problem all around metro Atlanta there were companies that would set up temp fences, and leave a crew of goats to eat the kudzu for a fee... and the cities were fine with it, even though zoning wouldn't allow permanent goats at those locations.

I appreciate the perspective. I don't think our problem is nearly like what you experienced. We're just going to stay after it with mowing. I'm sure construction will be pretty hard on it as well. The driveway will go in the front where the Kudu was the worst. It won't cover all of it but my guess is covering some of it with concrete will help.

 

[ck80]

I appreciate the perspective. I don't think our problem is nearly like what you experienced. We're just going to stay after it with mowing. I'm sure construction will be pretty hard on it as well. The driveway will go in the front where the Kudu was the worst. It won't cover all of it but my guess is covering some of it with concrete will help.

Agreed, it'll help. The hard trick to the mechanical approach is mowing often enough to prevent any type of ground canopy that shades/crowds out whatever type of lawn/surface you plan to plant. Otherwise you mow to find... brownish yellow stuff and dirt

Hopefully it'll eventually die off. Problem is it is just so prolific it starts storing energy and working towards reproduction as soon as the leaves come out. We measured it, the suckers grow about a foot a day from a strong root.