The Leica Total Station
The last lecture of the week and indeed this 2nd term was with Land Surveyor Ian Humby. He has developed his practice to specialise in surveying things us garden designers crave on a survey. Not just levels and trees and so on (topographical survey) but house doors and windows, guttering, roof lines and even the facia (Measured building surveys).
Speaking at rate he guided us through 'why' to think about shelling out for a land surveyor in the first place and some of his examples were pretty shocking (one had approx 8-10m 'missed' on both sides of the 'already surveyed' garden another had buildings positioned quite differently). Although he did finish that section showing a survey by another garden designer that was almost perfect (!) to show it is not impossible for us to do well.
There were idiot proof ways for us to make our surveying better (equilateral triangle math and bean sticks rule!) and a revision of some of the finer points of using a Dumpy level and the popular zip level.
His own surveyor kit, a Leica Total Station, was most impressive although the price tag clearly makes it for professionals only!
Apparently a Dumpy level (150x cheaper than surveyor kit!) is perfectly acceptable but you should consider yourself reasonable at math - which I do, so I am off to source one this weekend but will be longing for the Total Station in reality.
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