Markers near street?
 

Does anyone know what these markers are? The dirtier one in the picture is up at the end of our driveway, near the edge of the roadway. The cleaner looking one is at the edge of the road in front of my son's house. They look identical, & are about 1/2" in diameter.

When I first noticed the one near us a while ago, I thought it might be a utility marker of some sort, but my son's house is in another town, with different utility providers.

Survey markers.

Probably surveying benchmarks.

Best guess is sirveyors markers.....take a compass and see if any markings line up to make any cents.....

Maybe they are surveyor's markers? That would be my best guess. If it was utility related, you'd see some marker paint, especially near the new one. Yellow for natural gas, blue for water, red for electric, orange for cable/phone, etc.

Definitely survey markers.
https://www.baselineequipment.com/chrisnik-mag-nails

Not sure if anyone's mentioned surveyor markers.

Dunno if this has been mentioned or not, but those look like survey markers to me. :yesnod:

https://i.imgflip.com/1ax570.jpg


meanwhile, somewhere on Oak Island...



























https://i.pinimg.com/originals/19/c7...856d92546e.jpg

known as PK nails, used by surveyors, as they have a little dimple in the center, so you can line up a staff or a plumb bob exactly.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/PK_nail

became very familiar with these years ago in Antarctica when I helped out the surveyors a bit.

Driving surveyor spikes into drifting ice in Antarctica > Iron Maiden

actually, drove them into the dirt. spent many days helping lay out the location of two new buildings and their many concrete footings (precast concrete).

i can still hear Jeff (lead surveyor), "line, then distance!"

meaning first get the right direction figured out (line), and then worry about the correct distance from the transit.

i recall that each building had like 32 footers, and each footer was located by 2 PK nails, exactly located in the dirt, so later the footings could be placed properly by the heavy equipment operators (who I also worked with). they'd hoist them by the bucket on the front end loader via a chain attached to a lifting point in the footing. left, right, forward, back....wash, rinse repeat, shove a bit, DOWN! that's one....many more to go..... :smash:

Survey markers

Thanks for all the replies; I learned something today. Doesn't happen that often anymore.

you will also find pieces of 1/2 rebar used as survey markers, often capped with a plastic cap with the surveyor's name (so others will know who placed it). several corners of our lot are marked with these, we have about 10 points that mark our boundary with other lots. sometimes they will also drive a wooden stake near it so it's easy to locate later, and one of ours has a T-post (metal fence post) driven near it so you know it's there.

on the survey, these will be noted as either "IPS" - iron pipe set (placed by the surveyor), or IPF - iron pipe found, obviously set in place by a previous surveyor.

Do they mark the location of PK guitars? :popcorns:

We have those yellow caps at 3 corners of our (trapezoidal) property. I suspect that the 4th one is buried a bit. When we had the property flagged for utility locations prior to some digging last Spring, one of the guys was nice enough to wave his locator around the area where I think it is & said there was definitely something there. If I get ambitious someday, I'll dig down a little & see if I find a corner marker. It's the only one of the 4 corners that's in grass & gets mowed, so I wonder if a previous owner may have pounded it down below the surface. :island14:

very likely. it's still in the correct place, but now not subject to movement or damage.

our house in MD, i knew there was a marker in the yard between our house and the neighbor, finally found it one day (i wanted to lay out some edging just so, and stay on the line), sure enough, it was about 2" below the surface, but easy to find with a locating wand.

May have pulled it out not knowing what it was for. Have seen that happen.

Cliffs. :island14: