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Date: 11/20/25
Duration: 21:18
Guest: Jared Ownbey
Website: Ownbey Land Surveying
Listen on Spotify:
Summary:
In this episode, Ed sits down with Jared Ownbey of Ownbey Land Surveying for a deep dive into a field most folks only think about when they have to: surveying. Jared breaks down what his team does every day, from traditional boundary and topographic surveys to the high-tech world of bathymetric mapping using a remote-controlled survey boat. Yes, they literally map lake bottoms.
Jared shares stories from the field, including everything from handling massive 500-acre tracts to piecing together tiny parcels washed out by flooding. He explains why gaps and overlaps happen on paper, how surveyors track down missing corners, and why neighbors can be scarier than wildlife. You’ll hear about deer discoveries, copperheads, adventurous jobs in Chimney Rock, and the occasional misunderstanding when a survey crew shows up in someone’s backyard.
The conversation shifts to local life as Jared talks about his go-to food spots like Postero, Shine, and Hot Dog World. He also shares favorite activities around the area, including mountain biking at Kanuga, grabbing apples from Mountain Fresh Orchards, and riding the Ecusta Trail on his lunch breaks.
Jared wraps up with how folks can reach him if they need expert surveying help — and Ed hints that a part two might be in the future.
A fun, informative episode that shines a light on a trade most people don’t understand but every property owner depends on. Tune in and keep living local.
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Transcript:
Ed Frisbee (00:22)
Thanks for joining us today. And my special guest with this is Mr. Jared Ownbey withOwnbey Land and Surveying. I always say land and surveying, but it's Ownbey Land Surveying, right? That's great. Jared, thanks for joining us. Tell us a little bit about your company, what you do, and then I have lots of questions for you. All right. Thanks for having me. So my company is Ownbey Land Surveying. We're located at 522 Fleming Street. ⁓ In Hendersonville. In Hendersonville, yes. And we've been in business there.
since 2020. ⁓ surveying really since I got out of high school. ⁓ But we do all sorts of ⁓ survey related tasks. do boundary surveys, topographic surveys, flood elevation certificates, ⁓ construction staking, pretty much just about ⁓ anything that you can think of that, you if you think of a survey or what they would do. One unique thing that we offer is bathymetric surveying. We purchased a drone.
It's been a couple years ago. It's a boat and basically what we've been doing with it is we can survey a lake bottom or a body of water and generate a topographic map of that and then produce the volume amount. We do a lot of work for a company in Charlotte that specializes in dam restoration and so they sub us out for surveying ⁓ related tasks with the dam and the lake volumes.
That's interesting. Yeah, it's really fun. You set the boat out there, you can give it a mission plan, let it do its thing and fish if you want to while it's surveying. a lot of times, I do most of that work and it's remote controlled. So we do it manually because of obstructions and stuff that you may have in the water. But it's pretty cool. Do all that from...
land or you have to go out on the water also? No, do it from land. It has a camera on it. If you get to a point where you can't really see it, you can switch that and see what the boat's seeing. But for the most part, we haven't done anything larger than seven or eight acres. I see. And I can usually see it. And so it hasn't been an issue yet. That's really interesting. So surveying, what's one of the... What is the largest parcel you've surveyed as far as acreage or size?
To date, the largest parcel that we've done is about 500 acres. And how long would something like that take? Well, ⁓ prior to GPS becoming the primary tool that we use, which is wonderful, we would have to physically, what we call traverse that boundary. So we would come out with a transit or a total station is what we used.
and turn angles and traverse that boundary line and do what we call a true line. that could take, know, on average, depending on the terrain, we would figure, you know, a good crew, 1,500 to 2,000 feet of perimeter a day. So, you know, some of these boundary surveys could be miles long, so it could take weeks to just do the fieldwork portion. And then there's the research. You know, I think a lot of folks don't use
Surveyor often they only call a surveyor when they have to so I feel like that we have to you know And we're happy to do so but inform our clients. Here's the process This is how this works before we ever set foot on the property. There's a lot of research that goes into it We check, know deeds and plats of record ⁓ of the subject property and then any properties that touch it really we have to check those as well and Then we come out and do the field work bring all that data back to the office
⁓ process it, you know, if sometimes corners are missing, sometimes there's gaps, overlaps, we got to take those into account and then, you know, and finally eventually we have a map that we produce for our client. ⁓ So, but with the GPS coming so far, ⁓ GPS is expensive, it's very precise now, I mean we can get sub-centimeter accuracies with ⁓ our equipment and that allows us
a little more speed in the field because prior to that with a traditional traverse you need a lot of sight and that's not necessarily required when you have a GPS and we use what we call RTK which is short for real time kinematic. ⁓ Basically where we use a base unit set up at a point and then we'll carry with us what we call a rover and then we do all our surveying like that. But not to get too technical we could probably talk about that for...
hour and how that works and make your eyes glaze over. I am curious, you mentioned ⁓ gaps and I think you said overlays, but what happens in those situations? Like what you find becomes true? No, it doesn't. So one thing that we have to keep separate is that as a land surveyor we do not practice law. So we can't
We can't fix everything. So really what we're doing when we produce a survey plat, and let's say there is an overlap. What that means is there's an overlap on paper. There's an overlap in the chain of title. Error probably has occurred at some point, right? Land physically just, it can't overlap itself, or can it gap? You you've heard the term no man's land, which, you know, in the case of a gap that would be a strip of land, perhaps that there's no claim on it. This person's...
Deed says they own this and this one says they own that and there's a little strip in the middle that there's no you know paperwork saying who was it but we report all those facts on our Survey plat so we will show when we're required to show any gaps or lapages so we'll say you know possible overlap and then we have to give all the deed references as such and then Our clients ask us the same thing now what well find an attorney because that's what they're gonna need to do from that point is seek legal
counsel about how to go about it, you know, with that neighboring property owner, what can they do at this point ⁓ to, you know, resolve it? Well, in real estate, I've run into, I think we've talked about this once before, where there's unclaimed or, what's the correct terminology, where nobody knows who owns the land. We just call it no man's land. And if a neighboring owner wants to try to claim it, that can be a costly, because then you're
paying for title search and probably a survey. Yeah. Then there's several steps involved. You can't just claim it, I don't think. You think you have to contact the adjacent owners? Well, I've heard stories of folks and even surveyors in the past that you find a section of land that has no title to it. You could file a quit claim deed on it, which may convey title if there's any title to be conveyed. ⁓ Sometimes that would, you know,
ripen into them owning it, but ⁓ that's one way to go about claiming it. And there's a whole lot of other, ⁓ I guess, conditions that would have to be met for that to actually occur. But ⁓ a lot of times that's usually past where we are involved. The first step would be for us to survey that property, get some
measurements so that you know the parties know exactly what what are the dimensions in the area of what is you know either in that gap or in that overlap and then take that to the attorneys to figure out what to do with it. Right and then it becomes maybe so expensive you just leave it. That happens a lot yeah. It's very costly and a lot of times I've had folks you know something
situation like this and then they just drop it because the legal fees become so expensive and you know and I've I've had a client once time we found a You know a fence over the line in an area. They'd been obviously occupying. It didn't belong to them And they're like what should I do? I was like are you and your neighbor friendly? They're like, yeah Does he honor your fence? He says yeah, he said well, what should I do? I was like, well, you could tell him if you want or it could just you know Not say anything if you two are fine with it
That's between you and your neighbor. And I always try to tell my clients, you know, be a good neighbor. If you want to get along with your neighbor, you know, talk to them and be in front of them. But, you a lot of times that doesn't happen. So we've lost that in our society, I think. Talking to people. And agreeing to disagree at times. awesome. What's the smallest piece you've ever surveyed? If 500 acres ish is the largest.
That's a good question. We've got one coming up actually that we're going to do. It's 25 foot by I think a hundred feet maybe. Wow. And it's a little parcel in downtown Chimney Rock. you know Chimney Rock was from the very very much affected by Hulling. And this client that I have he's a friend of mine and I've done a lot of work for him in the past approached me about surveying it. He sent me a
a photo he'd taken with a drone of the area and there's nothing there. So I was like, look, I don't even know how to bid this for you. Obviously the corners are gone. It was flooded. ⁓ So it's going to be a challenge to put that back in. So we've done one other job in Chimney Rock since Helene and we had to, I guess you could say extrapolate, basically get out there and from the subject parcel, we survey out as far as we need to to find some corners.
know, property corners in the ground that we can, you know, verify, check and see, okay, is that a correct corner and then build off of that. So any surveyor that's been in Chimney Rock, I would say is having the same challenge for that. But yeah, I mean, that's probably the smallest that we've done. That's interesting. Like something after Helene, you can't just go off of GPS, I guess. You have to go back and do the true survey. have to go back and find a corner to work off of. Is that what you're saying?
That would be preferred. mean, the only way you could use GPS for a survey like that, let's say all the corners are obliterated, right? If there was a survey that had been done prior to that flood event and coordinates were listed, you know, and we were, you know, in our case NAD 83, ⁓ something that we could reference the same survey plane, we could use those coordinates to ⁓ put back those property corners.
We've also got a hierarchy of evidence that we use to replace missing corners. And coordinates is further down on that list, but sometimes if that's the best evidence, that's the best evidence. So it's kind of a case by case thing. That's very interesting. I don't think I'd ever enjoy surveying, but it's very interesting to listen to. If somebody's listening to this and says, dang, we need to call Jared, how do they call you or find you?
Well, I appreciate you asking We're not done talking. just... Yeah, yeah. So, ⁓ we have a website. ⁓ It's mountainlandsurveyor.com. That's easier than Oenby. That's why it's not Oenby. ⁓ Ownbey is spelled uniquely. A lot of folks want to put that E in there because phonetically that's what it sounds like it should be spelled like. But it's O-W-N-B-E-Y. So we have mountainlandsurveyor.com. ⁓ You can email us or email me at jared at mountainlandsurveyor.com.
⁓ Also, I have another ⁓ licensed surveyor in our office. His name is Dakota Waddell. Dakota at MountainLandSurveyor.com. And then our phone number for our office is 828-595-9668. Awesome. I'll ask you again at the end, so don't forget. ⁓ So what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen when you're out surveying? Or scariest? We'll kind of combine that. Okay. ⁓
We'll start with the weirdest, I guess. ⁓ I found an entire deer carcass one time on a 300 acre boundary survey and it was a really nice buck. And we were surveying, was in Cooper's Gap down in Rutherford County, I believe. And ⁓ we come across it and it was down kind of in a waterhole area. There was a little spring and ⁓ couldn't believe it. So we kept the head because it was really nice. It had already been
bleached out and just the skeleton. And then it took us about another month to finish that job. And so I went to see the client, was telling them, you know, we were giving them their plat and getting paid and that sort of thing. And I told him about this deer we had found. And he goes, I shot that deer. I was hunting and I couldn't find it. Do you still have the head? I says, yeah. He says, can I have it? And I was like, no, I've done put it on my wall. I put it on her, put it on, actually I gave it to my father-in-law and he put it on his shed.
But ⁓ he was fine with that, but that was a really, ⁓ that was kind of wild to find that. Let's see, scariest thing? I don't know. I haven't found anything scary. I guess neighbors would be the scariest thing. Sometimes, you know, people say, are you worried about bears or snakes or ⁓ bees? I guess bees would are my least favorite because you're in a bee's nest before you know it. And then they're going to light you up. Snakes.
We make enough noise in the woods, I really don't see snakes that often. The worst place I've ever been around to see snakes is ⁓ down off Potshulls Road near the power plant. ⁓ Down there off of 176, we did a five acre piece and we killed five copperheads because we crossed their paths and you know, they're aggressive and they'll hurt you. So I guess bees would be the scariest thing and then disgruntled neighbors. ⁓
The assumption, you know, they see us show up and the surveyors out here, there must be a problem. Right. And that's not, not the case. It's usually not the case, but we get misunderstood. And so there's a problem. Get off my land. Do y'all wear orange vests and stuff? Yeah, we do. I wear an orange vest, one for the convenience. I mean, we've got all these nice pockets and keep all our toys and stuff. I call it my costume. And, ⁓ my field guys, they also wear a vest or at least enough orange to
look like they're official. I don't want my guys to just show up somewhere and look like some person just climbing out of the woods. So we try to keep a professional look about us. then if we're doing a survey of someone's property, typically we knock on that person's door, let them know we're there or any neighbors. If we have to go across their property or onto their property to tie in an adjoining corner or anything like that, we always try to let people know what we're doing.
You mentioned bears. You got a survey to property that I had for sale in Asheville one time. And I think it was soon after your crew was out there and I was walking the property with the clients. I think we saw two or three bears within about hundred feet of us. And that's the first time I've ever seen a bear when I'm with clients from out of town. And that was pretty startling for them. And just the idea of me and some of them were older. The idea of trying to help them get away from a bear if he decided to walk towards us. Oh, was a little...
frightening I guess but normally bears don't bother you. No I've seen a bear one time it was on a job in Jackson County and it's kind of a funny story we were surveying kind of down in an area it's off of highway 107 and there wasn't very good cell phone signal and I needed to call the office I worked for a larger company at the time it's probably been 17 years ago so I jumped in a truck to drive up to the top of the mountain
this subdivision we were working on to call out and I kept hearing dogs and it was about this time of year and I was headed up the road and before I knew it this the biggest blackberry ever seen jumped out and ran across the road right in front of my truck and I just stopped I was like I can't believe I just saw that you know and then a few seconds later there come the dogs so they were they were running them but that's the only time I've seen a bear out surveying that's wild now my guys they they've telling me told me stories
They've seen a bear several times. ⁓ I've seen one in Mills River. ⁓ I've seen bears in downtown Asheville. I think I've seen more just driving. ⁓ I used to work at AB Tech. We see them up there on the campus all the time. ⁓ That's wild. I think they're attracted to the trash of people's trash cans and such. All right. So we're going to wind it down, but tell us before we get off.
Which some of your favorite places to eat or that you recommend to visitors that are coming to the area sure so I would have to say my favorite place to eat right now mine and my wife's would be Postero. Oh, everything at Postero is great The staff there We know some of them. They're very nice Excellent service excellent food. My second favorite for I guess a sit-down setting would be shine It's it's a toss-up. I would
Half the time I would rather go to Shine and my wife would rather go to Postero. So we were actually Shine last week. So it's a very good food. And those would probably be my two favorite. And of course, I mean, you can't go wrong with hot dog world. Hot dog world is still so different. just... So I mean, that's a quick, quick dinner there. My kids love hot dog world. Just a hot dog, some tater tots. Yep. We love their tater tots. That's right over here. Yep. right over here. I have walked there often.
⁓ so tell what about people coming to town or favorite things to activities like, you got to go see this if you're in town. well, this is probably don't hike a lot due to your work. So, well here lately I'm in the office a lot. So I try to get out. don't hike, but I do enjoy mountain biking. ⁓ if you're a mountain biker, Canuga bike park is my favorite place to go. I love it. ⁓ there's a lot of trails up there. ⁓ I got myself a new e-bike this year.
Full suspension and then that's I would ride it every day if I could it's it's a blast out there So if it's that if if you're a mountain biker, that's I would recommend that place ⁓ Hiking I mean, I can't tell you the last time I went on a dedicated hike, but it's probably Carl Sandberg up to glassy. Yeah You know this time of year you've got the Apple ⁓ Fruit stands and such I enjoy my favorite ones Mountain Fresh Orchards out there in any Ville
I always have a good selection of apples. So that's where I like to go get my apples. And your office is near or downtown ish. Do you ever take advantage of Acoustic Trail? Yes, I do. A lot of times I'll load my bike up, bring it with me to work, stop at lunch, ride down there, ride, you know, what's open of the trail, which I think it's about six miles from the market to the horseshoe and back and then back to the office. It's a great little break to the day.
I've been shocked the amount of people taking advantage of Acoustic Trail already. Yeah, it's pretty great. We enjoy it. We've enjoyed it too. ⁓ Anything else you think of I should have asked you related to surveying? I have other questions, but we're running out of time and maybe we'll have to have a part two sometime. two, I'd be glad to do it. So, can't think of anything right off. Okay. ⁓ well, I do have part two. We'll just have to stop. ⁓ Okay.
Jared, thanks very much for taking time. Tell everybody again how to contact you. You can reach us. Our number is 828-595-9668. That's our office number. Our website is mountainlandsurveyor.com and my email address is Jared at mountainlandsurveyor.com. Thanks for the plug in. Thanks for taking the time. Yes, sir. And thank you for watching and or listening and keep living local.