Making sense of the land

We walked the land the other day, and tried to get a better sense of its shape.

Looking at pictures from the air, I see that while it is densely wooded. I don't want to loose much woods if I can help it. We probably need to clear for:

• A yurt as temporary shelter
• A deluxe outhouse (with shower, washer, and dryer) to make things comfortable for my family while we're building
• A driveway. 
• A garden
• A septic drain field
• A "solar easement" to the south, so light can come in
• The house + garage

There's a slope down on the south side of the property, and I wanted to get a better sense of where it is. I tried walking the land with a laptop + GPS, and writing down latitude & longitude of key points. I then plugged the numbers in to Google Earth and got this.

There are 4 pins in the image that mark the corners of the land. The 'S' pin divides the land in to two parcels. I want to keep the option open of selling one parcel in the future. The 'Top of Rise' pin shows where the land slopes down to the South-East. North of that is pretty flat, except for the very north side of the property.


Measuring distances under 100 ft with GPS is tricky, because there is a built-in error in the GPS signal. If you stand still, your GPS will say that you're walking around at about 1 mph. By moving quickly between positions, you can get good relative measurements, though.

To help get better measurments, I just bought a 200' tape measure for $20 at Amazon:

Later that same day I went to measure my current kitchen at Amazon, and discovered that the tip of my 16' tape measure had broken off. Just as I took the last measurements, the kids caused the tape to be sucked up in to the body, making it useless. I ordered this replacement ($11) which will arrive tomorrow:

I did discover that my current kitchen has 15' of counter, plus a 26" square corner area. The range also has 15" of built-in counter-like space on one side.