Service Detail
Locating, mapping, and describing access and utility easements.
An easement is the right to use a piece of another owner's land for a defined purpose. A driveway that crosses a neighbor's tract to reach a road, a utility corridor carrying power or water, and a drainage channel that has to stay clear are all easements. A right of way is a common kind of easement, usually the right to pass over land or to run a road or a line across it. An easement survey locates that right on the ground and maps it: where it begins and ends, how wide it is, the course it follows, and how it sits against the parcel boundary.
The work ties the physical evidence back to the record. Most easements were created by a recorded instrument, a deed, a plat, or a separate easement agreement, and the survey reconciles what that document describes with what is actually on the ground. When a new easement is being created rather than retraced, we can prepare the plat exhibit and the written legal description that the granting document will reference, so the right is defined precisely instead of loosely.
An easement survey is a specialized use of a boundary retracement, so it usually starts from the same foundation. If you have not established the parcel boundary itself, our boundary surveys page covers that work. When an easement question comes up inside a commercial purchase, it is often handled through the title-driven ALTA/NSPS survey, which maps the easements listed in the title commitment along with the boundary and improvements. S&S Land Surveying LLC works out of 549 West Ave in Cedartown and handles easement and right of way surveys throughout Polk, Floyd, Bartow, Paulding, Carroll, Haralson, Douglas, and Gordon counties, and across the wider northwest Georgia and metro Atlanta region.
Founder William "Bart" Sims brings four decades of surveying experience to easement and right of way work.
Rated 4.9 out of 5 by 50+ Google reviewers across northwest Georgia.
Plats and legal descriptions are signed and sealed by a licensed Georgia land surveyor.
We reconcile the recorded instrument with what is actually on the land, not one or the other.
A right of way is a type of easement, usually the right to pass over land or to run a road or a utility line across it. Easement is the broader term for a right to use another person's land for a defined purpose, such as access, utilities, or drainage. Both are located and mapped the same way, from the recorded instrument that created them and from the physical evidence on the ground.
No. An easement is a right to use land for a specific purpose, not ownership of it. The fee owner still owns the ground under the easement. Our survey locates, maps, and describes the easement. Drafting or interpreting the grant that creates or transfers a right is attorney work, and we will refer you to counsel for that rather than opine on it.
We map and locate the easement so you can see exactly where it runs. Whether you may build within it is governed by the language of the easement and by the utility or holder that benefits from it, which is a legal and holder question rather than a survey one. Anything about what is buried in the easement and how deep is subsurface utility work. Call 811 before digging, and for private lines or soil conditions we will point you to a utility locator or a geotechnical specialist.
Often, yes. If a parcel reaches a public road only across someone else's land, a survey shows whether a recorded access easement actually connects the parcel to the road and where it runs. Buyers, lenders, and closing attorneys frequently want that confirmed before a landlocked or interior tract changes hands.
Easement work builds on the boundary and often sits inside a title survey. These pages cover the related survey types:
Tell us about the access or utility right and the parcel it crosses. Free estimates.
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