It is also coastal. An extra few feet might be significant when a big storm comes along.
But when you combine them, the accuracy is rather impressive. With my old Garmin 60CS, I can get altitude readings within ±2m of what the topo map says. On a good day I can get ±1m. Especially if I calibrate the barometric altimeter against a known altitude before I start walking.
And if the OP just wants to find the highest point, accuracy really isn’t an issue. As long as the instrument has sufficient precision, that’s good enough. He just has to ask the question ‘is “here” above or below “there”?’ and walk around the field instead of asking ‘what is the exact altitude here?’
umm…if I were about to invest big money in building a house, I would be more careful than just saying “we figure if…it might just allow us…”
Hire a professional land surveyor. He’ll measure all the topography , including the heights of the tree tops, and make a 3-D image of the terrain . An architect can easily move and rotate the new house on the computer screen, to any spot on the terrain,and even show you what the view will look like from each window.
Finally, someone gives the most correct answer. There is a reason why you should hire a professional in certain circumstances.
I agree with hiring a professional.
I have to say that needing the elevation above sea level, and needing the highest point relative to the rest of the property are two totally different questions.
An easy way to determine the relative highest point is to use a clinometer to traverse the property, instead of measuring the overall elevation you measure the slope between points. After a few profiles you can graph out your results and have a pretty good idea of the highest point.
Kinda my thoughts but if I just wanted to know the highest point then I’d borrow a regular level and tape a laser to it and spot the angle from point to point off of the same size stake with a sheet of paper stapled to it. You should be able to borrow everything you need.
Sure sounds like it would be the best option, but we’ll have to see what it costs.
Any means you use to measure altitude from sea level will produce temporary results. Sea level is rising steadily.
But this seems to be about finding the high spot on the property. That should be very easy. Just stick posts in the ground a few feed apart all over the property. Build a strong water-tight wall around the perimeter and fill it water, then pour in some dye. Drain the water and look for the longest distance from the water line on the posts to the ground. You probably want to remove the posts, but a good sturdy wall will add to the property value.
I was reminded of this silly process by the story told to me from someone who’s family owned a house in West Wildwood NJ, a sandbar on the coast near Cape May. Sometime in the 50’s or 60’s, a contractor was hired to raise the land sufficiently to build homes. He stuck graduated posts in the ground in various places, and was supposed to truck in enough fill to put the whole area well above the high tide mark. He did bring in some fill during the day, but at night he was pounding the stakes into the ground. Dozens of houses were built soon after the process was completed, and flooded soon after that. Most homeowners raised their houses up on posts (probably just higher up, I think they would have been built on posts anyway). But they still needed to keep boats handy to get in and out when the roads were flooded for extended periods.
What?
Even the scientists that believe in global warming (sorry, “climate change”, they have to have both scenarios covered in case things start cooling) only say the sea level is rising at 1.8 mm a year. Do you know how small an increase that is? Think about the fact that 1.8 mm is about 9/128ths of an inch. NINE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY EIGHTS of an inch a year. And that’s what you call a temporary result?
How many years would it take the sea level to rise one full inch at this rate?
Sorry, I didn’t think you’d seriously consider that triviality. It has no effect on where you’d locate your house anyway, unless you were too close to the water anyway.
I hope you didn’t take the second part of my post seriously.
I didn’t read all of the replies but it sounds like your property has very low changes in elevation and you want to know how many feet one spot is relative to another spot a few ft away.
A range finder may be more suited for this task. There are many different choices from about $10 bucks for one common for golf courses to hunting range finders from about $75 bucks to the ten of thousands of dollars. They will all give you distance to target as well as % slope for current location. More money also buys accuracy in most cases. They are easy to use too, even the cheap ones.
Even though your iphone altimeter may not have the accuracy you’re looking for, you can decease the error by taking multiple readings. Visit the same spot 30 different times and take the average of all readings will give you a pretty good number you can count on. Altimeters measure atmospheric pressure and whether sea level rises or falls will not change the elevation reading above sea level. These instruments are calibrated to use 1 atmosphere for to represent the pressure at sea level. Unless the Bureau of Standards changes the current value assigned to the atmospheric pressure at sea level, elevations anywhere in the world will not change even if the ocean dried up.
Or … just forget all of that and use a poor man’s method with a string and string level. that’ll get you within an 1/8" or so if you take your time and use short strings (50’ or <) stretched tight.
BTW, it would take a little over 14 years for sea level to rise one inch at the rate of 9/128 inches per year