Frequently Asked Questions

Every property is different. Cost depends on the type of survey, property size, available records, and complexity. Send us the property address for a quote.

It depends on the survey type, research required, property conditions, and project scope. We'll provide an estimated timeline with your proposal.

Tell us your deadline when requesting a quote. We'll let you know whether we can accommodate your needs up front.

Your property address and what you need the survey for are usually enough to get started.

Absolutely. Tell us what you're planning or what your town, lender, attorney, or contractor requested, and we'll help determine the appropriate survey.

Yes. Please send us any previous surveys, deeds, maps, or other property documents you have — they may be helpful during our research.

Yes. DCL works with residential, commercial, and professional clients on projects of different sizes and scopes.

Often, yes. Requirements vary by municipality and project.

Yes. Depending on your needs, we can locate property boundaries, recover existing monuments, and provide boundary staking as appropriate.

Yes, however, this requires records research and a boundary survey of the entire parcel, in order to determine your boundary lines.

Usually not. We just need safe access to the areas required for the survey.

Most often boundary evidence will be located beyond your property. We'll evaluate access requirements based on the specific project.

A-2 is an accuracy class defined by the State of Connecticut, not a marketing term. The Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies set out classes of accuracy for surveys, and Class A-2 requires positional accuracy of about a fiftieth of a foot, a ratio of error of closure of 1:5,000, tightening to 1:7,500 where distances exceed 150 feet, and angular measurement within 20 seconds.

In practice A-2 is the class most municipal submissions and property transactions in Connecticut call for. Tighter classes exist for control work, and Class D is not a field survey at all — it is a compilation of existing records.

If somebody has told you that you need an A-2, that is what they mean: a boundary survey performed and mapped to that published standard, sealed by a licensed surveyor.

A property or boundary survey establishes the whole boundary. It shows the position of every boundary line, the monumentation found or set at the corners, and the surveyor's full opinion of where the property is.

A limited survey answers a narrower question. Connecticut's standards recognize several — a zoning location survey, an improvement location survey, a boundary stake-out — each covering only what its purpose requires.

A limited survey is not a lesser one; it is a different scope. The right question is what the person asking for it needs to see, which is usually the first thing we establish.

It is the survey commercial property transactions run on. It follows a national standard published jointly by the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors, so a lender or title insurer in another state knows exactly what it is receiving.

The current edition took effect on 23 February 2026 and superseded the 2021 standards for any survey begun on or after that date.

The standard also carries an optional list, Table A, covering things like utilities, parking counts and zoning detail. Which items are included is negotiated between you, your title company and us at the start, because they affect both the scope and the fee.

If you are buying or refinancing commercial property, your lender or title company will tell you an ALTA/NSPS survey is required, and usually which Table A items they want.

Not in any legal sense. A survey does not have an expiration date in Connecticut, and a properly performed and recorded survey remains a valid record of what was found. Surveyors routinely rely on maps that are decades old.

What changes is whether it still describes reality. Construction, subdivision, new easements, moved or destroyed monuments, or a neighbor's long-standing use can all mean an old map no longer reflects the ground.

Lenders and title companies frequently want a recent survey regardless of whether the old one is still accurate. If somebody has asked you for a current survey, that is usually why.

We can establish where the boundary lies according to the records and the physical evidence on the ground, and produce a sealed map and a written description of it. In most disagreements that is the end of the matter, because the disagreement was about facts nobody had checked.

What a survey cannot do is decide a legal claim. If your neighbor asserts a right based on long use of the land rather than on the deeds, that is a legal question, not a measurement — Connecticut recognizes claims of that kind after fifteen years, and resolving one is a matter for an attorney and potentially a court.

We are surveyors, not lawyers. We will tell you clearly where the record boundary is. If the situation needs legal advice, we will say so rather than guess.