Topographic Surveys in Novato, CA

Topography in Novato is a watershed question before it is a design question. Novato Creek drains a 45-square-mile basin, the largest in eastern Marin, and empties into San Pablo Bay near the mouth of the Petaluma River; Marin County Flood Control Zone 1, formed in 1955 after repeated flooding around downtown, covers that whole watershed. On the low ground east of Highway 101 a topographic survey is really a drainage document: spot elevations carried to hundredths of a foot on NAVD88, top and toe of bank along the creek and the lagoon channels, culvert and swale inverts, and finished floor elevations an engineer can set against a base flood elevation. West of the freeway the ground climbs into San Marin, Indian Valley, and the grazing land along the Sonoma County line, where slope, oak canopy, and old ranch roads govern instead.

That range is why we scan rather than shoot a few hundred points with a total station. Our Trimble terrestrial laser scanner records millions of survey-grade points in a single visit, and we classify and filter vegetation out of the cloud to pull a bare-earth surface from under oak canopy, coyote brush, and the heavy grass thatch that defeats a conventional topo. Steep or cattle-worked ground gets covered from stable setups instead of a rod person walking every slope. Because the whole site stays in the cloud, a wall face, a culvert rim, a tree diameter, or a neighbor eave nobody asked about on day one is already measured. No return trip.

Deliverables are a signed topographic map, 1-foot contours (half-foot where drainage design needs it), spot elevations, a DTM surface, and a layered DWG/DXF base map built to your architect or civil engineer's layer standard, with the registered point cloud available on request. Boundary basis comes from recovered monuments and Marin County records. For a backyard unit, see our Novato ADU surveys; for building documentation, our Novato 3D scanning.