Land surveyor in Valencia

The Valencia huerta: hanegadas, irrigation channels and alquerías

Around the city, the huerta (the irrigated market-garden land) is still divided into small plots, watered by historic irrigation channels (acequias) and measured in hanegadas, the old local land measure of about 831 m² each. Old deeds describe boundaries as “irrigation channel to the north, track to the south” and give round-number areas that almost never match what is on the ground. When an alquería (a traditional farmhouse) is inherited, sold or restored, it needs measuring again.

The huerta is also protected by its own regional land-use plan (plan de acción territorial), which limits what can be built or divided. Before proposing a subdivision or an extension, we check what the rules allow on that particular plot. That way nobody spends money on a project that will not go ahead.

The coast: from El Saler to Cullera, Gandia and Oliva

On the coast, from El Saler and the Devesa southwards, the usual enquiry is about a sale or a home: a chalet or a plot whose area differs between the title deed and the Cadastre, a renovation that needs a reliable plan of what already exists, or a plot where a house is going to be designed. We work for owners, estate agents and the architects who design or renovate those homes.

On the seafront there is also the coastal protection easement (Costas), which is worth locating on the plan before designing or buying, and in the marshland areas, the level of the ground in relation to the water.

Camp de Túria: inland villas and regularisation

In Llíria, Bétera, La Pobla de Vallbona, Riba-roja or l'Eliana there are thousands of villas on urbanisations that began in the 1970s and 1980s, many on land that was rural at the time. The problems are much the same: walls that do not match the urbanisation plan, houses extended without being declared, and regularisation procedures in which the town hall asks for a georeferenced plan of each plot.

We measure the plot and the buildings and deliver the plan in whatever format the procedure requires. If you also want to register the house, we prepare the cadastral building location report (ICUC) and, where appropriate, the certificate of age.

Topographic survey in Valencia city

In the city we work mainly for architects and builders: surveys of building plots with their party walls and street levels, surveys of buildings about to be refurbished, structural setting out and geometric control during construction. In Ciutat Vella and the older neighbourhoods, the survey of a building between party walls is often the first reliable document the project has.

In the old seafront districts, the Cabanyal and the Malva-rosa, houses are narrow and deep, with only a few metres of frontage. There, half a metre of difference along a party wall is a serious problem with the neighbour, and it is worth measuring before designing.

Rivers, ravines and flood-prone areas

The Turia, the Xúquer and the network of ravines (barrancos) running down towards the Albufera shape much of the province. A plot next to a watercourse is subject to an easement and a control zone (zona de policía), and many lie within the flood hazard zones mapped by PATRICOVA, the regional flood risk plan. Since the DANA floods of 2024, that question comes up far more often in l'Horta Sud.

We locate the plot in relation to the watercourse and those zones and give absolute ground levels, so that the architect or the buyer can decide on data rather than assumptions.

Inland: Requena-Utiel, Los Serranos and la Costera

Inland, the properties grow larger and the work becomes rural: vineyards in Requena-Utiel, dry farmland and scrubland in Los Serranos and the Hoya de Buñol, orange and olive groves in la Costera and the Vall d'Albaida. We measure large estates with GNSS and, when the size justifies it, by drone, to obtain the orthophoto and the terrain model of the whole holding.

In Requena-Utiel the vineyards have been gathered into ever larger holdings, and in sales and leases you need to know precisely how many hectares are planted and where the boundaries run.

Typical cases in Valencia

Siblings who inherit an alquería in the Alboraya huerta and want to know how many hanegadas it really has. The owner of a villa in Bétera who needs the georeferenced plan for the regularisation procedure. A practice refurbishing a building in Ciutat Vella that needs a full survey of it. A buyer who wants to know whether a house in l'Horta Sud is in a flood zone and at what level it sits.