I was actually going to take grid paper and map it out ft by ft with waypoints every so many feet (10-15) with elevation heights, all the way into the front woods. with the angle of the road in front of the property, I may only be able to angle 20-30 feet from the side before I start cutting into the opposite slope. I know the way everything is angled now (in the front) it is about 5 feet higher than the (what I am calling drainfield) woods area. If I can slope off from the front of the house 50ft out to the drain field/woods and still have 2 feet, then thats perfect, as the drain feild then drops 3 feet into the ditch by the road. Again, how far on the side of the house I can continue the up hill battle is unknown till I get some specs down on paper. Worst case is I can angle it all to the back of the woods behind the house, where it should have gone in the fist place, but, ye ol redneck decided a pond next to the house was better, so, he built up the ground MORE, rather than build the pond deeper. Good lord!!
Your idea does sound interesting, will have to check that out. Need to buy me a laser level also. Almost bought a Topcon RL-H4C but it has a red led. It would work, but, still looking at options.
Thanks for all the opinions guys, and gals, appreciate it.
As for the laser level, if you want one you can see in daylight, get ready to spend some bucks. I got one that was supposed to be visible for 100' in daylight. Well, it is visible in daylight, if you can find the reflective target with it, within about 30 feet. Unfortunately, my slab is nearly 60 feet diagonally. I was sorely disappointed in it because found it to be pretty much useless until I got the walls sheathed on my shop. But, it's still handier and more convenient than a pocket on a shirt for inside use.
I had hoped to use it for levelling the slab forms, but unless I worked at night, that laser was useless. Too many things go wrong trying to do accurate work in the dark, so I just reverted to the oldest level ever made so I could get things right when i could see them. Gravity and water. I use a 5-gallon bucket with a hose thread bulkhead fitting near the bottom, 75 feet of water hose, and then 10 feet of clear vinyl tubing attached to a rigid stick. Total investment was less than 10 bucks, considering the hose was one that had ruptured a couple times under pressure and the bucket was an old used drywall paste bucket (free). I put a small cap on the vinyl hose with a tiny hole in it to help dampen the 'bounce' of the water between the stick and the bucket. Put a reference stake in near the bucket, and make sure the bucket will ALWAYS be at the same position and height, then mark that grade on the stick the clear tube is on based on a reference stake as close to the bucket as possible. From there, it's just a matter of measuring how much drop/rise there is by how far the water meniscus is from its original level in a position near the bucket. This makes shooting an elevation grid REAL easy. All you need is marks, no stakes. This is the same way the Romans put in the aqueducts in Rome and built Hadrian's Wall in England/Scotland. The aqueducts had to go over rough terrain, and maintain a drop that would make the water go in the direction they wanted it to. That's pretty tricky stuff.
Funny, but sometimes, the old ways are better and simpler and cheaper. All ya gotta do is remember up is down and down is up. Makes it really easy to set a grade with a simple mark on the stick for the amount of drop or rise you want. Put multiple marks on for longer distances and checkpoints in between. Some simple triangle geometry will figure out the elevations over the distance you need. Setting multiple bench marks makes it useful over very long distances. The only difficult part of using it accurately is getting all the air bubbles out of the hose. Air will go up hill, water goes down hill. So, just put one end higher than the other in a straight line and wait. Doesn't really matter which end, but I typically take the 'smart' end downhill and let the bubbles go back to the bucket since the air tends to go through larger hose better.
Almost forgot, very few people will 'borrow' an old 5-gallon bucket and patched water hose if you leave it sitting outside. Can't say the same for a fancy laser level on a decent tri-pod.