Quickly lets you see if homes are level and plumb
Key Points
- It shoots visible laser beams as far as 50 feet
- No walking back and forth trying to feel the slope of the floor
- A nice, small tool about the size of a good tape measure
- The Bosch GLL 55 Self-Leveling Cross-Line Laser is pretty neat
I'm sure you've been in homes where you feel like you're either walking uphill or downhill.
Your buyers walk back and forth over the same area saying how sloped the floors are. You agree, "Yep, they sure are".
But just how much are they off kilter? Is it just a bulge in the middle of the floor or is there settling on one side of the home?
I had a situation this week where I had my buyers call up Atlas Piers to come out and take a look at a big step crack in the brick veneer on one side of a house that they were interested in maybe putting an offer in on.
This is the second time I recommended Atlas Piers and it's the second time that the actual owner/president of the company, Wayne Farris, showed up to give us his opinion. I don't know how Wayne does it. Unlike other companies in the field, he doesn't charge to have him come out to evaluate a situation.
When you are just a potential buyer and not the actual owner of the home, very few companies want to waste their time because there's a good chance the potential buyer will never even end up buying the home. But Wayne comes out and takes his time to size up the situation and tell you his professional opinion. He isn't there to talk you into some expensive work that he can do. Last fall he came out for another buyer of mine and told them there was nothing to worry about. He could have easily tried to sell them a few thousand dollar piers that his company specializes in.
After looking at the crack outside, we came inside to see if we could identify how much settling we could see inside. There were no cracks in the sheetrock but there was a closet door that was a little uneven.
Wow!!! It reminds me of a Star Wars light saber
Wayne pulled out what looked like a big contractor's tape measure. He set it down on the floor at the far end of the room and pressed the on button. His gadget shot out two red laser lines, a horizontal and a vertical line that were projected onto the wall.
The neat thing about it is that it is self-leveling. It doesn't matter if the surface you place it on is level. It has some kind of internal pendulum of some type that levels itself out so the laser beam it shoots out is always level. If you place the device on the floor, the beam exits the device about one inch above the floor. If the floor is level, the horizontal beam it projects onto the far wall will be the same one inch up off of the floor. In this particular case, the horizontal beam was five inches above the floor on the wall that was about 20 feet away. So that means the house moved about 4 inches.
It's a pretty neat device. You can quickly quantify the levelness of floors in a very visual manner.
It also shoots out a vertical line so you can see how plumb the walls are. You can set it next to a vertical wall and see if it's leaning or if it's bulging in the middle.
I thought to myself "Damn, I got to get me one of those". So I wrote done the make and model number so I could buy one myself if it didn't cost too much.
It was a Bosch GLL 55 Self-Leveling Cross-Line Laser
That seemed pretty reasonable to me so I ordered one.
I can't wait until I get it and can test it out in the field with buyers who think they detect uneven floors. I'll be ready and say, "I have a gadget for that" and pull out my handy-dandy cross-line laser level. I'm thinking that buyers will be pretty impressed, just like I was.
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