You may not have seen one for years, but I haven't bought one for years. How many levels do you get through?
In fact, my best one is an heirloom from my Grandfather who died 25 odd years ago.
It has a bent vial, and only works one way up. (Well, actually 3 ways, vertical, horizontal and 45 degrees - it has 3 vials).
Even if all good *modern* ones work inverted, that doesn't mean all good ones do.
Andy
Only six in the last five years. And two free ones from screwfix and one free one from toolstation.
Just braved the cold and got my 2 foot level out of the shed.
I checked the level, bubble up and then inverted it. It read the same both ways. I note from the printing of it that it was made in the USA. But I can't see a manufacturer.
Not bothered to check my 3 foot level. That will have to wait for me finding all those tools that I can't find in that shed :-(
Dave
No, you really need a dished floor that will pool the water so that it can be mopped up. If the water goes to a point where it can go down a floor, you will have a problem.
My wife and myself are getting on in years and I took the option to lay some non slip flooring in my bathroom that is on the first floor. It was a pig to cut and lay, but what I did after that was get a silicon seal and seal the flooring to the scirting board. This should prevent any excess water getting down the side of the walls to the ceiling below. My floor is level by the way.
Semi tanking the bathroom will cure this. As I described above.
If you have one point to drain to, make it the middle of the room, assuming that your water proof flooring is a single sheet.
Dave
Do i make a low point in the middle by using 4 triangles of plywood or do i somehow curve the plywood floor and what water proof flooring will stretch to the curves?
Perhaps lino if i warm it with a heat gun and then glue it? But i fear it would unstretch and unglue itself in the middle
[george]
"Sloping floors so spilt water will go in one direction" !!!
"Dished floors so water will pool" .!!!
How much friggin' water are you folk intending to spill on your bathroom floor FFS . You are taking the piss surely?
Most modern levels are usable either way up. Old ones used a glass banana-shaped tube (one way only), modern ones use a moulded plastic barrel-shaped tube. This is cheaper to make, it also works either way up.
================================== Every one of my levels (ancient and modern - 4" to 6') has a vial marked and visible from either side or top so if the OP's is the same his tiler shouldn't have needed to use the level upside down to show a level.
Cic.
Thanks a million for all the helpful replies.
It does indeed appear that most spirit levels including mine will work upside down.
I've done a quick survey on the floor itself and on the ceiling below and have established that there is indeed some differernces in levels between adjacent joists but not so much along joists. If we start from the heighest point in the room, then a perfectly level floor would give about a 1/2" to 3/4" step up into the bathroom I don't think this is excessive but I gather the tiler laid the floor with the intention of minimising this. The problem is that this results in a
*noticable* slope across the floor and across the threshold.. We would much prefer to have a slightly larger step and a level (or not noticably unlevel) floor. As far as I undersatnd it, if a choice was to be made on how to lay the floor then it was us the customers who should have made it - not the tiler. And it's he that should bear the cost of relaying it to our wishes.It might all sound like a fuss about nothing, but the whole point of paying an arm and a leg to re-fit the bathroom is to achieve something that looks good - you won't actually be able to do anything in there that you couldn't do before. In a bathroom dominated by large ceramic wall and floor tiles, squareness is everything.
Thanks again Jeff
Equally he may say that he tiles on the base that he is given and if you were unhappy with the level then you should have rectified it before commissioning him. I do not know what the standard practice is with tiling, but with roof asphalting it used to be the case that in the absence of anything to the contrary, they would lay 19mm (or whatever) of asphalt following the contours of the roof, for better or worse.
No. Because if the water slopes to the right of the bathroom door, it gets into the light switch by the front door and trips the electric via the RCD. Yes, I know that I should remove the lights from the RCD, but I have not had a roundtuit for some time. It is one of the jobs on my list.
By the way, have you ever seen how much water can get passed a badly closed shower door?
Dave
I can't help you there, my floor was naturally dished about the middle of the room.
The curves do not have to be that big and I doubt that ply would be thin enough not to show under the flooring. Perhaps a better solution to your problem might be lay the flooring and use a heat gun or a good hair drier to get it flat to the floor and then use a good quality silicone seal around all the walls, toilet bowl and wash hand basin pedestal and over the door threshold. As someone else has pointed out, you do not usually have too much water on the floor if you make sure that a shower is not spilling over onto the floor. By the way, I am a messy bugger in the bathroom, hence my caution :-)
In my experience, once it has been warmed and settles it rarely moves again.
Dave
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Jeff" saying something like:
I've never seen one with a straight bubble tube. It wouldn't work very well at all.
So, more bullshite.
All mine have a (slightly) barrel-shaped tube with the same profile all round and work OK upside down. Like this, manufacturer does not have to worry about axial rotation of the tube when it is fitted. Simon.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember sm_jamieson saying something like:
All of my previous levels were of curved tube design, which were very reliable, but read on...
I dug out a recent one and had a closer look. The tube is slightly barrel-shaped right enough, but the level fails the upside-down test, giving different readings end swapped to end. The level passed the rightwayup test ok.
In light of this I'd be very wary of trusting a cheap level off the shelf.
Or even on the shelf :)
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