Level Thinking

Last week I was participating in a service project week with youth from several locations. We were divided into teams on arrival and my team got a project to finish building an awning/grape arbor. The concrete piers had been set the week before, but as we proceeded, it became apparent that the piers had some height variation along the 32 foot run. We wanted to know how much it varied, but we had limited tools.

We did have a large plastic tote and a long garden hose, so we constructed a simple water level. First, at one end of the run we filled the tote with water and immersed the garden hose to remove the air.


Next we pulled one end of the hose over to the the first pier 32 feet away. By moving the hose end up and down we could roughly tell when it was just about even with the level in the tote. We used a pencil to make a mark.


From this we measured a gradual slope of about 6 inches over 32 feet. We decided to let the height change over the run length since it was gradual and it was destined to hold grapes vines anyway. Also the house was not completely level either.
I had these photos taken and I explained to the team that it was for my blog. We got to talk about my blog during the week, we finished the project a bit early and I had a fun week.