Talk:Spirit leveling

message: see Talk:Spirit level — Graibeard 00:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge request

message: Not sure that this is the correct term for this operation. I will have to ask a surveyor here what they call it. These days laser levels are used on building sites, or the old fashioned guys use dumpies, which have a split mirror view finder, not a spirit level. This article may need to be expanded and updated but I don't have the knowledge to do it.SilentC 21:08, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have conducted and witnessed much level work and never have I seen a dumpy level anywhere but in a museum.  Laser levels have become very common, but they do not remove the need for spirit levelling.  Typically, an engineering surveyor will, with the use of a spirit level (though nobody uses that term much in my surveying experience), set a grade mark on a stake, then the contractors themselves will use that grade to calibrate their own laser level.  Once the laser level is set up, it provides vertical reference points from which the builders can measure. -oOo-WhiskeyClone-oOo- 19:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

text: "I have conducted and witnessed much level work and never have I seen a dumpy level anywhere but in a museum" - Just because you've never seen one being used, doesn't mean nobody uses them anymore, now does it? SilentC 21:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you saying you encounter them frequently during the course of your duties as a surveyor?  May I ask what locale you work in?   -oOo-WhiskeyClone-oOo- 21:06, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Does it look like that's what I'm saying? What I said was that "the old fashioned guys use dumpies". And yes, I have seen a handful of the older builders who still use dumpies. They probably belong in museums but that's bedside the point. They are not surveyors, and neither am I, but that doesn't exclude them from performing this operation. So anyway, what's your point? My point is that I've never heard a surveyor or a builder here in Australia referring to this operation as 'spirit levelling'. Even you called it 'level work' as opposed to 'spirit levelling'. Maybe it's considered an archaic term here, that's why I said I'd have to ask a surveyor. I'll get around to it. SilentC 21:23, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry I forgot to make my point.  I realize that benchmark circuits and other tasks may be performed with instruments that don't use a spirit level bubble (such as the obsolete dumpy level), and therefore the term "spirit levelling" is inaccurate, but I have not been able to find a better term for the operations described in the article. I have always described these operations collectively as "level work," as do the surveyors I work with, but that term sounds a little vague for an encyclopedia.  Surveying textbooks I have read tend to use the term "spirit leveling," when describing operations such as benchmark circuits and the grading of stakes.  The article seems to describe two things: 1) benchmark circuits; and 2) establishing a vertical datum for a large area.  I'm starting to think that the benchmark circuit portion should be cleaned up and made into its own article, and the vertical datum portion (and its equations) should be merged into the Physical Geodesy article (to which it currently refers us for details.) -oOo-WhiskeyClone-oOo- 22:00, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spirit leveling

message: :: I removed the following as part of cleanup. Seems worthwhile, but needs rewriting before put back in article. Guroadrunner 00:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  rewrite this area