How Level is Your Shop Floor?

[Gary Curtis]

Mine isn't. It has a pronounced slope. The slab was poured 14 months ago, and my table saw arrived a year ago. I was bothered by the tilt as I worked away with a 48" carpenter's level and misc. bubble levels to get the tables dead flat and dead even.

Does it matter that the best I could do was shoot for an equal bubble deflection on all the table surfaces?

Gary Curtis

[Rob Will]

Mine isn't. It has a pronounced slope. The slab was poured 14 months ago, and my table saw arrived a year ago. I was bothered by the tilt as I worked away with a 48" carpenter's level and misc. bubble levels to get the tables dead flat and dead even.

Does it matter that the best I could do was shoot for an equal bubble deflection on all the table surfaces?

Gary Curtis

Hi Gary,
How much slope are you dealing with?
Rob

[Jason Beam]

Mine was both sloped and a glacial mountain range when I moved in ... the slope didn't bother me nearly as much as the protruding pieces of concrete. In 16 feet, it dropped 6 full inches, but the peaks of some of the chunks stuck up only about 3-4 inches.

I finally laid down sleepers in a 12x12 inch grid and put down some cheap stuff - at the time it was particle board. Then I painted the whole floor with garage floor paint. Now the floor's perfectly level and has no surprise bumps to trip over. It was a good move, since I bought a ton (literally) more machinery that really needed to be level and on a smooth surface to move around.

[Chris Friesen]

Mine isn't level at all. Double garage, pronounced hump in the middle of the floor.

My previous shop was actaully worse, so the table saw sits on a platform with four of LV's "one ton" glides supporting the saw. Works great.

Ladders and sawhorses have to be placed carefully to avoid wobbling.

[Michael Schwartz]

Concrete guys do concrete because they don't how how to read a level, square, or tape mesure. Which by the way are the three most basic carpentry skills.

If you wanted a spot to be dead level for some reason, you could put down a layer of a self leveling grout, of course checking it with a level as you go, to flatten out and level the floor.

[Mark Singer]

I build a lot of large pieces on the floor and rely on it being level. Beds , chairs , cabinets are often layed out...modified and components cut and measured from the shop floor....it really needs to be dead on!

[Reg Mitchell]

Mine is pretty level. Only a few inches from one end to the other but it needs to slope a little for drainage unless you have a drain in the center and then it would slope toward the drain. If you want it flat and level your gonna have to build it.
My tablesaws are resting on 3 points. It is the easyest way to level them. I learned hanging mirror in yatchs, nothing is square or flat, that you will always have 3 points that will touch a surface. you have to shim the 4th.
As far as assemly just build you a table, mine is 24" tall, flat on top and put ajustors on the legs to ajust it to the floor. For me that is a good working highth and lets me work all the way around something. If you really want to get funky put one on a lazy susan so you can turn it to do the finish work. That is a project I will be working on in the future
Reg

[Jamie Buxton]

Garages are not supposed to have flat floors. They are supposed to slope down toward the door so that water and ice drain out instead of pooling inside the building.

[Jude Kingery]

Hey Gary,
Our shop floor is slightly sloped for just that reason, drain off any water out the garage door. But we've not had any trouble at all leveling the band saw, lathes. Seem to be just fine. Best of luck to you on your endeavors, though. Jude

[Andrew Williams]

Level? What is this strange term you speak of?

I use lots of shims.

[Rob Will]

My machine room was poured dead level. Other parts of the building have floor drainage either to a drain or out the overhead doors.

Rob

[Larry Fox]

Not at all. Shims under almost everything. My Uni has the 4th corner shimmed with a short piece or Romex that was lying around when I initially setup - I will replace it ..... one of these days. :)

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

My shop has a little slope a couple degrees t so that when the thing floods the water all runs out down the hill.

I have used this feature on numerous occasions to clean the whole shop and basement.

[Steve Schoene]

Building codes require garages to have that slope toward either drain or doorway. The one on the house I am having built was poured this morning and is being finished as we speak. It will slope 2" in 23 ft.

Of course, it won't really see cars, since it really will be my shop.

[John Headley]

My shop has a wooden floor which over time has developed high and low spots. When I roll around the saw, the mobile base would bow with the floor which would force my laminated extension table out of square. To help with the problem, I made my own legs for the extension table angled back to the base of the cabinet. Reducing the size of the footprint necessary for the mobile base, helped maintain the alignment of the table to the saw top.

[Art Mann]

Why are you even worried about level? Unless you have an extreme angle that makes working difficult, level is irrelevant. In my stand alone 24X28 shop, the floor slopes all the way from the back to the double doors in the front and I like it that way. What you need to be concernewd with is flatness. That is a different thing than level. If your floors aren't flat, then your equipment will rock and be unstable. You will have to use shims to make everything stable. If you use your floor as a reference surface, as a previous poster does, then you also have a problem with that.

My advice is that if your stationary equipment and benches are stable, then put away your level and forget about it. If your floor isn't flat, then I don't know of much you can do about it other than put shims under your equipment and bench legs or build a superficial level floor on top of the existing one.

[Jim Becker]

Like Steve's mentions, my shop floor slopes about 2" in the 21' back to front as it was originally built as a garage by the previous property owners. For a long time I just had "everything" on the slope and that made work surfaces consistent. Thinks have changed in the last year as I leveled the slider when I put it in place and shimmed up my workbench since I don't move it around anymore. Ideally, I'd love to level the floor, but at this point it would be too much of a pain to do so.

[Gary Curtis]

Rob, using a bubble level, the table saw top throws the center of the bubble out to the 1st ring marking. The declination is towards the garage door.

The reason for my post is this: I have a sliding table saw, and the slider can be adjusted in 3 axis. In other words, it moves back and forth and is held co-planar to the saw top. Co-planar means parallel in 2 axis and perpendicular in the Y axis. A lot of adjustments to get it in that configuration. Centering a bubble gauge would have been the simplest trick.

The darn machine weighs 750 lbs and the bearings would bind on the tracks if anything is cockeyed. Since nothing is binding and the 5-Cut test of the slider comes out true to about 1/20th of a degree to 90, I'll call it quits. I figured the gentle slope was for water drainage, although I can't imagine how water would get inside the garage, unless one were to wash a car in there.

It's comforting to know that everyone's garage has the same quirk.

Thanks all,

Gary

[glenn bradley]

Mine has the normal garage-type slope except for the rear 10 feet. This is a pad that was a fourth bedroom option. I drop about 1/2" every 8 - 10 feet rear to front on the garage pad.