Does the Marble Test for Floors Really Work? Try It, but Keep a Level Head

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What does rolling a marble on the floor actually prove? A recent viral video shows a marble rolling on the uneven floor inside an apartment of the luxury Millennium Tower in San Francisco. Residents there were horrified when it emerged in August that the tower, built on bay mud, was both sinking and leaning.

The buzzy short was posted by resident Frank Jernigan to illustrate how off-kilter his pad had become.

According to SF Gate, the so-called “Leaning Tower” has “sunk a total of 16 inches and is now tilting at least 2 inches.”

But does the marble test truly tell us anything?

If you have a sinking feeling that your floors might not be perfectly horizontal, will a quick and easy marble test prove it? And how big a problem is it if your marble does roll away? We asked some experts to learn how they roll.

The structural engineer

“The marble is a good way to demonstrate the floor is not level, but not to tell if this means there is a problem,” says structural engineer Bill Neal of Vernon, CT. In other words, a slight slant in the floorboards is not necessarily a cause for concern.

Stay with us now, there’s a lot of talk of “levels” to explain how to tell if your floor is flat—both the carpenter’s tool for assessing horizontality and the state of being horizontal.

“The best way to see if there’s a problem is to put a 4-foot-long level on the floor,” Neal continues. “Ideally, when the level is level, the end should not be more than an eighth of an inch off the floor. If it’s a quarter inch or more, the house definitely should be checked.”

He adds, “It might be because of shoddy workmanship, or it could indicate a structural problem.”

In conclusion, the level should be level. Easy to remember!

Millennium Tower, San Francisco

Wikimedia Commons

The real estate agent

”Regarding settlement in floors, the old marble trick isn’t bad, even some inspectors used to do it,” says San Francisco–based luxury real estate adviser Joel Goodrich. But, before you trade in your inspector for a bead of glass, consider this.

“The real value and importance of having a professional inspector or structural engineer inspection is that they can say whether the settling is active (i.e., worsening) or cosmetic (i.e., not structural, but a function of the age of the building).”

He adds that checking the level of a structure isn’t something you want to leave to guesswork or chance. “Especially with all the older buildings and homes in the city, we definitely do due diligence on any settlement to determine whether it is cosmetic or structural.”

The developer

“The truth is, all floors are going to be a little bit unlevel,” says Mayer Dahan, a real estate developer in Los Angeles. “If you can notice your building is dipping, that’s not acceptable. Between one room and another, if a marble rolls, you’ll survive.”

A marble could get rolling because different rooms with different finishes can come out slightly different from one place to another in the house.

“A little bit’s OK. Anything drastic, the cost of these corrections is very expensive,” he says.

Ready to roll? The marble method can indicate an issue, but there are other reasons a ball may roll on a surface. Make sure to use a level in addition to your marble.

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