Leica Disto D5 Update

[incognito]

2) Accuracy- My total living area calculations for condos taken from interior measurements consistently come up well short of tax records.

So you feel that your disto measurements, which should be accurate to +/- .1% at 100', are less reliable than the tax records?

Who cares what the exterior measurements are, or what the tax records say. Condos are air space ownership, and are properly measured interior wall to interior wall.

The trick becomes determining how the living area for your comparables was established!

 

[Couch Potato]

I would agree with you that it's nice to be able to shoot an extra 200', but I rarely encounter residential structures out here with single runs of over 100'. I have no problem seeing the dot from a distance. It's reading the darn paper in front of my face that gets me.

The measurement is rarely over 100', but the easiest target is often well over 100'. Often the best target for a wall is a part of a house down the street. The use of the add/subtract functions for indirect measurement is one of the most overlooked functions of a Disto.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Disto's are accurate not that you cannot make a mistake... interior measurements are just that and won't always reflect the "exterior" of a condo which may be based on plans and specs or overall sizes. I have seen a number of condos that measure 150' and have 7 or more units...and unless you have the plans and specs you can mismeasure because one or more units will be slightly larger or smaller than the others.
The time savings for me is being able to measure around bushes better..and no it won't save me much time, if any, when both of us are on inspection. But with one person using a clipboard for a target and plotting and the other other handling the disto and calling out the numbers, any measuring is about as quick as you can walk around a building.

In commercial buildings, I can get wall height, etc. much faster with Disto and since my (residential) helper rarely attends commercial inspections with me, it is easier to handle by myself.

 

[stangtime]

I've had a digital tape that I bought at Home Depot 15 years ago for $25.00 with me on almost every inspection since. I still use an old tape for the exterior but I always shoot interior walls as well to double check things. That digital thing has been dead on despite horrendous abuse (ie. sat on, dropped a bazillion times, rained on, snowed on, left in the car - summer as well as winter, whacked into things...). Every time I've checked it against the tape it's been incredibly close. While a Disto may be a Cadillac I'm fine with more pedestrian accoutrements.

Dan

 

[Lisle]

I bought my D5 during the recent end of the year sale and have been using it continuously in 2011. There were claims made by some here how much faster it is to measure and comments made as to the accuracy. With 5 months under my belt I have some comments about the D5:

1) Time- It does not save me any time measuring an entire house or condo. Some measurements take less time while others take more time. I have experienced absolutely no time savings.

Overall the time savings should be tremendous. Most times it takes a fraction of a second to measure across a cluttered garage or through some thick hedges. I know that sometimes it is hard to find a surface to bounce the laser off of but you'll pick up some tricks as you go which reduce the amount of times that this becomes an issue. The "+" and "-" buttons are invaluable for this.

2) Accuracy- My total living area calculations for condos taken from interior measurements consistently come up well short of tax records. Even on a house today where I measured an interior wall while inside it came to 39' so I added 1', 6" per wall on each side which is accurate, to obtain a total wall measurement of 40'. An exterior measurement of that wall revealed 42', which was in exact agreement with my exterior measurements on the opposite side of the home. I am concerned about the accuracy on my interior measurements.

You are judging your disto, an extremely accurate device, by tax assessment records, which are typically greatly inaccurate. Apply logic.

If you are worried about the accuracy of the device, test it at home against a tape measure. Mine is right on the money and has been for years.

3) Cool factor- doing inspections without a cumbersome wheel is nice. I have the D5 in a holster on my belt, so it is much more compact and seems more professional. I have received many positive comments from homeowners, real estate agents and especially 2 different occupants who were building contractors.

You are worried about the accuracy of a Disto, but have been using a wheel? C'mon dude.

I like the D5 although I would be happier if I felt I could trust interior measurements more and I had hoped for some time savings, but it just isn't there for me. The answer here could be that I am totally lame, which is not out of the realm of possibility, although I would be interested to hear feedback from others to see if my experiences are common or unique.

Do some testing so you feel confident in the device. If it's not deadly accurate, get it fixed. After a short time you too, thinking you left the device back in the office, will have the experience of your heart stopping a little bit followed by the great relief of finding the Disto burried in your breifcase.

 

[Vermonter]

Never bought the time savings claims either and experienced very few myself. Mainly quicker in measuring inside garages, decks, distances from wells to structures/septic tank cap/property lines. Finding exterior targets is the hard part on most homes around here. I usually end up measuring inside and adding the walls....which lowers your accuracy.

 

[rijman]

Overall the time savings should be tremendous. Most times it takes a fraction of a second to measure across a cluttered garage or through some thick hedges. I know that sometimes it is hard to find a surface to bounce the laser off of but you'll pick up some tricks as you go which reduce the amount of times that this becomes an issue. The "+" and "-" buttons are invaluable for this.

This is false in my opinion. Tremendous time savings? I don't see any time savings. Like I said, it saves time on some measurements in the process of measuring a home then takes longer on others. Sometimes there is no side fence to shoot into to get a front or rear wall of the home. Sometimes I walk to the end of the wall and stand my clipboard off the end of the wall at ground level then walk back to shoot the measurement. Other times it takes me a minute to figure out how to get a measurement. If you have to walk a wall twice to place a sticky or clipboard or you have to stop and think about how to get a measurement you are losing time, which is made up on the easier measurements. I don't have someone in the field with me, otherwise using another person would be an easy solution. If someone really is saving a lot of time measuring with a Disto, I have to believe they were very slow measuring with a wheel or tape.

 

[Tom Woolford]

Looks like Disto's are a lot like Obama's Birth Certificate: You either accept the thing or not. Rarely can I not find a suitable target. As long as a wall has windows, I've got a target, and If I have to put up a sticky, it sure doesn't take two trips to do it, as I can see from the first corner there isn't a target. Put up a sticky and pick it up when I do my exterior pics (I do all 4 sides). It just a matter of establishing a routine. There is a measurable time savings for me, and it is substantial. Ever had a tape get stuck on the corner (usually a LONG wall), and take a hike back to free it? I can measure 2 or three walls, AND enter it into the sketch program in the time it takes to free the tape. No going back for me.

 

[rijman]

Looks like Disto's are a lot like Obama's Birth Certificate: You either accept the thing or not. Rarely can I not find a suitable target. As long as a wall has windows, I've got a target, and If I have to put up a sticky, it sure doesn't take two trips to do it, as I can see from the first corner there isn't a target. Put up a sticky and pick it up when I do my exterior pics (I do all 4 sides). It just a matter of establishing a routine. There is a measurable time savings for me, and it is substantial. Ever had a tape get stuck on the corner (usually a LONG wall), and take a hike back to free it? I can measure 2 or three walls, AND enter it into the sketch program in the time it takes to free the tape. No going back for me.

With all due respect, when you shoot to a sticky you placed the sticky then you have to pick it up, that's 2 trips to the same spot, which would not be necessary with a wheel or hand tape. When you have to stop and figure out how to shoot a wall with no targets that takes time. When you are having trouble seeing the red dot on your target or holding the dot on a small target to shoot it that takes time. The overall process of sketching a detached home includes drawing the floorplan and writing down measurements to which there is no time benefit from a laser. The only area you can save time is in the actual process of measuring. On a home and garage that has 14 walls to measure how much quicker can it be to laser versus rolling a wheel when there are a couple of walls with no targets and you have to return to the same spot twice in 2 areas where sticky targets were placed? How can there be tremendous time savings when we are only talking about a short amount of time that is consumed by actual measuring?

I'm not going back to the wheel or hand tape, I'll stick with the D5. However, I think the claims of time savings with the laser are grossly exaggerated.

 

[David Mescon]

For me, personally, I find that I save a fair amount of time with a laser. It's great when dense foliage prevents me from readily walking one or more particular runs. I've never used a sticky, but I will use my clipboard as a target from time to time. Sometimes, after using it as a target, I will move it around a corner and use it again.

Obviously, for condos. and other properties which need to be measured from the interior, the laser saves me a lot of time.