Concrete & Masonry

Slabs, footings, blocks, mortar and grout.

• Brick calculator — How many bricks and bags of mortar for a wall. Worked from your brick size and joint thickness, because 6.75 per sq ft is only true for modular brick.
• Concrete block calculator — How many concrete blocks and bags of mortar for a wall. Coverage is worked out from the real 15-5/8 in block plus your joint width, not a rule of thumb.
• Concrete driveway calculator — Cubic yards, bags and control joints for a concrete driveway. Joint spacing and saw depth come from ACI 302.1R, not from a rule of thumb.
• Concrete footing calculator — Cubic yards, bags and rebar for strip footings, pads and round deck piers. The rebar count adds the code lap splice at every joint, not just the run.
• Concrete calculator for post holes — How many bags of concrete per fence post, with the post itself subtracted from the hole. Works for 4x4, 6x6 and metal posts, general or fast-setting mix.
• Concrete sealer calculator — How much concrete sealer you need, from published data-sheet coverage. Texture and porosity are asked separately, because the sheets say both decide the rate.
• Concrete slab calculator — Work out the cubic yards, bags of concrete mix and total weight for a slab. Enter length, width and thickness, and see whether bagged mix or ready-mix is cheaper.
• Concrete stairs calculator — Concrete for stairs and steps, worked as a stack of steps rather than a box. Treating a flight as one box of the total rise by the total run counts the air above every step, and doubles the concrete exactly.
• Mortar calculator — How many bags of mortar for block or brick — and which bag. Preblended mortar mix lays 13 blocks; masonry cement plus sand lays 46. Both are published.
• Rebar calculator — How much rebar for a slab or footing grid: bar counts, code lap splices, sticks to buy and the weight. Counts two short bars out of one 20 ft stick.