Materials · quantities · cost
How much, what to buy, what it costs.
26 jobs priced and 13 calculators for the materials a building job actually consumes. Each one ends in a shopping list you can take to the yard, priced for where you live.
Every figure links to the document it was read from. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
A 20 × 12 ft patio, 4 in thick
3.25 yd³
- Raw volume
- 2.96 yd³
- Waste on a prepared base
- 5%
- Rounded to the quarter yard
- 3.25 yd³
- Or, in 80 lb bags
- 140 bags
- #3 rebar at 18 in, both ways
- 320 ft
- Control joints, max 10 ft apart
- 24 ft to cut
Worked example. The rebar and the joints are the two lines most calculators leave out — and the two that decide whether the slab cracks.
Costs
What the job costs
26 jobs priced from your own measurements instead of a national average. Material separated from labour, and only the labour moves with where you live.
- Roof replacementroof replacement cost
- Windowswindow replacement cost
- Central air conditioningcentral air conditioner installation cost
- Carpetcarpet installation cost
- Water heatercost to replace water heater
- Tankless water heatercost of on demand water heater
- Hardwoodhardwood flooring installation cost
- Fencefence installation cost
- Flooringfloor installation cost
Calculators
How much material it takes
13 calculators for what people measure before they price. Each ends in bags, sheets, boxes or tons — the sizes the material is actually sold in.
- Concreteconcrete calculator
- Square footagesquare footage calculator
- Concrete slabconcrete slab calculator
- Paintpaint calculator
- Gravelgravel calculator
- Deckdeck calculator
- Asphaltasphalt calculator
- Stairsstair calculator
- BTU / HVAC sizingbtu calculator
Before you choose: 4 comparisons
Concrete or asphalt, deck or patio, carpet or hardwood. Both figures come from the engines that price each one, on the same job — so the answer is a number, not a list of pros and cons.
See the comparisonsThe tables behind the figures
Bag yields, aggregate weights, pitch multipliers, the regional labour index. Every number a calculator uses is published on its own page, dated and free to cite.
Reference dataNew — takeoff reader
Describe the job. Get the takeoff.
Write it the way you would say it out loud — “20 by 12 patio, 4 inches, plus six 12-inch piers three feet deep” — and get every quantity, a scaled sketch and a price.
The reader only turns your words into geometry. Every number after that comes from the same engines behind each calculator here, so the model has no way to invent one. It shows you what it understood, and lists everything it had to assume.
What comes back
- Patio slab3.25 yd³ ready-mix · 320 ft of #3 rebar · 24 ft of joints to cut
- Pergola piers26 × 80 lb bags, 10% trench waste
- Drawn to scaleBoth items, dimensioned, joints and rebar grid overlaid
- Assumed, not readEvery inferred value listed so you can disagree with it
Why this is not another calculator site
Real products, not abstract volume
Nobody buys 2.7 cubic yards. You buy 80 lb bags, 4 × 8 sheets, boxes with a stated coverage. Every result converts to what is actually on the shelf, using the yield the manufacturer prints on the packaging.
Waste you can see and argue with
The allowance changes with the material and the layout — diagonal tile is not straight tile, and a hallway is not an open room. The percentage is shown, the reasoning is printed beside it, and you can override it.
Regional pricing done honestly
A bag of mix does not cost eleven per cent more in California. The hour to place it does. We separate material from labour and only regionalise the labour, using published federal price parities.
The parts other calculators skip
Rebar spacing. Control joint layout. Short-load fees. Frost depth for a post. The things that decide whether the job holds up, and that almost nobody bothers to compute.
Everything here is checkable
Bag yields come from the manufacturer’s data sheet. Jointing follows ACI guidance. The regional adjustment is a published federal dataset, named and dated. When a number changes it goes in the changelog; when we get one wrong it goes in corrections.
Edited by
Pablo Ruiz Quintero
Every page carries a review date and a byline. We do not sell materials, refer contractors, or take a cut of a quote.