How to Figure a Concrete Pour
Knowing how much concrete you will need to complete a pour well ahead of the pour date will let you create the best schedule to insure you have the crew and the concrete available to get the job done. You can figure a concrete pour using the building plans. You can also figure it from the actual pour site by taking three measurements. Even if your pour is oddly shaped, there is a quick tip to help you figure out how much concrete to order so that you don't have to spend too much time on this part of the project. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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1
Open your building plans to the drawn location of the concrete pour you need to figure. If you do not have plans and are trying to figure the concrete from a formed structure, use a tape measure to get the measurements that would have been on the plans.
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2
Multiply total length of the pour by total width by total thickness---or depth, using a calculator. If the thickness is not listed on your building plan, turn to the plan notes. Look under the heading "Concrete," which will list the common thickness of all walls or slabs for the building. You may need to convert inches to decimals to make it easier to do the calculation.
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3
Divide your total by 27. This will convert the cubic feet you just calculated to cubic yards. Concrete is ordered by the cubic yard.
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4
Multiply the total you found in step 3 by 1.05. This total will give you the cubic yardage of concrete you will need for your pour, plus 5 percent overage of concrete to cover any spillage or small differences in depth in the pour, which is common with sand-bottomed pours.
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Tips & Warnings
If your pour is oddly shaped or, has areas with different depths, separate the pour into different sections, and figure out each one separately. Add the totals together to get the overall amount needed.
Don't try to save money by not adding in the 5 percent overage. Should you run short on concrete and have to wait to get more, you risk running up extra labor costs in preparing control joints so your concrete pour will pass inspection. Some concrete designs won't allow you to "break" the pour. To break a pour is to pour the concrete on two different days in one place.
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- Photo Credit concrete image by charles taylor from Fotolia.com
