A concrete estimator is an online calculator that builders and workmen use to make an assumption about the quantity of concrete material they will need for a job. These can be found all over the internet, though some of the better brands and more accurate versions have to be bought from retailers and are not available for free. These are probably more recommendable for accuracy, but may not be better on your budget when you can still get good versions for free. Builders need to use this device for their profession for many reasons, all of which revolve proper use of resources, time and energy.
If they know how much concrete they need before they go to the site, they save fuel costs and precious energy by not carrying excess concrete that they don’t even need for the project! It saves wasted time and wasted resources.
If builders bring too much concrete to a site, chances are that by the time they really do need that excess concrete, it will be useless from the many factors it has withstood, not the least of which being time. This is then a waste of money because that concrete will be wasted and the builders would then have to go out and purchase more concrete. Also, some people who go by the ‘waste not-want not’ approach may use the extra concrete anyways. This excess concrete would be only a useless surplus to the concrete on the site that was really needed. This also could cause problems with the construction later on, so it is advised to just avoid having a surplus of concrete to begin with.
It takes time to actually make and transport and use concrete. If you have far too much of it, then you’ve wasted time making it when the time could have been better spent working with the amount you actually needed in the first place. When you know how much concrete you need from the start, it saves so much time in comparison to what you would waste if you didn’t have one.
All the above are concerns if you end up with left over concrete, but there is a possibility that you won’t have enough. That would waste an incredible amount of valuable work hours while the contractors go and get more concrete needed to actually finish the construction. Also, if you up and leave in the middle of a job, you will lose credibility with whoever hired you. If you want to be recommended by the consumer to friends and family, then you don’t want to run out of materials.
Concrete Estimator Types
Concrete Bag Estimator
Concrete estimators tell you how much concrete you need for a certain amount of work. Say you need to use concrete to brick a wall. You could use a concrete estimator to figure out how much concrete you need for one block of such a size and weight and density and then find out how many blocks you need.
This estimator also helps with finding out how many bags of concrete you need. All bags of concrete should say how much is contained, in either cubic meters or centimeters. If you know how many cubic centimeters or meters you need to brick your wall and how many are in a bag, then you can easily know how many bags of concrete you’ll need. This saves you money and the hassle of lugging around extra bags you don’t need.
There are also calculators that tell you straight off how many bags you will need, but it might be better to work them out yourself because you might find that the bags they use as guidelines are different from the ones you buy, which could prove a costly difference indeed; a surplus or deficit in your concrete based on their bag measurements wouldn’t be good at all. Some estimators, though, will say that the bag is a standard number of cubic measurements and you will be able to use that and save all the adding hassle of the other one.
Concrete Cost Estimator
Sometimes there are set costs per kilogram or unit of weight for concrete, which allows you to estimate the cost of your materials also. This is what you use a concrete cost estimator for.
This is handy for budgeting your concrete. You may not need all your concrete straight away and you might not be able to afford it all at once anyway. With this and the knowledge of how much it will cost you, you will know roughly what you can afford and what you need before ever purchasing your materials.
You would still need to know how much concrete you needed, so you could find out how much it would cost, so you would still need to use a normal estimator or a bag estimator first. You can also see how much it will cost you per bag on these cost calculators.
Concrete Project Estimator
This device helps you estimate the cost of your whole concrete project. You just need to know the size of the area the concrete is for and your rough estimates how much your concrete costs and your bricks costs and your foundation costs beforehand. This is handy for people who are hiring builders for new buildings or even house extensions.
This is the estimator many building companies use to estimate the cost of their entire job so they know how much to charge their consumers. This is a good idea, because if you overcharge people they will get insulted and if you undercharge then you lose money.
With this one, you not only know how much your concrete costs, but how much everything costs. Then you can really get your finances sorted.
Concrete estimator brands
There are so many sites that offer concrete estimators that some of them have to be useful for you. And the best part is that they’re all free.
Take Concrete.com for instance. This site gives you very easy directions on how to estimate concrete. All you need is basic measurements and you’re good to go.
Another example would be Engineers Edge. These also have very easy instructions and are still free and incredibly accurate to use.
You can buy some disks with concrete estimators on them that claim to be more accurate than the ones you can get for free, but really how much better can they be than the ones you can get so easily?
So there you have it- there are so many different uses and reasons to use concrete estimators in building work. So if you’re a builder and you haven’t used one of these yet, it’s never too late to start now.