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Concrete calculators for contractors
Eight of them, all free, all in cubic yards, feet and inches. Each one carries the thing the ad-farm calculators leave out — the short-load fee, the compaction gap, the cut waste your pattern actually produces, the code limit an inspector measures — and each one turns into a priced quote in one tap when you want it to.
Concrete YardageCubic yards, waste and how many ready-mix trucks — plus the short-load fee nobody warns you about.The short-load feeGravel BaseTons to order, loose against compacted, so you are not a fifth short with the plate on site.Loose against compactedRebar SpacingBar count, linear feet, ties and chairs — with the wire mesh alternative costed beside it.Mesh sheets do not cover what the tag saysPaverPaver count with cut waste set by your laying pattern, bedding sand and polymeric bags.Pattern decides the wasteRetaining Wall BlockBlock and cap counts, base stone, and the 4 ft line where you need an engineer.Four feet is where it stops being a landscaping jobFooting ConcreteFooting yardage rolled into the slab total, because you are ordering one truck.Trench walls are not formsConcrete StepsYards for a flight of cast steps — or the bag count, because a stoop is almost always a short load.A stoop is almost always a short loadSonotube & Column ConcreteConcrete per pier and for the whole deck, with the footing bell and the frost line accounted for.The tube that floats, and the one that heaves
Why these and not the first result
- US customary throughout — cubic yards, feet, inches, tons, ready-mix loads. No unit toggle to get wrong.
- Waste is a number you set, not one we assume: 8% on a tight slab, 20% compaction on base stone, cut waste by paving pattern.
- The fees that land after you have quoted are named on the page — short load, standby, weekend delivery.
- The code limits are stated where they bite: riser height, tread depth, the 4 ft wall line, the frost depth a pier has to reach.
- Every answer is in the HTML before any JavaScript runs, so it works on one bar at a job site.
- One tap turns the quantities into a priced quote your client accepts from their phone. Your first one is free.
Reading, when the number is not the whole question
- What concrete actually costsReady-mix is quoted per cubic yard, but the number on your invoice is rarely the number on the price list. Here is what moves it, and what catches people out.
- How to quote a concrete jobMost quotes are lost on presentation, not price. Here is the order to work in, and the arithmetic mistake that quietly costs contractors money on every job.
- Concrete estimate templateEvery template you can download is the same blank table. The useful part is knowing what goes in the rows — here it is, and here is the version that fills itself in.
Put any of them on your own site
Every calculator here can be embedded on another website free — a supplier’s resources page, a builder’s blog, a forum answer. The snippet is at the bottom of each calculator page.