HOW TO KNOW NUMBER OF CEMENT BAGS THAT CAN BUILD YOUR HOUSE

Table of Contents

WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW YOUR CEMENT COST IN THE BUILDING PROJECT

You are here probably because you want to start a building project and would want to know the number of bags of cement you would use.

Or, you are here because you are having problem of over-spending in number of cement bags so far on your ongoing building project and wants to know the actual number of cement you suppose to use in that project just to ascertain if your contractor is cheating on you.

Whichever one be the case, this post will tackle it by providing details and analytic approach of how you can know and estimate number of cement bags for your building projects.

THE NEED FOR PROPER CALCULATION

Saving money for building is not an easy task or investing your regular cash inflow to building project as well. One need to be confident of the success of the project before embarking on it in order to avoid uncompleted building projects.

For that reason, proper calculations have to be made and clear view of the expected amount of money must be obtained. This will not only save you the stress of unnecessary expensive and waste and possible uncompleted project, it will also reduce level of doubts and possible misunderstanding with your contractor.

A lot of things are involve in building project, you need the money, you need the time to visit and follow-up on the project, you need good contractor, you need trusted suppliers of building needs, and the whole process involves physical and mental stress.

A well-detailed early calculations will go a long way to save you some of the stress when everything gets busy. That is the reason why you need this post and other posts on this EngineeringAll.Com blog.

HOW TO CALCULATE THE NUMBER OF CEMENT BAGS

To calculate the total number of cement bag, we need to first of all calculate number of blocks by reading the previous post published few days ago on calculating the number of blocks.

For instance, if you are the person molding your own block on the building site, a bag of cement will give about 35 – 40 blocks (6inch solid blocks), or 35-40 blocks (8inch hollow blocks), the number of blocks you mold in this range of 30blocks to 40blocks will determine the quality of the block.

When I say the quality of the block I mean the strength based on the cement and sharp sand mixing ratio and the compacting force used doing the cement making.

In terms of making mortar for mason one bags of cement mortar (soft mixture of sharp sand and cement used in laying blocks) can lay up to 100 solid blocks (6inch) or 100 hollow blocks (8inch). The bigger the size of the block the lesser the number.

However, you can still lay more number of block with a bag of cement mortar or lesser number of blocks with a bag of cement mortar, everything depends on the quality of house you intend to build.

Mortar made with high concentration of cement tends to hold the blocks stronger and helps to prevent easy cracking of building walls later.

So carefully discuss with a builder near you to ascertain the appropriate number of blocks a cement bag mortar can lay for you by specifying the type of block you are using for the building.

Calculating for the Blocks and Its Laying

Assuming the overall number of blocks for your building is 3000 blocks (you can know the overall number of blocks for your build by reading the previous post on ‘’ how many blocks can build a house’’) from the number of blocks you obtained from that post replace it with the example of 3000 blocks that I am using here.

Please remember that I am assuming you are going to mold the blocks yourself rather than buying from the block industry but if you will be buying from the block industry you can remove the aspect of molding blocks from the list of expenses here.

Assuming you need 3000 blocks for your building project, a bag of cement produces 35 blocks for you and a bag of cement will lay each 100 blocks for you. This simply means that you need 86 bags of cement to mold the 3000 blocks (3000/35 = 85.7) and you equally need 30 bags of cement to make mortar that will lay all the blocks (3000/100=30).

Therefore, you need a total of 116 bags of cement for the blocks and its laying. But if you are buying the blocks from block industry your expected number of cement bags will be for the laying of the blocks which is 30 bags of cement and for the casting works in the house.

Calculating For The Number Of Cement Bags In Casting Works

The next calculation is the number of cement bags for all the casting works on the building. Your building must have casting works on it. The lintels located above your window level, door levels, balcony, and even your gate pillars, they are need to be casted with a concrete.

Besides, some building may require all-round lintel casting just to chain it together especially if the building has been abandoned in uncompleted state for years and you are just coming back to complete it. Some foundations also requires casting with concrete depending on the soil texture and the weight of the building you intends to build like the duplex foundation.

A foundation for bungalow in a good soil texture may not require casting but those of duplex and heavier structures like that will always require casting on the foundation level. Knowing the number of cement bags for these casting works will help you to round up your calculation.

In terms of making concrete and casting, consider it that your two gate pillars will consume four bags of cement. Every lintel in three windows will consume 1 bag of cement, two doors lintel will take 1 bag of cement, then use this ratio to calculate any other casting works in your building design to get the overall number of cement bags for the casting works and add it to the number you obtained for the block works.

CONCLUSION

I believe by now you have already understood how to calculate the number of cement bags to it approximate figure as I have detailed on this post. However, if there is any area you do not understand in this post please feel free to alert me through the comment section.