During the construction of any type of premises, preliminary calculations of all materials used must be carried out. This must be done at the design stage to avoid cost overruns or shortages of raw materials during the work. For example, the calculation of brickwork can be carried out even before laying the foundation, knowing the dimensions of the walls being built according to the project. At the same time, it’s good to take into account several important points that we will consider in our article.
Types of brick laying
In modern building construction, various methods of erecting walls from this material are used, which can be classified in this way:
- Laying a brick in the form of 2 longitudinal lines with gaps that are “pulled together” by transverse elements and filled with gravel or expanded clay concrete. The walls are durable and have increased heat and noise insulation. However, the labor and material costs are high compared to another method.
- Plain solid masonry. In this case, the calculation of brickwork is carried out for walls made in half the width of the brick, in one element and so on. For standard material, the thickness of the partition is taken respectively 12 cm, 25 cm, 38 cm, 51 cm and 64 cm.
Highlights
The calculation of brickwork is carried out taking into account the following values:
- length, height and width of the wall;
- total area of openings (doors and windows).
The calculation also takes into account the height of the seam. As a rule, a value of 10 mm is taken for this, at which a higher-quality brickwork is obtained. Calculation of the brick in this case can be performed, knowing how much raw material falls on one cubic meter. This calculation can be carried out on special calculator programs that are presented on some web resources. Or the same calculations can be done independently using the information below.
Calculation of the required amount of raw materials
The calculation of brickwork can be performed according to the following procedure:
- Determine the wall thickness of the future structure in the project. For regions of the middle band where sharp temperature changes are observed, it is better to take a value equal to 51 cm or 64 cm.
- Calculate the area of the walls. For this, dimensions such as length, width and height of these parts of the building are needed (they can be found in the project). These values need to be multiplied, and from the result obtained, subtract the area of windows and doorways.
- The calculation of the volume of masonry is carried out in accordance with the amount of raw materials in 1 m 3 . This value varies depending on the size of the brick and the method of laying the material. Values can be found in the table below.
- The number of bricks in one cubic meter must be multiplied by the area of the walls, so we get the total amount of necessary raw materials.
| The number of bricks per 1 m 3 (pcs.) | Type of masonry |
| in half a brick | in one brick | one and a half | in two bricks | two and a half |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| taking into account the height of the seam | 61 | 45 | thirty | 128 | 95 | 60 | 189 | 140 | 90 | 256 | 190 | 120 | 317 | 235 | 150 |
| excluding | 51 | 39 | 26 | 102 | 78 | 52 | 153 | 117 | 78 | 204 | 156 | 104 | 255 | 195 | 130 |
It is important to consider that it is better to purchase materials with a margin, since in practice various unforeseen situations occur. Therefore, from the result found, it is necessary to calculate 5% and add this value to the total amount. Thus, it is possible to cover the costs of defective raw materials and “battle”.