Knowing no of bricks in 1 cft wall and calculating quantity of bricks in a wall is very important for estimation engineers and in quantity surveying. Brick masonry is one of the most common type of masonry used in walls and columns. Bricks are made easily with clay which is readily available in local areas. That is the reason why 75% of buildings in India and Pakistan including other developing countries of Asia are of brick masonry.
Calculation of quantity of bricks is one of the basic concepts in estimation; so you must read below very carefully and if you can’t understand anything please comment below and I would help you out.
Before going to some calculation stuff, it would be helpful for you if you could get some idea on different shapes of bricks.
The procedure I am going to explain for calculating the number of bricks in 1 cft wall, is very simple and straight forward. I have tried to make it as simple and basic for you. In the end I have shared an excel spread sheet (.xls) for the quantity of bricks estimation. You can download that for free and use it whenever you need.
Beside that I will be making an online calculator that would help you to estimate no of bricks in seconds without any offline download.
Basics of brick masonry estimation
So basically, you must first know about the standard size of brick produced in your hometown. Mostly the bricks are produced in kilns and the sizes of molds used are actually little less than what we generally use in estimation. So in order to avoid any confusion; there are some standard sizes of bricks and I recommend you to use the same in your estimate.
In Asia and subcontinent, the standard size of brick is 9” x 4.5” x 3” (length x width x height). In MKS system of units it would be 200 x 100 x 100 mm. This specified volume of brick includes the mortar that is used on all the faces of brick in any brick bond.
[su_box title=”Do you know?”]It is important here to note that 10% of the bricks volume is occupied by mortar i.e. 10 mm thickness of mortar can be considered.[/su_box]
[su_box title=”Do you know?”]In addition to that 5% of brick wastage must be added in the calculated brick volume. This wastage is mostly unavoidable as you need brick bats for creating a consistent brick bond i.e. English bond or Flemish bond.[/su_box]
In America and some European countries, the size of brick is changed like as per one reference it is 7.5-inch x 3.5-inch x 3.5-inch. But whatever is the standard size of brick the procedure of calculation remains the same.
Quantity of Bricks in 1 cft wall
So keeping standard dimensions of 9” x 4.5” x 3”
Or in feet the volume of one brick would be = 0.75 x 0.375 x 0.25 cft = 0.0703125 cft
So the number of bricks required for 1 cft wall would be
Number of bricks for 1 cft wall = 1 / 0.070 = 14.285 numbers.
So for 1 cft brick wall 14.285 number of bricks are required.
But this number of bricks includes 10% of mortar space so we need to subtract 10% space that would be occupied by mortar.
10% of 14.285 = (10/100) x 14.285 = 1.4285
So 14.285 bricks – 10% = 14.285 – 1.4285 = 12.8565
But as stated above 5% of wastage must also be included in the estimate so we can say ;
12.8565+ 5% of 12.8565 = 12.8565 + (0.05 x 12.8565) = 13.499325 number of bricks.
So we can conclude that for 1 cft brick wall 13.499325 bricks are required.
So we can make here a thumb rule for estimation that for 100 cft of brick masonry wall we would be in need of 1350 number of bricks.
Quantity of Bricks in a Wall
So now you know the thumb rule; and it’s a good idea to work on a practical example. In a building drawing we need a floor plan from where we can get the thickness of the wall and the length of the wall. The height of the wall can be taken from the section or from the elevation.
So when you have the volume of the wall in cft you can easily calculate the required number of bricks for constructing that wall.
I have taken a sample plan of a house of size 31 ‘ x 26’ – 3” as shown in the figure below. I would only be calculating the quantity of bricks for the back wall of drawing room highlighted.
The length of the wall is 14’ and keeping in view the height of 10’ while the thickness of wall is 9”.
So the volume of wall = 14 ‘ x 10’ x 0.75’ = 105 cft
As we know that for 100 cft the bricks required are 1350
So for 105 cft the quantity of bricks required would be
= (1350 /100 ) x 105 = 1418 bricks.
So for the back wall of drawing room we would require 1418 number of bricks.
Excel Sheet for Brick Work Calculation
I have recently prepared an excel spread sheet for calculation of brick work for a wall. It is completely free you can download any time by clicking the link below.
[su_document url=”https://definecivil.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/brickwork.xlsx” width=”440″ height=”440″]
[su_button url=”Download the Book” target=”blank” style=”bubbles” size=”7″ icon=”icon: arrow-down”]Download the Excel Spread sheet[/su_button]
That’s all about our first estimation relevant post. If you have liked this methodology please share it and if you have any doubt or if you think we have made a mistake please don’t forget to comment below.
