Brick Calculator for a Wall
Enter the wall size and get the number of bricks, cement bags and sand. Modular or traditional bricks, 4 inch or 9 inch wall, with wastage.
How the brick calculation is done
The calculator first works out the volume of brickwork: wall length x height x thickness, after deducting doors and windows. A modular brick is 190 x 90 x 90 mm; with a 10 mm mortar joint on three faces it occupies 200 x 100 x 100 mm, which is 0.002 cu m. So one cubic metre of brickwork needs about 500 modular bricks before wastage. Traditional 230 x 110 x 75 mm bricks come to about 400 per cubic metre.
Mortar is the brickwork volume minus the volume of the bricks themselves. That wet volume is multiplied by 1.33 to get the dry volume of cement and sand, and 15% is added for mortar wastage. For a 1:6 mix, one part in seven is cement and six parts are sand. Cement is converted to 50 kg bags at 0.0347 cu m per bag.
Worked example (default inputs)
A 10 ft x 10 ft wall, 9 inch thick, modular bricks, 5% wastage, 1:6 mortar. Brickwork volume is 3.048 x 3.048 x 0.2286 = 2.124 cu m. Bricks: 2.124 / 0.002 = 1,062, plus 5% = 1,115 bricks. Wet mortar is 2.124 minus 1,062 x 0.001539 = 0.49 cu m; dry mortar with wastage is 0.75 cu m, which needs about 0.107 cu m of cement (4 bags, rounded up) and 0.64 cu m of sand (about 23 cft).
How many bricks in 1 sq ft of 9 inch wall?
About 10 to 11 modular bricks per sq ft for a 9 inch wall, and 5 to 6 for a 4 inch wall, including 5% wastage. The exact figure depends on brick size and joint thickness.
Which mortar ratio should I use?
1:6 is common for 9 inch load-bearing walls in houses; 1:4 is used for 4 inch partition walls and in wet areas because the thin wall needs a stronger mortar. Follow the drawing or the engineer’s note if there is one.
Why is my site using more bricks than the calculator says?
Breakage in unloading, cutting at corners and openings, and thicker joints than 10 mm all add up. Compare the calculator’s number with the bricks actually received and consumed per wall; a gap above 8 to 10% usually means joints are too thick or bricks are being broken in handling.
The quantity you get here is the quantity to indent. The same material can be requested, received and tracked wall by wall in the Trackovo app, so the estimate and the actual consumption sit side by side: track material and labour in Trackovo. Trackovo is a construction site management app with material, labour attendance, DPR and payments; it comes with a 14-day free trial.