Today, I wanted to figure out how many bricks I needed for a wall I’m building in my backyard. I could just guess, but I figured there had to be a better way. So, I did a little digging and found a simple way to calculate the brick area.
First, I measured the wall. I got out my trusty tape measure and jotted down the length and height of the area where the wall was going. It’s important to use the same units for everything – I used feet.
Next, I measured a single brick. Again, I measured the length and height. My bricks were pretty standard, so this was easy.
Then came the fun part – the math! I multiplied the length and height of the wall to get the total wall area. Easy peasy.
After that, I did the same thing for the brick: multiplied the brick’s length and height to find its area.
Now, to figure out how many bricks I needed, I divided the total wall area by the single brick area. Boom! That gave me a pretty good estimate of the number of bricks.
But wait, there’s more! I knew I needed to account for the mortar joints between the bricks. A common rule of thumb is to add about 3/8 of an inch to both the length and height of the brick when doing your calculations to account for that mortar.
So before dividing,I adjust my single brick area by doing the flowing：
The brick and mortar
- Brick Length + 0.375 = New Brick Length
- Brick Height + 0.375 = New Brick Height
Calculated my ‘New Brick Height’ multiple my ‘New Brick Length’,then got my adjust single brick area.
Finally, I divided the total wall area by the adjust single brick area.
I also learned that it’s always a good idea to add a little extra (like 5-10%) for waste, breakage, or cuts. You don’t want to be caught short!
So, that’s how I tackled the brick area calculation. It wasn’t too bad, and now I have a much better idea of how many bricks to order. Hope this helps someone else out there with their bricklaying projects!
