The very first thing a home owner thinks about is how much the new building will cost, whether there will be enough savings to complete the plan or whether everything will have to be put off until better times.

There are, indeed, a lot of fears here, and even more fears that are not confirmed by anything. You can calculate the budget for building a house in advance, slowly and very thoroughly.

In this case, everything will be taken into account. Unless it will be impossible to count an accidental lightning strike on a construction site or another force majeure event. Although, with rational planning, even such things can be foreseen in advance and should not cause confusion in the work on the construction site. We will try to give the answer to how to simply and correctly calculate the price of implementing a planned house project in our publication.

House price calculation

The easiest way to calculate the price of a future home is to, having in hand a project or at least a sketch of the future structure, contact the specialists of the construction company InnovaStroy. Specialists will offer you a free consultation on questions regarding building a house. The price of the house is calculated by the company's specialists based on your needs and capabilities. The calculation of the project itself and the design of the house can also be carried out by the company’s specialists.

You can take a different route - look at the company’s website for ready-made house designs and ask for current prices according to finished house projects In any case, it is better to directly contact a specialist who can clearly answer the question that concerns you. In particular, he can expertly calculate how much design and construction, decoration, home design or geological surveys will cost. If you want to review these calculations and conduct your own analysis of potential construction costs, then listen to our advice.

The calculator is great, but... Nowadays it is quite fashionable to calculate the cost of construction using an online construction calculator. Sometimes such systems are well designed graphically and present the essence of the issue in detail. However, all these are too rough calculations that have a large level of error, sometimes reaching 50% or more. The reason is obvious - construction calculations cannot be carried out according to general ideas and by substituting visually suitable construction elements into the general estimate. This is too rough a calculation. Therefore, such calculators, despite their apparent professionalism, very often sin with calculations that are too approximate and far from reality.

There is one advantage in these methods of finding out the price of a future home - you can at least see, as they say, the order of the numbers. But nothing more, because in addition to the price of building materials, you also need to find out the cost of their delivery, loading and unloading, installation, and post-installation processing. The cost of transport services alone can range from 5% to 20%. There are many other factors that are often not taken into account in such calculations. Therefore, the longest and most difficult, but perhaps the most correct option is still working with a finished project. Part of any complete construction project for a house is its estimate, which details the price of all materials, as well as the cost of services for their installation and putting the house into operation. Let's take a closer look at how to correctly calculate the cost of construction work.

Foundation price

One of the most expensive jobs in building a house is building the foundation. The cost of installing it depends on the following factors:

climatic conditions of the area;
house structure - frame, solid brick or aerated concrete blocks;
soil type, soil properties;
selected type of foundation.

When you have this data in your hands, then you can accurately calculate the amount of materials needed for construction and their range. Here are a few indicators that will give you a general idea of how much materials you need to spend on foundation work:

with a brick foundation wall thickness of 510 mm, the mass of the wall will be 920 kilograms;
if it is a hollow brick with a wall thickness of 380 mm, then the weight of the wall will be 450 kg;
lightweight concrete panels with a thickness of 250 to 400 mm will weigh 230-550 kg.

On average, both work and materials for building a foundation of various options will cost 20-30% of the cost of building a house, if you do not take into account the internal design in the cost of the house. You can reduce the cost of building a foundation by arranging a foundation on piles. However, a lightweight pile foundation must be for a small house, otherwise you will need to use special equipment. Meanwhile, a pile foundation may be cheaper due to the fact that there is no need to remove a lot of soil, mix and pour concrete formwork, or build a brick foundation wall. Taking into account such a reduction in the cost of a house project, the price of foundation work may even reach minus 40-50%.

If you are building a regular concrete strip foundation, then you should take into account that for 1 cubic meter of masonry of such a foundation more than 1 cubic meter of rubble stone or brick will be spent. meters, and cement mortar - 0.4 cubic meters. meters. The construction of pillar foundations for lighter houses with a simple design or built from light wall materials will require a consumption rate of stone or brick at the level of 1-1.2 cubic meters. m per 1 cubic. m of masonry. In this case, no more than 0.27 cubic meters of cement-lime mortar is needed. m. Separately, you should take into account the costs of installing the base and waterproofing.

Walls are an important part of the house

Calculating the price of construction cannot do without calculating the cost of erecting walls. Depending on the materials that can be used in construction - wood, brick, concrete - the price of construction also changes.

There are several practical examples of calculating the price of wall construction:

a house made of profiled timber should be designed so that for one degree of winter cold there is 0.8 cm of timber;
if the house is built from solid brick, then with an average air temperature in winter not lower than minus 30 degrees Celsius, the wall thickness should be at least 65 cm;
the construction of walls from different materials requires different calculation data, therefore, when calculating wall structures, the height and length of the elements that make up the wall should be taken into account.

There are norms for the consumption of bricks during the construction of walls, for example, when laying a wall with a thickness of 250 mm. If you take 1 cubic meter of masonry into account, then it will require at least 400 solid ceramic bricks, 0.2 cubic meters. m of mortar. Based on these standards, it is possible to calculate the need for brick and cement, sand, and other components of masonry.

How much does a roof structure cost?

Calculation of the necessary building materials for the roof begins with the exact figure of the roof slope. It can range from 5 to 60 degrees. Depending on this, the consumption of building materials will be normalized.

For this, a simple formula is used - half the span width of the house is multiplied by the relative value. For example, with a slope of 25 degrees and a house width of 8 m, the calculation will be as follows: 4 m multiplied by 0.47 = 1.88 m - by this height (1.88 m) the rafters must rise. When constructing a roof, the overhang of the rafters is usually made, which is from 0.5 m. Roofing materials are taken into account by estimating the roof area. Each material has its own margin of accuracy and joining. For slate roofing it is small, but the need to calculate the length of each element should be taken into account.

If the length of the roof or its width turns out to be greater than required, you will have to cut off half or most of the slate slab and thus the consumption of this roofing material will increase regardless of the roof area. The situation is similar with metal profile structures for roofing work. It is easier to calculate tiled roofs or roofs made of soft tiles and other materials that can be cut without sections and supplied for construction. However, it should also be taken into account that soft roofing materials can be supplied in roll bags of a certain length, which may also entail additional costs compared to the calculated ones.

Engineering and Design

After the “box” is constructed, construction of utilities should begin. Often, interior decoration of walls and rooms is also done together with them.

Typically, interior, engineering and finishing works include:

sewerage and water supply;
construction of a heating system, including installation of a “warm floor” system;
wiring of electrical networks, installation of engineering electrical appliances. This could be, for example, split air conditioning and ventilation systems;
construction of any partitions or design objects
installation of internal fences, fastenings, plastering and interior decoration, including draperies, stretching, wallpapering.

Landscape design elements should also be included in design decisions. Is it possible or not to count all the necessary nails, screws, sockets and other little things? In principle it is possible, however, this is hardly the developer’s primary task. There is a simple recommendation on how to check the need to install one or another electrical system or plumbing facility.

Check the data with the project, calculate the average number of the same sockets or taps. Take into account only large components, since they will make up the largest part of the construction cost. To the estimate for all these materials, you can safely add 50% of their cost, and in some cases, for example, when installing a specific bathtub or equipping an indoor pool with a self-cleaning system, then even 100%. This will be a rough, but quite close to reality, estimated cost amount construction work.

It should be noted that the cost of unique work, for example the construction of a decorative fountain, can be significantly more expensive than traditional bricklaying, although in fact they are the same thing. The fact is that such specific types of work are usually undertaken by narrow specialists, therefore the price of such work may be higher and this is justified.

Three myths of calculating construction costs

There are some important tips that will help you avoid unnecessary risks when calculating the cost of building a house.

To reduce the cost of construction as much as possible, since savings or cash are not always in the right amount, some developers make three mistakes that can, instead of saving money, cost them significant unforeseen expenses. These are the typical mistakes:

Hiring unprofessional builders who can reduce the cost estimate by up to 50-60%. As it turns out later, laying certain building materials requires experience, and unprofessional pouring of the foundation or the beginning of laying walls will lead to more disastrous consequences - deformation of walls or ceilings, poor foundation stability. In addition, the consumption of building materials will be much higher, since non-professionals simply do not know how to lay mortar correctly and on time, rationally lay bricks or do roofing work. There are especially many questions regarding internal and engineering work. As a result, all actions aimed at supposed “savings” will result in an even larger budget.
The price of work without a project or a detailed design is cheaper, and construction work without an estimate, which can “save” 10-15% of the construction cost, is better than the full development of project documentation.

We have already explained what unprofessional work with building materials can result in. Approximately the same will happen when you do not have complete documentation on hand. The finished house project with all its necessary components also includes detailed plans, including utility lines, placement of certain devices and components. The estimate can be clarified and drawn up specifically for the house, for certain materials and models of windows, walls, drywall, nails, screws, taps and similar construction details.

On the one hand, this may seem like unnecessary and overwhelming detail, and you really may not require such overly accurate calculations. On the other hand, if you are building a large house, then such details can ultimately make up a significant part of the construction budget. In any case, the presence of estimate documentation disciplines both the developer and the builder, since there is a document and specific technical instructions for construction.

You can find out the price of building a house from your friends and use it as a guide when making decisions.

This is not entirely the right decision. If the start of construction of a house follows all the rules and in this case:

geodetic work is carried out;
the house project is drawn up by a competent professional designer;
all conditions for the placement of the house, the need or, conversely, the absence of the need to erect a heavy, powerful foundation, the construction of a certain type of walls or roof, are established based on the results of research;
The calculation of materials is done according to standards, and not by “eyeball”, then the results of calculating the construction price may differ significantly.

The price of a house is individual, just like a person’s character. In one area with a difference of hundreds of meters, the composition of the soil may change. The architectural and planning solution may also change. The simplest thing that can significantly increase or decrease the cost of a house is the presence or absence of utilities, including electricity and water. Therefore, assessing the price of a building based on friendly advice may turn out to be very inaccurate information.

How to count correctly

If you decide to correctly calculate the price of a house, then you should take into account many factors. Independently calculating the construction price can lead to gross miscalculations. And the point is not only that the developer does not always have complete information about the price of materials or the cost of construction work. The fact is that there are many other circumstances that influence the price of construction:

seasonality of work;
payment and its form;
materials recommended for construction;
discounts offered by the order executor;
rational construction methods.

We have named only a few additional, but significantly influencing the price of construction, factors. For example, if you decide to finish building a house in winter, then the price of construction will increase, since you will need to pay for more expensive labor and the necessary additives to the solutions, the use of frost-resistant binding materials, which are not used in the spring-summer season.

If we summarize our research, we can come to the obvious conclusion - construction and its calculations are not easy and require significant special knowledge or extensive construction experience. Correct calculation will save your money and time, and most importantly, it will give you confidence that you will be able to complete the construction of your house on time and without difficulties.

The best way to quickly estimate costs

Before you begin the pleasant and at the same time exciting procedure of building a future family nest, you need to conduct a financial analysis of the issue and clearly define the acceptable level of expenses for creating a residential building. If you have already decided on building materials, then an approximate online calculation of the cost of construction can be made directly on the company’s website. An intelligent calculator will allow you to create a preliminary estimate online, while it will take into account the area of the house, the type of foundation, the material of the walls and roof.

In addition, you can choose one of two options for finishing the facade, installing heating, electrical, water supply systems, and add to the estimate the costs of additional insulation and autonomous sewerage. The cost calculator for building a country house will take into account all your wishes and display the approximate cost. Of course, the geolocation of the site, the season of work and the complexity of the project will adjust its cost. Therefore, we recommend contacting the company manager to clarify the estimate.

If earlier the choice of what the house would be like was small - from wood or ashlar, today there are plenty of materials, and an accurate calculation of what and how much is needed is required, that’s why it’s needed construction calculator.

In what cases and how is a construction calculator used?

Even if you have not yet decided what materials the house will be built from (and there are plenty of options: brick, silicate or aerated concrete blocks, logs, timber or boards on a frame), the principle will be similar. First, the foundation is made, then the basement, in the process a basement and possibly a basement are formed, then the walls grow, the floors are laid, the rafter system is built and the roof is laid. Everything is simple and, at the same time, very complicated when you consider how many different building materials need to be purchased, transported and placed on the site. And if something is missing, should I go again, look and buy?

So that there are no incidents with a lack of bricks or boards, an online construction calculator is used, that is, a special service on the Internet that allows you to make calculations in a matter of minutes.

However, it is impossible to provide for everything in such a program, because house designers often come up with something new, and you may have your own ideas. Therefore, you need to know how to calculate the material for a house using a pen, a piece of paper and simple arithmetic. You will have to operate with such values as length, width, height and volume, as well as linear meters and area (including sections of a particular material).

The foundation is calculated quite simply, you just need to determine the volume of the future fill, decide in what proportions you will mix the solution, and then calculate the construction of the house. Let's say you want a strip foundation for a small cottage 6x5 meters, divided into 2 rooms, the width of the base will be the same as that of the walls, for example, 40 centimeters, the depth is half a meter. It’s easy to calculate the volume of fill, multiply 40x50 and get the cross-sectional area, then multiply by the length of the walls (2 x 6 meters and 3 x 5 meters). Since we count in meters, it comes out to 0.4. 0.5. 27 = 5.4 cubes of solution. This will help you on how to calculate the amount of materials.

Foundation calculator

Calculation of construction of a house with brick and block walls

Not everyone likes a log house, and many find the brick option more practical, especially since well-made masonry has fairly high thermal insulation properties. Typically, walls are built with one and a half bricks, sometimes two; there are other types of masonry, for example, two walls with a void between them filled with bulk material that plays the role of insulation. Building blocks are purchased by the cubic meter, and it is advisable to know exactly how many stacks will be needed for the job. It’s even better to decide in advance on the number of bricks. How? Calculating the construction of a house in this case will be very simple.

Previously, we looked at strip foundations, but why are walls worse, the thickness of which also allows us to calculate their volume? We proceed in the same way, not paying attention to the error arising from the masonry joints (it is better to make them thin so that cold bridges do not arise). Knowing how to calculate the volume of a house, we can easily find out how many cubic meters of brick will be needed. It remains to determine the volume of one piece, divide the first number obtained by the second, and we will find out the required number of bricks. As for expanded clay concrete blocks, since they are exactly 7 times larger in size, there will be just as many fewer of them.

Calculation of frame-type building structures

The greatest difficulty for calculations is presented by the frame houses that are now becoming fashionable. The fact is that such structures are quite complex, and only a designer can say in advance how much timber will go into the frame, which will later be sheathed with boards. But it is still possible to calculate a frame house, since the construction of this structure is subject to certain rules. The basis of everything is the lower belt, in the form of a frame made of timber with crossbars, which will become the ceiling of the first floor in the future. Next, corner posts are installed, the cross-section of which depends on how many levels the building is supposed to have. For a two-story house, it is advisable to install the supports from 150x150 millimeter timber.

The number of linear meters of material required for the bottom trim is calculated using the formula: (a+b) . 2, Where a And b– lengths of the sides of the house. The result will be, in fact, the perimeter P buildings. Let's add crossbars here that will correspond to the shorter wall, let's say it will be a, then the formula will change to this option: P = ((a+b) . 2) +n. Here n– number of crossbars laid in increments j, this value is calculated using the formula: n=b/j – 1, one must be subtracted because the last cross member is already taken into account in the previous formula, being one of a-sides The height of the lower belt is two beams, based on this, taking into account the above formulas, it is possible to calculate the construction of a house from lumber.

Then a power frame is built, consisting of vertically installed supports, the spacing between which is half that of the base crossbars. In other words, their number can be derived from the previously given formula by slightly changing it: n = ((a+b) . 2)/(j. 0.5) – 4, the last number corresponds to the number of corner posts. Where doors and windows will be located, the supports are skipped, therefore, the formula must include subtracting the number of such planned openings. The windows are delimited by two cross-bars, the doors are one at the top, in addition to the horizontal beams that crown the ground floor load-bearing frame. For the second floor, the calculation of building structures is done in a similar way, but we will not talk about the rafter system here, it requires separate calculations.

How much does it cost to build a house - the calculator will give you the answer

In general, the pitch, both for the jumpers of the lower chord and for the racks, is selected based on the dimensions of the cladding materials. For example, if the length of the exterior finishing board is 1 meter, and the thickness of the support beams is 15 centimeters, then the step between them should be 85 centimeters so that the elements of the nailed sheathing are joined exactly in the middle of the racks. You should also take into account the standard sizes of the internal cladding, in particular, plasterboard sheets have a width of 60, 80 and 120 centimeters, and it is reasonable to adjust the pitch of the beams to these indicators.

A wooden I-beam, which is just beginning to be actively used in construction, is very convenient. Made from two horizontal bars connected by an OSB bridge, this material provides ready-made cells to be filled with insulation.

The cost of one cubic meter of timber is not difficult to find out, but how much it will cost to build a frame is a completely different question. However, given the dimensions of the lumber and the number of racks, anyone can easily calculate the total volume of wood. To know how to build a house, you need a separate calculator for each material, in this case for timber. Next, you will need to calculate the insulation, determine the area of waterproofing, windproof membranes, vapor barriers, and calculate the amount of finishing material. For example, based on the thickness of the beam of the load-bearing frame, it is better to choose thermal insulation 2 times thinner and lay it in two layers, this will provide an additional air gap, which, in combination with the overlap of the mats, will give a greater effect. Moreover, the price depends not on the thickness, but on the density of the material.

In the modern construction industry, more and more innovations are appearing that are designed to make the work of architects and their clients much easier. In this article we will talk about such a tool as construction programs, which allow you to determine with the necessary accuracy the main costs, construction time and many other parameters.

Any Internet user can download construction programs for free. Most modern applications are developed and uploaded to the network by popular construction companies, which thus conduct a competent advertising campaign for their services on the domestic market.

As a rule, construction programs of any class have an intuitive graphical interface and many tutorials. Thus, any user of a personal computer can independently, without the help of an experienced designer or architect, create a 3D model of their dream home. A secondary program for construction calculations will help you estimate the cost of upcoming work with maximum accuracy.

It is not uncommon for many users, both private and corporate, to use illegal or “pirated” copies. It is important to remember that many construction calculation programs from the “hacked” class have an unlimited validity period, but a simplified and reduced set of tools. Because of this, many difficulties can arise not only with demonstrating the model, but also with its addition or re-development.

Before you turn your attention to free construction programs, you should note that professional applications for modeling and estimating a home have either paid or limited access. Therefore, if you do not need to delve into the basics of the architectural and design profession, you can use free services.

This section discusses the main parameters that construction design programs should have.

Construction drawing program

A standard program for construction drawing must comply with all real laws of physics and take into account the characteristics of each building material. A simplified version of this type of program is Home Plan Pro. Using this tool, the user can create a basic drawing of the house with pinpoint accuracy, as well as draw up a detailed plan of the interior. Basic skills in drawing and architecture are required to use this application. Thanks to the simple interface, the user will quickly get used to the presented professional environment.

House drawing in Home Plan Pro program

And another important parameter of any construction software is a rich set of software tools. The program for construction drawings is equipped with a special designer, where each element is assigned a place in the appropriate category. Also, when constructing certain structures, any application should provide the user with the opportunity to see how a real model will behave under different weather conditions.

Calculation of the cost of materials for the construction of an insulated house outline (house frame)

Before you start searching for the house project you need to build, we recommend that you use our calculator to calculate the cost of materials for building a house box. After spending just a little time, you will have an idea of the amount of money you will need to spend on purchasing materials to build a house. We want to immediately warn you that our calculation is approximate, but at the same time, as a rule, the discrepancies between the obtained result and the amount indicated in the construction estimate, in most cases, have a difference of no more than 10-15%. The parameters that our calculator operates are always relevant and are updated once every three months.
Attention: The calculator takes 3-5 seconds to load. Wait.

* Required fields: length and width of the house (in meters).

IMPORTANT: The calculator provides calculations only for materials for construction. To get the full cost of construction, that is, materials + work, we recommend asking our partner construction companies for a free estimate. But first, you need to select a house project in our catalog. You can order such a calculation by clicking on the link below:
- Free construction cost estimate ➤

Construction calculator - tell your friends!!!

If you are looking for design documentation for construction or competent builders capable of building a durable and high-quality house, we recommend that you first obtain high-quality and professional advice from specialists from the following companies.