Foundation-to-Frame Suite

Build the walls without guessing what they cost.

Work out blocks, bricks or stone, the mortar to lay them, a continuous ring beam, DPC, wall ties and a costed bill of quantities. Any trade word you do not know is explained where it first appears.

Blocks, bricks or stone Openings deducted automatically KES 200 / 24 hours
This works out quantities and cost. It does not design your ring beam steel. Counting blocks, mortar and concrete is measurement, and this tool is good at it. How much steel your ring beam needs to safely tie the building together is design — copy that from an engineer's drawing where one exists, or ask before guessing on a two-storey or unusual building.
Stage 1 of 8Project

Stage 1 · Project

What are you walling, and with what?

Pick the wall type first. Everything else in this calculator — thickness, mortar, ring beam width and wall ties — follows sensible defaults from this choice, and you can adjust the ones that genuinely vary from site to site.

How will you measure your walls? You can switch later without losing or changing the real dimensions.

Wall type

A planning rate, filled in from your wall type above. Change it if your actual block, brick or stone size and bond differ.
Boundary: this tool covers blocks/bricks/stone, mortar, openings deduction, a continuous ring beam, DPC and wall ties — the walls and ring beam only. Plastering is the separate Plastering Calculator, and roofing is the separate roofing calculators.

Stage 2 · Wall sections

How long and how high are your walls?

Most simple rectangular houses only need one row: the total length of every wall, and the height from the top of the slab to the underside of the ring beam. Add more rows for a gable end, a stepped plot, or a feature wall that is a different height.

This fills in the height for every wall section below. Change a single section's height only where it is genuinely different — a gable, a step in the ground, or a feature wall.
Wall sectionUseShapeLength (m)Height / rise (m)Other endRBDPC
Shapes: use Rectangle for normal walls. Add a separate Triangle row for a gable above its rectangular wall. Use Trapezoid where the two ends have different heights. Ring beam and DPC are counted only on rows you tick.

Stage 3 · Openings

Doors and windows reduce the wall you need to build.

Enter each door or window size once, with how many of that size you have. Their combined area is subtracted from the wall before counting blocks, bricks or stone, and before working out mortar.

Wall sectionTypeHow manyWidth (m)Height (m)Lintel

Lintels over openings

Length resting on masonry beyond each side. Confirm from the drawing.
Use the structural detail. Steel is intentionally not designed here.
Leave this empty if you would rather work from a blank-wall estimate first — you can always come back and add openings before you unlock the full result.

Stage 4 · Ring beam & DPC

The concrete band that ties the walls together, and the damp course beneath them.

Ring beam is a continuous reinforced concrete band cast on top of all the walls at once — not a separate lintel over each door and window — so its length is your whole wall perimeter, and it does not shrink because of openings below it.

Normally the same as your wall thickness.
Copy the specification from the drawing where one exists.

Ring-beam formwork

Choose how many vertical faces require shutters.

Ring beam steel

Use the structural drawing. Main bars and links/stirrups perform different jobs, and their diameter, count and spacing must come from the engineer's ring-beam detail. The rows below only convert that approved detail into stock bars and cost.
What is it? (e.g. main bars, stirrups)Bar sizeHow manyLength of each (m)Length you buy (m)

Damp proof course (DPC)

DPC is the waterproof strip laid along the top of the wall base, at the point the walling begins above the slab, so damp cannot rise into the walls above.

Normally the same as your wall thickness.

Stage 5 · Wall ties & waste

A few last quantities before pricing.

Count every wall edge that meets a concrete column. A wall between two columns has two junctions.
Distance up each column junction. Confirm this from the structural detail or site instruction.

Procurement allowance

Stage 6 · Local rates

Use prices from your supplier and site.

Enter prices from your local supplier, fundi, contractor or quarry. The calculator does not assume that Nairobi prices apply to your site.

Use local rates only. Enter the actual unit price beside every applicable item. Enter 0 only where an item genuinely has no cost for this project.
Name where the prices came from so they can be checked later.
The final report records this date so an old estimate is not mistaken for a current quotation.

Steel price per 12 m stock bar

Stage 7 · Review and unlock

Check the inputs before pricing.

Nothing below reveals cost. Confirm your wall sections and openings, then unlock the full walling breakdown.

Your calculation is ready. No quantities or costs are shown before payment. Unlock below to generate the complete walling BOQ and PDF.

Stage 8 · Full estimate

Your walling breakdown.