Guides

The calculators answer how much. These answer the questions that come either side of it: which product, which pack size, and what the word on the bag actually means.

Every figure quoted below is produced at build time by the same calculation functions the tools run, from the same cited constants. A guide on this site cannot print a number its calculator disagrees with, because it does not have its own copy of the arithmetic.

• Bags or ready-mix?

  Where the cost of a pour crosses over, and why the answer is almost never about the concrete.

• Mulch: bags or bulk?

  Thirteen and a half bags to a cubic yard, a minimum load you pay for whether you use it or not.

• Cement grout or epoxy?

  Two published charts, side by side, and the factor of two that sits between them.

• Builder’s glossary

  Nominal, o.c., spring angle, board foot, batter, waste factor — the words these calculators use and what they mean.

What you will not find here

Prices. Not one figure on this site is a dollar amount we made up, and a cost guide full of invented numbers would be the easiest page here to write and the least honest. What a slab costs is the quantity — which these calculators work out and cite — multiplied by what your merchant charges this month, which only you can know. So the guides below give you the quantity, the pack sizes, and the shape of the decision, and every calculator takes your own price and does the rest.