Brick calculator
Bricks, cement and sand for a wall — worked from the brick that is actually laid in Nepal rather than the Indian modular brick every other calculator assumes. On the wall below that difference is 256 bricks.
The wall
1,198 bricks2.7 bags of cement and 0.57 m³ of sand
The order
| Net wall area | 15.60 m² |
|---|---|
| Brickwork volume | 1.794 m³ |
| Bricks, with wastage | 1,198 |
| Cement | 2.7 bags |
| Sand | 0.57 m³ |
What the brick decides
| Bricks per m³ | 636 |
|---|---|
| Mortar, share of volume | 27.9% |
| On the Indian modular brick | 942 |
| That would be short by | 21.4% |
Measure a brick before you order a house. Published figures for the Nepali brick disagree — the National Building Code is cited for 240 × 115 × 57 mm, other guides give 230 × 110 × 55, and they do not agree on whether the joint is already included. This page does not pick a winner. It takes the size as an input and derives everything from it, so the answer is right for the brick in your yard rather than for an average of two sources.
Openings are deducted from the face before the volume is worked out, which is the commonest reason a hand take-off over-orders. Wastage is applied to the brick count only — you do not break mortar.
Why an Indian brick calculator is wrong in Nepal
India's modular brick is 190 × 90 × 90 mm, which with a 10 mm joint becomes 200 × 100 × 100 — exactly 500 bricks to the cubic metre, a round number that is quoted everywhere. It is the number behind almost every "brick calculator" you will find.
The brick laid in Nepal is longer and much thinner. At the National Building Code's 240 × 115 × 57 mm it takes about 636 bricks to fill the same cubic metre — because a thinner brick means more courses, and more courses mean more bricks and more joints.
On the wall above that is 1,198 against 942: an under-order of 21%. It is invisible, because the wrong answer looks perfectly reasonable. You find out when the wall stops.
Mortar is what the bricks do not fill
There is no separate mortar formula. A cubic metre of brickwork is bricks plus mortar, so once you know how many bricks fit and how much space they occupy, the mortar is the remainder — here 27.9% of the wall. A thinner brick has more joints and therefore more mortar, which is the second way the Indian figure misleads: it under-orders the cement too.
Dry material is more than wet mortar, because sand bulks and the mix loses volume filling voids. This page uses 1.33, which is the conservative figure in common use. Some tables use 1.54 and produce about 16% more cement; that is a real disagreement, and it is stated here rather than buried.
The mix is a decision about weather, not strength alone
1:6 is ordinary internal brickwork. 1:4 goes on anything that meets the rain, because a richer mix absorbs less water — which in a monsoon climate matters more than the extra strength. Getting this wrong on an external wall shows up as damp two years later, not as a failure.
Related
The concrete and brick estimator covers the structure this wall sits in, the rebar calculator the steel, and the unit converter the mixed feet-and-metres drawings Nepali sites work from. If this is the part of engineering you enjoy, civil engineering at ICE is built around it.
For the arithmetic worked by hand, with the wastage allowances explained, read concrete and brick quantity take-off.
Common questions
- Is this Nepal brick and mortar calculator page free to use?
- Yes. Every Kaamko tool is free, with no sign-up, no account and no usage limit. They are published by Imperial College of Engineering, a Tribhuvan University-affiliated engineering college in Tathali, Bhaktapur, and are not funded by advertising.
- Does what I type get sent anywhere?
- No. This tool runs entirely in your browser: the calculation happens on your own device, nothing you type is uploaded, and nothing is stored after you close the page.
- Where do the figures come from?
- Each tool names its source on the page, along with the date that source was read. Where a rate or a slab is provisional — announced in a budget speech but not yet gazetted, for instance — the page says so rather than presenting it as settled.
- Who maintains these tools?
- Imperial College of Engineering, formerly Janakpur Engineering College, in Tathali, Bhaktapur, Nepal. Corrections are welcome by phone on 01-5091616 or through the contact page, and a figure reported as wrong is checked against its published source rather than adjusted on request.
Last checked by Imperial College of Engineering. Rates, slabs and formulas are re-checked against their published source on this date.