Several pours, footed into the order: cubic yards, cubic feet and the whole bags your dimensions divide into

AThe order, at a glance

Figured for this order. The cubic feet one bag fills is not typed yet, so the bag counts are dashed.

The figure this sheet exists for is the purchase quantity: what the geometry you measured is in the unit the yard sells and in the unit the bag is labelled, over several pours at once, with one allowance applied to all of them. Print this sheet

Printed from otherworldlabs.com, the concrete order sheet.

BThe pours you are about to buy concrete for

Only have the job's total cubic yards? A total forces no split back into pours, so do not invent dimensions to make one foot: type each pour's own figures instead. If the bag count is all you want from a total you already trust, that is your total yards x 27 = cubic feet, divided by the cubic feet one bag fills, taken up to the next whole bag, with your allowance on top.

CThe order, a row for each pour

DEvery figure, worked

Each pour, from the dimensions you typed

The order, footed and divided into bags

EHow the figures are read

The three geometries

A slab is an area times a thickness. A footing is a run times a width times a depth. A column is a circle times a height. Those are the three this sheet distinguishes, and there is no fourth anywhere on the page or in the file sold beside it.

The slab's two entry modes

A slab typed as a length and a width, and a slab typed as its square footage, are two ways of typing one area rather than a fourth geometry. A reader quoted four hundred and eighty square feet holds that area and holds no length and no width, so the sheet takes the area, prints the area, and never invents a pair whose product happens to fit.

The cubic feet one bag fills

The yield is the figure printed on the bag in your hand, and it is the only thing that turns a volume into a bag count. This sheet holds no yield for any product and suggests none. Until you type it, every bag count on the page is dashed and the volumes are printed without one.

Whole bags, and why the rows can foot high

Half a bag is not sold, so every bag count is taken up to the next whole bag. The order line takes the whole order's volume up once; each row takes its own pour up on its own. The rows can therefore foot to a bag or two beyond the order line, and the working says so where it happens rather than hiding it.

The allowance, twice

The allowance prints as you typed it, as a percentage, and again as the cubic feet and the whole bags it adds. The bag count with the allowance in is taken from the volume with the allowance in, never from a bag count that has already been rounded up.

Cubic yards and cubic feet

A cubic yard is twenty-seven cubic feet. Both units are printed for one reason: the yard sells in one and the bag is labelled in the other, and one volume has to be read back in whichever unit the counter desk is using.

What is incomplete

A pour you have started is one carrying a name, a geometry or a dimension of its own. It is complete when every dimension its own shape and its own entry mode need is typed. Until every started pour is complete and the yield is in, the order totals print no figure at all and the glance says what they are waiting on.

FThe cases the arithmetic does not settle

Each of these is yours to decide, and none of them is decided here. The options are set out and the sheet prints whichever reading you type.

A pour that is not one of the three shapes

A trench with sloped sides, a stepped footing, a pad with a thickened edge: none of them is a box or a cylinder. Some crews break the pour into the three shapes and type each piece as its own pour. Others type the shape that holds most of the volume and carry the rest in the waste allowance. The first keeps the geometry readable on the sheet; the second keeps one row. This sheet takes the shapes you type and adds nothing for a slope it cannot see.

Bags against ready-mix

A volume is sold both ways, and the sheet prints both readings of it: the yardage a truck is ordered in, and the bag count at the yield you typed. Which one a job wants is a decision about the job, not about the arithmetic, and nothing here recommends either.

Where the allowance belongs

Some crews put their allowance on the volume, as this sheet does. Others order whole pallets and let the pallet rounding carry it. Others again carry an allowance on the slab and none on the footings. The sheet applies one typed percentage to the whole order; a different allowance for a different pour means a second order sheet, and the file sold beside this page keeps both.

What a short pour costs

A pour that runs out mid-placement is not a volume question by the time it happens. The sheet's job is the record of what was ordered and on what assumption, which is the thing worth having when a yard and a crew are reading one order back to each other.

GWhat this sheet will not do

• It names no dimension, no thickness, no depth, no diameter and no spacing as the right one. Every dimension on it is one you measured and typed, and arithmetic is the only thing the sheet adds.
• It says nothing about reinforcement, strength, mix, water, slump, aggregate, curing or finishing, and it holds no figure of that kind for any product or any job.
• It cites no code and no standard, and it never says that anything you type meets a requirement of anybody's.
• It names no brand, no product and no supplier, and it carries no figure read in from one. The yield and the allowance are yours.
• It calls no yield, no allowance and no dimension usual. It reads a dimension to two decimals and prints the figure it used; and a figure typed outside the range its own shape holds it to is read at the nearer end of that range, with a warning naming the figure and what it was read as.
• It holds one order and keeps nothing. Close the page and the figures are gone: nothing you type is stored, here or anywhere else, and no figure on it is read in from anywhere. The kit sold beside it is what a supplier is handed and what you keep.