How to use this
From a first estimate to a quotation you hand over. Each step says what to enter, what happens next, and what to check before trusting the number.
Your first estimate, in three minutes
You need nothing to start: no drawings, no quotation, no account.
Open the estimator and pick your city. The city changes everything: cement, sand and block prices are surveyed locally, and haulage is not the same.
Choose the building type and enter the total floor area across all storeys. The type sets the imposed load used for the structure.
Set the finish level. It moves the budget more than anything else, far more than the floor area does.
Read the range, then read "How this figure was reached" underneath it. If the base rate is an estimate rather than a survey, it says so there.
Go through "What we make of it". Anything tagged "To settle" costs money if ignored: no water, no standby power, a contingency too thin.
Depending on what you are trying to do
The four real uses, and the shortest path through each.
I have the architect’s drawings
Drop them into the estimator, under "Read my drawings". Claude pulls out areas, spans, heights and specification, then shows every measurement with how it got it: printed dimension, scaled, schedule, or inferred. Review before applying. Anything it could not read is listed separately, with no invented value.
Open the estimatorI want to check a quotation I was given
Rebuild the project in the estimator, then compare line by line in the "Cost breakdown" tab. More than 20% out on any one trade is worth a question. Then open "Structure": if the contractor proposes a 120 mm slab over a 6 m span, the calculation will tell you it does not work.
Open the estimatorI am about to order materials
Move to "Quantities" and enter your real dimensions. A 40 m wall at 3 m with 12 m² of openings comes out at 1,317 blocks, 9 bags of cement and 24 worker-days, breakage included. That is a shopping list, not a range: you hand it to the merchant, you can check it yourself, and you can see at once if someone asks you for twice that. Export it to CSV.
Open the estimatorI need to hand a client a quotation
Enter your own supplier prices under "Your rates", add your margin, then open the "Quotation" tab and switch to the "Client" version. The client sees the trades and the price; the margin and the ranges stay in the "Internal" version. Print it, or copy the project link to share it.
Open the estimatorHow to know whether to trust a figure
Every price on the site carries a label. It is not decoration.
Sourced
A published survey, with the link and the date. Cement surveys from ACP, Radio Okapi and Zoom Eco, the statutory wage scale, steel importers’ tariffs.
Derived
Computed from sourced prices by a stated formula. A cement block is not a market mystery: it is cement, sand and moulding labour.
Estimated
An inference, with the reasoning written down so you can argue with it. A bare estimate is not allowed.
What this tool does not do
Said plainly, because a tool that claims to do everything can be trusted on nothing.
- It is not a structural design. The sizing follows the Eurocodes but covers no wind, no seismic, no fire, no crack width. Have an engineer confirm it before building.
- The plot is not included. Land varies too much between districts, often fiftyfold within one city: folding that in would make the number meaningless.
- It is not a contractor’s quotation. It is a defensible order of magnitude, to be tested against two local contractors before you commit.
- Without a soil test the foundation assumed here is a hypothesis. Two trial pits cost a few hundred dollars; underpinning costs tens of thousands.