Free Construction Reference Charts

30 printable lookup tables for the numbers a job runs on: roof pitch and squares, siding and gables, concrete yards and bags, tile and thinset, paint, drywall, flooring, gravel, stairs, AC tons, wire sizes, markup against margin. Every one prints as a PDF. No signup and no watermark.

Roofing

Pitch, slope and squares. The two tables a roofer reaches for before anything gets ordered.

Roof pitch chartEvery pitch from 1/12 to 24/12, with the angle, the multiplier you have to apply to a footprint, and the rafter length that goes with it.Roof squares chartFifteen common footprints against six pitches, so you can find a house roughly the size of the one in front of you and see the squares before you measure anything.

Siding and exterior walls

Squares, gables and starter strip. The walls priced before a single triangle has been measured.

Siding squares chartTen wall perimeters against six wall heights, with the waste already added, so you can price the walls before you have measured a single gable.Gable area chartEvery gable width from 16 to 48 feet at five pitches, so the triangle nobody can reach with a tape stops being a guess.

Concrete, asphalt and lumber

Yards, bags, tons and board feet. What a supply house asks for when you call it in.

Concrete slab chartSeventeen slab sizes from a 4 x 4 pad to a 30 x 40 shop floor, at three thicknesses, with the bag counts next to the yardage.Concrete bag chartFrom a quarter of a yard to five yards, in quarter yard steps, with the bag count for both common bag sizes.Board foot chartBoard feet per piece for every common nominal size from 1x4 to 8x8, at six lengths, so you can price a list that is quoted per board foot.Asphalt tonnage chartFourteen driveway sizes at three compacted depths, in the unit a plant actually sells in, which is tons rather than yards.

Inside the house

Rooms, sheets, gallons, boxes and stairs. Everything measured off a floor plan.

Paint coverage chartFifteen room sizes with the gallons to buy at one, two and three coats, and a second table that works straight off a wall area if you already have one.Drywall sheets chartFourteen job sizes against the three sheet sizes, with the compound, tape and screws for each so the whole delivery is on one line.Room size chartEvery common room size with its area in all three units and its perimeter, which is the number trim and baseboard are ordered by.Flooring box chartFourteen areas against five box coverages, because the only number that changes between two brands of the same plank is how much is in the box.Stair rise and run chartEvery total rise from two feet to twelve, with the riser count that keeps each step in code range, the total run it needs, and the stringer that has to reach.Tile size chartFifteen stocked tile sizes with the tiles per square foot, the count for a 100 and a 200 square foot floor, and the thinset each size drinks.Thinset and grout chartBags of thinset and pounds of grout from 25 to 500 square feet, at three tile sizes, plus what the joint width alone does to the grout order.

Landscape and yard

Beds, depths and coverage, for the material that is sold by the yard and delivered by the ton.

Mulch coverage chartSixteen bed sizes at five depths, in cubic yards, with the bag count and the delivered weight underneath.Gravel coverage chartSixteen areas at five depths in cubic yards, and then the same areas in tons, which is the unit the quarry will quote you in.

Decks, fences and insulation

Boards, posts, rails and bags. What gets counted off a sketch before anybody calls the yard.

Deck board chartFourteen common deck sizes with the board count, the linear feet and the joist count for each.Fence post chartTwelve fence lengths at three post spacings, then the whole material list at eight foot spacing, then the concrete a hole takes at every normal depth and diameter.Insulation coverage chartFourteen wall and ceiling areas against six package coverages, and the cavity area that is actually left once the framing is taken out of the gross square footage.

Heating, cooling and wiring

Tons, BTU and conductor sizes. The two lookups that settle an argument about equipment before anybody prices it.

AC size chartFifteen floor areas against all seven climate zones, in the half ton steps equipment is actually sold in.Wire size chartThe smallest conductor that holds voltage drop under 3 percent, for ten loads across seven distances, copper and aluminum.

Markup and margin

Markup against margin, and what a monthly late fee really costs a customer in a year.

Markup to margin chartEvery markup from 5 to 100 percent, with the margin it actually produces.Margin to markup chartStart from the margin you need to run the business on, and read off the markup you have to price at to get it.Late fee chartThe monthly rate you put in a contract, converted to the annual rate a state usury law is written against, and then the dollars on an invoice that is actually late.

Pricing your own work

What an hour really costs, what to charge for it, and what overhead and profit do to a price.

Labor burden chartFourteen base wages against six workers compensation rates, showing what the hour actually costs you before a minute of it is unbillable, and then what happens when some of it is.Contractor hourly rate chartNine target incomes against the percentage of your hours that are billable, and then the same targets against the overhead the business carries.Overhead and profit chartFourteen direct job costs against five overhead and profit combinations, with the markup each combination actually equals and what adding the percent to the cost instead would have left you with.

Getting paid

Retainage and draw schedules. The two places where a profitable job still runs out of cash.

Retainage chartEleven contract values against five retainage percentages, then a full progress schedule showing what is earned, what is held and what is actually payable at each application.Draw schedule chartTwelve contract sizes against three to eight progress draws, with what the deposit and the final payment come to, and what changes when retainage is held from each draw.

Every number here was computed, not copied

Reference charts on the internet get copied from each other, and an error copied four times looks like a consensus. The 4,232 figures across these 30 pages were all produced at build time by the same calculator engine that runs on this site, from the formulas written out in plain arithmetic in the calculators.

That has a practical consequence worth knowing about. If a formula on this site were wrong, it would be wrong on the chart, on the calculator and in the printed PDF at the same time, in public, instead of hiding inside one page nobody checks. The assumptions behind each number, the bag yields, the coverage rates and the waste allowances, are written into the note under every table rather than buried.

A chart is for the counter, a calculator is for the job

These tables are for the moments where you want a number in five seconds and an order of magnitude you can sanity check: standing at a supply counter, on the phone with a customer, deciding whether the trailer or the truck goes to the yard.

When it is time to actually order, use the calculator for the same trade. It takes your real measurements instead of the nearest row, and it hands back the whole material list as a document you can print or send, rather than a single figure on a screen.

Print them and put them somewhere

Every chart page has a PDF of the same table, sized for US Letter, with nothing on it but the chart and its notes. Inside a truck door, on the trailer wall, in the back of the estimating binder. That is what a reference chart is for, and a phone in a wet glove is not a good substitute.

What these are not

They are estimating figures. Nothing on them sizes a beam, checks a load, or replaces a local code, a permit or a manufacturer's installation instruction. Where a number depends on a product, a soil type or a state rule, the note says so, and that is the point at which the specification stops being a chart's business.