How To Calculate The Quantity Of Sand And Number Of Trips Of Sand Needed For Your Building Project

Today on buildingcontractorsecrets.blogspot.com/, i am going to talk about how you can calculate the quantity of sand needed during the sand filling stage of your building project.
After seeing and hearing how many clients are ripped off by their so-called engineers during this stage of their construction, i felt there is a need to make it possible for these clients to be able to calculate the quantity or volume of sand needed for sand filling their projects.

This post is going to be made using a building on the DPC (Damp Prove Course) Level: This is the first 4 blocks laid on the building. After laying blocks to this level, there is need to import materials usually laterite (Red sand) or sharp sand depending on the requirements of the environment and the provisions of the Specifications.
First 4 Course of a building
Please Note: DPC is not necessarily 4 blocks high. The height only depends on the nature of the environment as well as the terrain of the area. Low lying areas or areas prone to flooding may have a DPC level up to 7 blocks high.
So now, how do we know the Volume of sand needed to sand fill our building project?
In order to make this easy, i am going to use a one room as a case study. Please remember that the dimensions of a room depends on the clients requirements, however, it is recommended that a minimum dimension of 12ft x 10 (12ft long and 10 feet wide) be used.
Now we are going to use that dimension for our room.
Now that we’ve known  the length and breadth of the building, lets also know the depth since we will be needing this to get the total volume to sand fill.
Remember that a block is 9″ high, having 4 of this will give us 36″ or 3ft
Now lets convert these dimensions to Meters.
Remember that 1ft = 300mm or 0.3 meters
With that in mind, how many meters do we have in 12ft, 10 and 3ft?
12 feet = 3600mm or 3.6m
10 feet = 3000mm or 3m
3 feet = 900mm or 0.9m
Now what is the volume to sandfill?
In order to get the volume, we must multiply the area by the depth…
Area = Lenth x Breadth
But our Lenth = 3.6m
The Breadth = 3m
Therefore our Area = 3.6 x 3 = 10.8m2
Having known our area, lets multiply with the depth in order to get our volume
Volume = Area x Depth
Volume = 10.8 x 0.9 = 9.72m3
Having known the Volume to sand fill, lets now get to know how many trips of sand to request for…
Please Note that there are different category of tippers but because its a small project, we are going to empl0y the 5 ton tipper.

what is the volume of a 5 ton tipper?

The volume of a 5-Ton tipper (A tipper with 6 Tyre) = 3.81m3
Now to get the the Number of Trips of sand needed to sand fill a one room apartment, we divide the calculated Volume by the uniform volume of a trip of sand.
Thus, since a 5-ton tipper has a volume of 3.813,
we will need 9.72/3.81 = 2.6 trips
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Hi, I'm Richard Nwachukwu! It is my job to handle the content aspect of this great organization and I'm determined to ensure you get it all right as long as you're handling a construction project in Nigeria!

26 Comments

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  1. As far as sand is concerned,
    We have 5 tonne
    We have 10 tonne
    We have 20 tonne
    We have 30 tonne

    If I'm a seller with 10 tonne trucks, I'll gladly tell you that 10 tonne is 1 trip

    Now in the eyes of someone having 5 tonne truck, that's 2 trips of sand

  2. Thank you. But did you put into consideration that lattriate soil will compress when compacted to a density of about 1019 kg/m³ thereby reducing in vollune. Did you consider this factor before arriving @ ur conclusion?

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