Bricks guide
How many bricks do I need to build a house?
By the BuildMate team ·
The short answer: a typical four-roomed house needs about 12,000 bricks. The better answer is to measure your own plan, which takes ten minutes with the method below.
Bricks per square metre
A standard Zimbabwean common brick is about 222 × 106 × 73 mm. Laid with 10 mm mortar joints, each brick covers roughly 232 × 83 mm of wall, so:
| Wall | Bricks per m² |
|---|---|
| Half-brick wall (110 mm, one brick thick) – inside walls | 52 |
| One-brick wall (230 mm, two bricks side by side) – outside walls and foundations | 104 |
Bigger bricks need fewer: at 235 × 75 mm it is about 48 per m² of half-brick wall. Each product page lists the measured size of that yard's brick.
The method
- Measure each wall: length × height, in metres.
- Take away the openings: a door is about 1.9 m², a 1.2 × 1.2 m window 1.4 m².
- Multiply by bricks per m²: 104 for one-brick walls, 52 for half-brick walls.
- Add the foundation walls from the footing up to floor level.
- Add 5% for breakage and cutting, then round up to whole pallets of 500.
Worked example: a four-roomed house
A simple house 10 m × 6 m on the outside, four rooms, walls 2.6 m high to the wall plate, one-brick outside walls and half-brick inside walls.
| Wall | Working | Bricks |
|---|---|---|
| Outside walls | 32 m × 2.6 m = 83.2 m², less 2 doors and 6 windows (12.4 m²) = 70.8 m² × 104 | 7,361 |
| Inside walls | 11 m × 2.6 m = 28.6 m², less 3 doors (4.8 m²) = 23.8 m² × 52 | 1,238 |
| Foundation walls | 43 m of wall × 0.6 m high = 25.8 m² × 104 | 2,683 |
| Subtotal | 11,282 | |
| Plus 5% breakage | 11,846 | |
| To order | 24 pallets of 500 | 12,000 |
Brick gable ends under a pitched roof add roughly another 1,000. A bigger house, higher walls or a boundary wall change the total, so measure your own plan.
Sand and cement for the mortar
Allow about 0.6 m³ of building sand and 3 bags of cement (50 kg) per 1,000 bricks. For the example house that is roughly 7 m³ of sand and 36 bags of cement.
Order in stages
Most builders order the foundation bricks first, then the rest when the slab is down. It keeps bricks from standing on site for months, and each delivery is priced up front, so there are no surprises.
Measure your own walls in the calculator, then price the bricks delivered to your site.
Estimates only. Your builder or the plans' bill of quantities has the final number.