The part of the job your steel quote doesn't cover
A frame quote prices the frame. The base it stands on is a separate job, and on a sloping Cornish field it is rarely the smaller number. Our free calculator works out the concrete, stone, mesh and muck-away from your building size, so you know the real figure before you sign anything.
Work out my groundworksWhy the base catches people out
It is not in the frame price
Steel suppliers quote steel. Site strip, cut and fill, hardcore, the slab, drainage and the access track are a separate trade and a separate bill — often a third of what you end up spending.
The slope costs more than you think
A level field and a field with half a metre of fall across it are two different jobs. One needs a digger for a day; the other needs muck carting off and fill carting in. The calculator asks, because nobody else's does.
Topsoil moves more than the slope
Strip 250mm off a 350m² working platform and you have shifted nearly ninety cubic metres before you have touched the level. If it is leaving site, that is ten lorry loads.
What you get
Pick what the building is for — machinery store, grain store, livestock, workshop, hay barn, industrial unit — and the slab specification sets itself. Put in the span, the length and what the ground is doing, and you get an ordering list grouped by who you ring:
- Concrete in cubic metres, waste allowed, rounded to the half metre
- Type 1 in tonnes, with the loose depth to spread before compacting
- Mesh sheets or fibre dose, damp proof membrane and edge detail
- Topsoil strip, cut and fill, and muck-away loads if the spoil is going
One thing it will not do is size your pad foundations. Those come off a structural engineer's design and change with span, height, wind loading and what the ground will bear. Anyone giving you a pad size without a design has guessed it.
Open the calculator