Bricks per square foot, and the two numbers that both look right
Ask how many modular bricks are in a square foot and you will be told 6.75. Work it out from the actual brick you are holding, 7-5/8 by 2-1/4, with a 3/8 joint, and you get 8 by 2-5/8, which is 21 square inches, which is 6.86 per square foot. Both numbers are in circulation and neither is wrong.
The 6.75 figure comes from the nominal module. Modular brick is designed so that three courses make exactly 8 inches, which needs a course height of 2.667 inches, which needs a bed joint slightly fatter than 3/8. Masons run it that way because the whole point of the modular system is that courses line up with block, with window heights and with each other. The 6.86 figure is the arithmetic of the brick and joint you specified. The gap between them is under two percent, which is a fifth of the waste allowance, so it does not change what you order. It does change where your courses land over ten feet of wall, which is why layout is done with a story pole and not with a calculator.
Bond patterns change the waste, not the count
This surprises people. A running bond, a third bond and a stack bond all cover the same area with the same number of bricks, because every brick still occupies one module of wall. What changes is how many bricks you cut and throw away at the ends of courses and around openings. Running bond needs a half brick at alternate course ends. Third bond needs two different cuts. Stack bond needs no cuts at all in a clean rectangle but is unforgiving about the module, so any wall that is not an exact number of bricks long puts a visible cut in a vertical line.
Herringbone and basketweave panels are different again, because the diagonal cuts them at both edges of the panel and the offcuts are rarely reusable. Fifteen percent is a fair allowance and can go higher on a small panel with a lot of edge relative to its area. The other thing that pushes waste up has nothing to do with the pattern: blended brick, where several colours are mixed deliberately, means culling units that land wrong, and returns and corners mean a lot of edge.
Soldiers, rowlocks and why they are counted separately
A soldier course is bricks stood on end, usually as a band over a window or at the top of a wall. Each brick then occupies only its own width plus a joint along the run, which for a modular brick at 3/8 is 2.625 inches, so a soldier course takes 4.57 bricks per linear foot rather than 1.5. The band itself is a brick length tall, so 8 inches. A rowlock is a brick on edge, typically as a window sill, taking one brick length of run each and forming a band as tall as the brick is deep.
Both bands sit inside the wall face, so this calculator takes their area out of the field before counting the field brick and then adds the band brick back at its own density. Twelve linear feet of modular soldier course is 55 bricks and removes 8 square feet from the field, which is 55 field bricks removed. It nets out close on modular brick and does not net out on wider units, which is why the two are separated in the results.
The parts of a veneer that are not brick
Brick veneer is a single wythe hung off a structure with an air space behind it, and it leaks. That is the design: wind-driven rain gets through the brick and the mortar joints, runs down the back face, lands on flashing and comes back out through the weeps. If any part of that chain is missing or blocked, the water goes into the wall instead.
| Component | What it is doing | How it gets counted |
|---|---|---|
| Corrugated or adjustable ties | Holding the veneer to the structure against wind | Area divided by the horizontal and vertical spacing |
| Air space | Drainage path and capillary break | Not a quantity, but it must stay clear of mortar droppings |
| Base and head flashing | Catching water and directing it out | Linear feet of base plus every opening head |
| Weep holes | The exit, immediately above every flashing | Base run divided by the spacing, plus one |
| Lintels | Carrying brick over an opening | Opening width plus bearing each side |
Tie spacing in the calculator defaults to 16 by 24 inches because 16 puts a tie into every stud on a standard frame, but the spacing that applies to your wall is a design figure that depends on the wind load and the tie type, and the building department where you are has the final say. The same goes for how far the veneer can span over an opening on a given lintel.
For the mortar itself, the mortar mix calculator gives the portland, lime and sand proportions by mortar type, which matters a great deal on repointing and on soft brick. If the wall behind the veneer is masonry rather than a stud frame, the concrete block wall calculator handles the backup, and the brick and block calculator covers multi-wythe walls where the brick is structural rather than a veneer.
Questions people ask
How many bricks do I need per square foot?
For modular brick at a 3/8 inch joint, between 6.75 and 6.9 depending on whether you use the nominal module or the actual brick dimensions, and both are close enough for ordering. Queen size runs about 5.8 per square foot, king about 5.3, Norman about 4.6 and utility about 3.0. The calculator works it out from the unit and the joint you set rather than using a table, because the joint width genuinely moves the number and a lot of published figures quietly assume 3/8.
How many wall ties do I need?
That is set by the design and by the building department where you are, not by a general rule, and the honest answer is to get the spacing from your drawing. What the calculator does is turn a spacing into a count: at 16 inches horizontally and 24 inches vertically, one tie covers 2.67 square feet, so a 240 square foot wall takes 90 ties. Tighter spacing is common near the top of a wall, around openings and in high wind regions. If your drawing gives one tie per so many square feet instead of a grid, divide the wall area by that figure directly.
Why does the calculator deduct the soldier course area?
Because otherwise those bricks get counted twice. A soldier course over a window is 8 inches of wall height for a modular brick, and that strip of wall is not also full of ordinary stretcher courses. The calculator takes the band area out of the field, counts the field at the running density, then adds the soldiers at their own much higher density. On modular brick the two roughly cancel; on a Norman or utility brick they do not, and the separation stops the estimate drifting.
Do I count the air space or the flashing as materials?
The air space is not a quantity, it is a gap that has to stay open, and the practical job is keeping mortar droppings out of it while you lay. That is done with care, with a bevelled bed and sometimes with a mortar net at the base. Flashing and weeps are quantities and the calculator gives you the linear feet and the weep count. What it deliberately does not do is tell you what flashing material to use or how it should be lapped and terminated, because that is detail work where the wrong choice shows up as a wet wall five years later.
How much extra should I order for colour blending?
Brick colour varies between production runs, and a wall built from two pallets of noticeably different brick is a permanent, obvious mistake. If your brick is a blend or a hand-made unit, order the whole job at once from one run, and add waste on top of the pattern allowance rather than assuming you can buy three more later. Five to ten extra percent on a blended brick is a cheap insurance policy compared to a patch that does not match, and keeping a few dozen spare bricks somewhere dry pays for itself the first time something hits the wall.