Take off service from Builders Merchant

[patp]

Ridgeons, our local Builders Merchant offer a take off service from our plans to give us a detailed idea of the quantities of bricks, cement etc that our build will need. Has anyone used this service and, if so, is it worth the £150 they charge. To be fair they will refund the £150 if we spend £5000 with them. As they are really local this is a possibility though not, of course, guaranteed.

Should our architect, or is technician, be able to offer this service?

[Alexphd1]

Can you not do this yourself??? Good old calculator, paper, pencil and Google???? At least you are not tied to them and easier to negotiate a deal?

[recoveringbuilder]

Quite easy to do yourself, I even as a mere woman did ours and there wasn’t even a block left, same with gutters etc

[ragg987]

1 hour ago, Christine Walker said:

there wasn’t even a block left, same with gutters

Did your tradesmen walk away with the left-overs?

 

I made the mistake with floor board of ordering too close to the limit and running short by 2 planks. The transport for 2 planks was quite high! In general I tended to over-order by a small margin as there was always scope or wastage or damage.

 

I found a lot of suppliers are more than happy to take-off from your drawings for free - I took this up with RWG, brick-slips and some other supply-only aspects. One thing to be  check is that your local BM can supply at decent proces - I usually avoided my local suppliers as I could source cheaper elsewhere. A couple of excpetions applied, but small.

[recoveringbuilder]

Did your tradesmen walk away with the left-overs?

I can assure you they didn’t!

they already had experience of what happened with the kit erectors when they decided to help themselves!

[patp]

Oooh er. A bit nervous to do it myself, especially the bricks. I failed maths at school  Can our architect give us the square metres of the brickwork? 

[ragg987]

Sounds like you need to pay someone in that case, either a QS or your local BM. If you trust the BM it is probably the cheaper option.

[K78]

On 05/06/2019 at 18:00, patp said:

Oooh er. A bit nervous to do it myself, especially the bricks. I failed maths at school  Can our architect give us the square metres of the brickwork? 

 

Width x height will give m2 for a wall