Slab
A 12 ft × 14 ft slab poured 5 inches thick suits a residential driveway or workshop floor. Here is the volume and the bag count worked out from the standard slab formula, length × width × thickness.
Concrete needed
| Bag size | Bags needed |
|---|---|
| 40 lb | 234 |
| 60 lb | 156 |
| 80 lb | 117 |
| 25 kg | 170 |
| 30 kg | 142 |
At this size
5 in is the in-between thickness people land on when a slab has to take a car but is not a working yard - a domestic driveway, a workshop floor, a caravan or boat pad. It is a real step up from 4 in for wheel loads, and it is where reinforcement starts being worth the money rather than optional.
A 5 in slab wants control joints every 10-15 ft - 24 to 36 times its thickness. At 12 × 14 ft that is about 1 joint: 1 across the 14 ft width (2 panels of about 7 ft). Those panels are longer than 1.5 : 1, which tends to crack across the middle - adding a joint on the long side to square them up is worth doing. Cut or tool them about 1.25 in deep - a quarter of the slab - and do it within the first day, before the slab decides where to crack on its own.
The short side is 12 ft, so a straightedge resting on both forms strikes this off in one pass - a 14 ft screed board gives you the overhang you need at each end. Work back along the 14 ft direction and the whole 168 ft² is within reach of two people without stepping in it.
117 × 80 lb bags is 2.59 yd³ - about 59 mixer batches. At this size the bag count is a costing reference rather than a plan: mixing 117 bags on site cannot keep ahead of the setting edge, so the pour ends up full of cold joints. Ordered by the yard it is part of a single load. Have the crew, the access and the discharge points sorted before anything arrives.
| Length | 12 ft |
|---|---|
| Width | 14 ft |
| Thickness | 5 in |
A slab is a simple rectangular prism: multiply length × width × thickness. Enter the thickness in inches (it is usually the smallest dimension) and the plan size in feet. Four inches suits patios and walkways; drives and garage floors are usually five to six.
That volume - 70 ft³ - is divided by 27 to give 2.59 cubic yards, and by each bag's yield to give the bag count. An 80 lb bag of premix yields about 0.60 cubic feet, so this job takes 117 of them; bag counts always round up, because you cannot buy part of a bag.
Ordering ready-mix instead? Suppliers sell by the cubic yard (or cubic metre) and usually have a minimum load and a short-load surcharge - worth a call before you choose between bags and a truck.
Formwork
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