Frame a wall, size the floor joists, total the lumber order, and pour a slab — deterministic calculators, not a guessed estimate.
Trades 8 min read
framing turns linear feet of wall and a wall height into stud, plate, and header counts (plus board-feet and cost). floor-joist checks joist size and spacing feasibility for a given span and live load, and returns the joist count for that run.
board-feet prices a run of lumber from its dimensions and a quantity — feed it the joist count from the step above and it prices exactly that run, not a guess. bill-of-materials then aggregates every line item on the job (studs, sheathing, joists, whatever else) into a subtotal with waste allowance and tax. The frame-and-order-lumber template runs all four steps in that exact order, threading the joist count automatically.
Pouring a slab too? concrete sizes the cubic yards, bag counts, and ready-mix cost; rebar grids the same slab. The concrete-pour-estimator template runs both and rolls the concrete cost straight into a bid-estimator bid.
Every one of these is a deterministic calculator, not an estimate an LLM guessed at — the same inputs always produce the same output, which matters when a bid has your name on it.