Plan an exterior wall
Every trade, one set of measurements
Exterior wall planner
An exterior wall is planned as a run — a length and a height — and what it is finished in decides most of what goes on it. From those two figures come the studs, the wrap behind the cladding, the cladding itself worked out four ways, and the fixing schedule or the lath each of those ways needs, from the calculator that owns each.
- 1 Measure the wall
- 2 Choose its finishes
- 3 Save it to My Project
Give the wall a length and a height, and it is drawn here with every figure beside it.
The wall
Nothing here is required. Each figure appears as soon as it has what it needs.
Length and height. The face is counted solid: a run holds no doors or windows in this model yet, so a wall with openings in it is over-ordered by their area — worth knowing before you order, and worth taking off by hand.
Add an exterior wall
A run and a height, the same shape a fence is. What it is clad and lined with is asked once it exists; what holds it up is not, because a lintel over an opening is a structural decision and this page does not make those.
Everything the wall needs
In the order the work is done. No row has a figure yet.
Nothing in this wall is everything the wall needs yet. Choose how a surface is finished, or what else is being done, and its rows appear here.
Assumptions assumed
Everything the figures above rest on that you did not give, and what they are still waiting for.
Nothing is assumed yet: give the wall its measurements to begin.
How the planner runs
- Give the wall its length and its height.
- Choose the cladding, or leave it and read lap siding, board and batten, brick and stucco side by side.
- Take the stud spacing your framing uses, which is what the stud count is worked from.
- Read the fixing schedule the cladding calls for — it is the part most often left off a materials list.
- Save it into your project and price the wall with the rest of the job.
Where the figures come from
- Framing Stud Calculator
- House Wrap Calculator
- Siding Calculator
- Lap Siding Fastener Schedule Calculator
- Board and Batten Siding Calculator
- Brick Calculator
- Cavity Wall Weep Hole Spacing Calculator
- Stucco Calculator
- Stucco Lath Calculator
Reading for the decisions
Questions
- Why are the openings not taken out?
- A run in this model is a line and a height with no openings in it. Rather than pretend otherwise, the page says so: the wall is counted solid and is over-ordered by the area of its windows and doors. On a wall with a lot of glass that is a real difference and the figure should be adjusted by hand.
- Is the lintel over an opening in here?
- No. What carries a wall over an opening is a structural decision made against the load above it, not something read off a length. The site's lintel calculator checks a bearing length once a lintel has been chosen, rather than choosing one.
- Does the stud count include plates and corners?
- It comes from the framing stud calculator at the spacing you give, which counts the studs along the run. Corners, channels and the plates themselves depend on how the corners are made up, and that varies enough between framing practices that a single number would be wrong more often than right.
- Why is the wrap area bigger than the wall?
- House wrap is lapped horizontally and vertically, and the laps are material you buy and do not see. The roll calculator adds them at the laps the manufacturer specifies rather than counting the bare elevation.
When the work is a job rather than a room. Plenty of it never starts from a space — a slab, a roof, a deck, a panel upgrade. Each of those is a job takeoff: give it the few figures that job is described by, and every trade in it comes back together, the way the room does here.