Flooring Estimating and Takeoff Services

What Moves the Number on Flooring

Slab moisture. Concrete releases moisture for a long time, and most resilient, wood and resinous floors will fail over a slab above their moisture tolerance. Mitigation is a per-square-foot system that on a large slab is a very large number, and whether it is needed is decided by a test result that usually does not exist when the estimate is prepared. We price the test and state the mitigation assumption explicitly rather than quietly assuming none is required.

Substrate flatness. Large-format tile, resilient sheet and polished concrete each demand a flatter substrate than a typical slab is finished to. Grinding, patching and self-levelling underlayment close that gap, and the quantity depends on the slab as built rather than as specified. On a slab poured to a loose tolerance, preparation can exceed the flooring material.

Material mix and room count. Flooring cost per square foot varies by a wide multiple across the materials in a single building, and the finish schedule assigns them room by room. A building total at a blended rate is wrong everywhere; the quantity has to follow the schedule.

Transitions, base and perimeter work. Every material change, door opening and elevation change is a transition with a specified profile, and base runs the perimeter of every room. On a building with many small rooms the perimeter and transition work is a substantial share of the package while the area barely changes.

Removal and what is under the old floor. On renovation, removal labor depends on the number of layers and on how well the adhesive lets go. Older resilient flooring and its adhesive may contain asbestos, which turns removal into an abatement scope with its own contractor, containment and schedule. Where the documents do not establish it, we say so.

Occupied buildings and phasing. Flooring is one of the last trades in, which means it absorbs schedule compression, and in an operating building it means off-hours work, room-by-room phasing and furniture moving. Those are real costs and they frequently exceed the productivity loss people expect.

Pattern, layout and waste. Broadloom carpet waste depends on roll width, pattern repeat and seam layout rather than on area. Large-format and patterned hard flooring waste depends on room geometry and layout origin. A single waste percentage across all materials is wrong on most of them.

How It Works

1. 1 Send your plans — PDF, DWG, DOC, images or ZIP, up to 100MB per file.
2. 2 Get your quote — a flat price for the scope with a delivery date, confirmed in writing.
3. 3 Approve — nothing starts until you confirm.
4. 4 We take it off — quantities from the drawings and schedules.
5. 5 Delivery — workbook, marked-up set, assumptions schedule.

Tools and Standards

Takeoffs are produced in Bluebeam, PlanSwift, Trimble, STACK, organized against CSI MasterFormat divisions — this scope is specified under Division 09 — Finishes (09 60 00 Flooring).

Quantities and assemblies are read against the published standards that govern this trade, because the standard is what decides whether two apparently identical items are actually the same line item:

• ASTM F2170 — relative humidity testing in concrete slabs using in-situ probes
• ASTM F1869 — moisture vapour emission rate using anhydrous calcium chloride
• ASTM F710 — preparing concrete floors to receive resilient flooring
• ASTM F3010 — two-component resin-based membrane-forming moisture mitigation systems
• ASTM E1155 — determining floor flatness and levelness using F-numbers
• CRI Carpet Installation Standard
• ASTM F1482 — installation of wood underlayment over existing substrates

Pricing is built on RSMeans cost data localized to your project's market, then reconciled against current supplier quotes and our own completed project costs. Every estimate states its pricing basis and the date it was priced.

Why Flooring Is Estimated Wrong

Moisture mitigation assumed unnecessary. The single most expensive assumption in this trade. Mitigation on a large slab is a major number, it is triggered by a test result rather than by anything on a drawing, and an estimate that silently assumes no mitigation is required has taken a large contingent liability without saying so. We state the assumption on the face of the estimate.

Substrate preparation as a blanket allowance. Grinding, patching and self-levelling depend on the actual flatness of the actual slab and on what the specified material tolerates. An allowance is a guess about a measurable condition, and on a slab finished to a loose tolerance under large-format material it is usually a low guess.

One blended rate across all materials. Carpet tile, VCT, luxury vinyl, wood, polished concrete and resinous systems span a wide cost range, and the finish schedule assigns them room by room. A blended building rate is wrong in every room and it is impossible to check against anything.

Transitions and base not counted. Every material change and door opening is a transition; base runs every room perimeter. On a plan with many small rooms this is a large linear quantity that the area figure barely moves, and it is routinely absorbed into a square foot rate where it disappears.

Stairs measured as floor area. A stair tread, riser and nosing assembly costs several times the equivalent area of flat floor and is a different installation entirely. Rolling stairs into the floor area understates them substantially on any multi-storey building.

Attic stock forgotten. Most specifications require a percentage of attic stock delivered to the owner. It is a real purchase, it cannot be added after the dye lot is gone, and it is one of the most commonly omitted lines in a flooring estimate.

Frequently Asked Questions