About this site

What the site is

Drywalls Calculator has 60 calculators for the questions a drywall job raises, in the order it raises them: how many sheets a room takes and which size, how many screws and how much adhesive, how much joint compound, tape and corner bead for the finish level you want, how to frame a partition, which assemblies stop sound or carry a fire rating, how long each coat takes to dry, and what the whole job should cost. They are written for homeowners finishing a basement or a room, DIYers patching and skim-coating, and hangers and tapers checking an order or a price.

Drywall estimating looks simple and is easy to get wrong: square feet divided by 32 ignores the openings, the layout of the sheets and the finish level, and a single "bucket per ten sheets" ignores the compound and the coats. A site that does each count the way an estimator does, and shows its arithmetic, seemed worth building. The guides explain the ideas behind the numbers, and the reference tables collect the figures in one place.

How the calculators are built

Each calculator is a small program with an explicit formula, listed on its page under "How we calculate this". The same code produces the example result shown when the page loads, the result you get when you press Calculate, and the worked examples in the text, so the three can never disagree. Before a calculator is published it is run against a set of test cases with known answers, including unit conversions, and it is published only when they all pass.

The defaults come from public sources: the Gypsum Association's application standard (GA-216), finish levels (GA-214) and fire and sound design manual (GA-600); the International Residential Code for board thickness, garage separation and wet areas; manufacturers' product data for board weights, compound, tape, texture, damping compound, clips and anchors; USG's technical bulletins for drying; the Bureau of Labor Statistics for wages; and dated consumer cost surveys for prices. Where no published figure exists, as for waste allowances or work rates, the page says the figure is our estimate. Each calculator's assumption table says which figure was used and when it was last checked; the methodology page lists the sources in one place.

Who writes it

The site is written and maintained by its publisher, with AI writing tools used to draft and to check text, and with every number, formula and claim reviewed by a person before it goes up. We say this plainly because readers deserve to know how what they read was made. The editorial policy sets out the rules we follow, how corrections are handled, and how advertising is kept separate from content.

What the site does not do

• It does not ask you to sign up, and it keeps nothing you type into a calculator. The arithmetic runs in your browser.
• It does not take money from the companies whose products its calculators touch, and it does not recommend specific products.
• It does not claim precision it does not have. Where a figure is an estimate, the page says so and says how wide the uncertainty is.

Contact

Found a result that looks wrong, a source that has changed, or a calculator you wish existed? Use the contact form or write to contact@drywallscalculator.com. Reports of errors are checked first and answered.