Understanding the importance of converting measurements from feet and inches into decimals can improve the accuracy of pricing estimates. This conversion process is crucial for standardizing quantities within a unit of measure, especially when using Excel to calculate costs.
Key Insights
- The process of converting measurements from feet and inches to decimals is used to standardize quantities within a unit of measure, making it easier to price out an estimate.
- Tools like Excel require measurements to be in decimal form for accurate calculations. For instance, 17 feet 6 inches would need to be converted into 17.5 feet before it can be multiplied by the unit cost.
- To convert inches into decimal feet, divide 1 foot by the 12 inches. The decimal value of 1 inch is 0.083. For example, 8 inches would be equivalent to 0.667 as a decimal.
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So, working with feet and inches versus feet and decimals, and why. This is very important because we have to standardize the quantities within a certain unit of measure to price them out. Without the ability to convert inches into a decimal, it's nearly impossible or extremely difficult to price out an estimate accordingly.
So, since we use Excel for our calculations, we're going to take a quantity with a unit of measure and multiply it by the unit cost. When you look at 17 feet 6 inches, there is no way in Excel, for example, to price out a linear foot cost based on inches or feet and inches. Everything has to get converted to a decimal to utilize it with the unit cost.
So, we then have to take any number similar to 17 feet 6 inches and change that into 17.5 feet. So, an architectural design typically measures in feet and inches and is shown, as you see here such as 6 inches or 9 feet 8 inches or 12 feet 1 inch and so on. When it comes to estimating, inches are always converted into a decimal and then added to any whole number that precedes it.
If manually measuring 17 feet 6 inches, it would be recorded as 17.5 feet with a tick mark or labeled as FT. The following lengths in feet and inches are converted to reflect only two or three decimal places to represent their fraction of a foot. So, here you see that you've got 6 inches equals 0.50 feet or 0.500 feet.
It's all the same. Those are in inches. So, what about feet and inches? Now, you see you've got 9 feet 8 inches equals 9.67 feet. The 0.67 is a decimal reflective of 8 inches, and I'll show you how we get to that in a moment.
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The same thing with 12 feet 1 inch and so on. And then you've got 15 feet even equals 15 feet or 15,000 feet. So, note that we have added a zero in front of the decimal for clarity purposes only. And you can easily see that on the very first item with 6 inches equals 0.50. It helps define where that decimal point is located.
It's a good practice. In fact, it's a best practice to get into. Instead of starting out with a decimal, put a zero in front of it for clarity purposes.
So, now you're probably trying to figure out, well, how do we convert all these inches into a decimal? Let's take a close look at this conversion process on example 1. To convert inches into decimal feet, divide 1 foot by 12 inches. This value is 0.083, which is the decimal value of 1 inch. We have a total of 8 inches.
We're trying to find out what the decimal equivalent is. So, we can see that per inch it's 0.083 × 8 inches. So, 8 inches is the equivalent of 0.667 as a decimal.
Let's take a look at example number 2. 15 feet 3 inches. Again, we use the factor of 0.083 as the decimal equivalent of 1 inch. Multiplied by 3 inches equals 0.25 feet.
Plus the 15 feet, which is already a whole number, gives you a grand total of 15.25 feet. That number that we have right now can apply towards any unit cost that we're going to put on our spreadsheet. We're going to take a unit cost per foot, and it's going to be 15.25 feet times the unit cost.
Example number 3. We use a combination of feet and inches. We have 13 feet 10 inches and 16 feet 3 inches. We run the same calculations using the decimal equivalent of 1 inch.
And it gives us a total of 13.83 feet times 16.25 feet equals 224.8 square feet. Now we have the quantity that can be multiplied by unit cost.
