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, as in 6 inches or 9 feet 8 inches or 12 feet 1 inches 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 little tick mark or 17.5 feet as an 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. 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 inches and so on. And then you've got 15 feet even equals 15 feet or 15 feet.000. 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 might take place.
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 the 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 times 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 have the factor of 0.083 as the decimal for 1 inch. Times the 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 by 16 feet 3 inches. We run the same calculations for the equivalent decimal point 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.
