The honest answer is that it depends on the drawing. But there is a sensible way to estimate it before the drawing exists.
People ask us this every week, usually before there is a structural drawing, and the honest answer is that it depends on the drawing. That is not a useful answer to somebody trying to work out whether they can afford to start, so here is how we estimate it.
For an ordinary two storey house on a Malé plot, reinforcement usually works out between eighty and a hundred and twenty kilograms per cubic metre of concrete. Columns and beams sit at the top of that range, slabs nearer the bottom. If you know roughly how much concrete the frame takes, you can put a number on the steel inside twenty per cent, which is close enough to decide whether to go ahead.
What moves it more than anything else is the span. A slab that carries four metres needs noticeably less than one carrying six, and the jump is not gradual. If the plan has one long room in it, that room is where the steel is going.
Two things people forget when they price it. Binding wire, spacers and chairs are about three per cent on top of the bar, and cutting waste is another five if you buy full lengths and cut on site. Buying it cut and bent to a schedule removes most of that, and it removes the storage problem as well.
Bring the drawing when you have it and we will price the steel off the schedule. Before then, take the concrete volume, multiply by a hundred, and treat the answer as a kilogram figure you should not be far from.
