Every CMU estimating method that starts with square footage ends with a factor. Factors are wrong. TMM is masonry estimating software that renders the wall block-by-block — corners, bond beams, half-highs — and counts what's actually there.
The standard approach: multiply wall area by 1.125 blocks per square foot, add 5–10% waste. It's been the default for decades because it's fast. It's also wrong in the same ways every time.
Corners aren't blocks. They're special units — different face dimensions, different pricing, sourced differently. Every inside and outside corner pulls corner blocks from the count and puts them in a separate column. A square-footage takeoff doesn't know where the corners are. It can't — it never drew the wall.
Real job. Real numbers. The 88th Avenue pump station has a 280 linear foot perimeter broken into 12 wall segments. Rakes, a door, bond beam courses, non-modular height at the parapet.
Tracing it in TMM took 3.7 minutes. The block count came out automatically — not a square-footage estimate adjusted upward, but a rendered wall with every unit in its position.
The takeoff separated stretchers, corner blocks, bond beam units, and the half-high parapet course. Not estimated. Counted.
And the same model labels the wall: that block count travels straight onto the masonry shop drawings, course by course.
Square-footage takeoffs apply a factor — typically 1.125 blocks per square foot — then round up. That factor doesn't know about corners, openings, bond beams, or non-modular heights. Block-by-block counts each unit type individually, so the order matches what the crew actually lays.
Non-modular means the wall height doesn't divide evenly by 8 inches. When that happens, the top or bottom course needs a half-high block — a different unit entirely, sourced separately and priced separately. Square-footage estimating buries this in waste. TMM counts it as its own line item.
The 88th Avenue pump station — 280 linear feet of perimeter, 12 wall segments — took 3.7 minutes from blank canvas to a full block-by-block takeoff. Larger projects take proportionally longer, but the tracing step is fast because it counts as you draw.
Standard stretchers, corner blocks (inside and outside), bond beam units, lintel units, half-high blocks, sill blocks, and cut pieces at non-modular wall ends. Each is a separate line item. No lumping, no rounding up into a waste factor.
Trace the wall, get the count. Founder pricing at $300/mo while seats last.
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