How much concrete for a 60 ft sidewalk?

A 4 ft wide, 4 in thick walk is 240 square feet and 2.96 cubic yards. Add a 6 by 6 in curb alongside and it goes to 3.52, because the curb is another 0.56 cu yd, and 4.00 once a 10% allowance is on and the supplier rounds to the quarter yard.

How do you calculate concrete for a curb?

Not by area. Work out the cross-section in square inches, divide by 144 to get square feet, and multiply by the run length. A 6 by 6 in curb is 36 sq in, which is 0.25 sq ft of section, so 0.93 cubic yards per hundred feet. A curb and gutter with an 18 in pan is 144 sq in, a full square foot, and four times that.

Why is curb priced per linear foot?

Because its volume depends on one dimension, not two. The cross-section is fixed by the detail and the only thing that varies is how far it runs. A slab is a thickness over a surface and moves with two dimensions, which is why the two cannot be combined into a single rate per square foot without losing information.

How thick should a sidewalk be?

For a public walk, whatever your municipality's standard detail says, and that is the only answer that matters because they inspect it. There is no national figure and the IRC does not cover exterior flatwork. Four inches is the common convention for pedestrian traffic.

How far apart should sidewalk joints be?

This page will not print a spacing, because the guidance lives in ACI documents that are not free to read. What it does print is the panel ratio your spacing produces, which is arithmetic you can check. A panel much longer than it is wide will crack across itself rather than at the joints, so the proportion matters as much as the distance.

What strength concrete for a sidewalk?

IRC Table R402.2's nearest row, covering porches, carport slabs, steps and garage floors, gives 2,500 psi in a negligible weathering region, 3,000 in moderate and 3,500 in severe, with air entrainment mandatory in the last two. A sidewalk is not one of those four things but it takes the same freeze-thaw punishment.

Do I need a permit for a sidewalk?

For anything in the public right of way, almost certainly, and often their standard detail and their inspection too. For a path inside your own property, usually not. The dividing line is the property boundary and it is worth confirming exactly where that is before you form anything.

Home › Concrete › Concrete Sidewalk and Curb Calculator

Concrete Sidewalk and Curb Calculator

A curb is a cross-section, not a thickness

A six inch curb looks like trim and prices like structure. On a four foot walk it is a sixth of the concrete, because a curb is a cross-section carried along a line rather than a thickness spread over a surface.

Sidewalk and curb takeoff

Run length

Sidewalk width (0 for curb only)

Sidewalk thickness

Curb

Curb height

Curb width

Gutter pan width

Gutter pan thickness

Contraction joints every (0 to skip)

Compacted base

Weathering potential

Waste allowance (ours)

The section is yours: a public walk or a curb in the right of way is built to the municipality's standard detail, and this page does arithmetic on the dimensions you give it rather than assuming theirs.

Specification summary

Generated from on . Reopen that address to reproduce these figures exactly.

Entered

Result

One section, walk and curb at the same scale

Worked example

Sixty feet of 4 ft sidewalk, 4 in thick, with a 6 by 6 in curb alongside, joints at 5 ft.

The walk is 240 square feet and 2.96 cubic yards. That is the flatwork half and it behaves like a patio.
The curb is 36 square inches of section, which is a quarter of a square foot. Carried 60 feet that is 0.56 cu yd, or 0.93 per hundred feet.
Which is 15.8% of the pour, from something six inches wide that you barely look at. A curb does not scale with anything you can see: it scales with its cross-section and the length of the run.
Add a gutter pan and it stops being a rounding error entirely. A 6 by 6 curb with an 18 in pan 6 in thick is 144 square inches, a full square foot of section, which is 3.70 cu yd per hundred feet. Four times the plain curb.
The joints put twelve panels in sixty feet, each 5 by 4 ft, a ratio of 1.25 to 1. Panels much longer than they are wide crack across themselves rather than at the joints, and the ratio is arithmetic you can check.

The number that separates this from every other flatwork page is the cross-section. Curb is sold by the linear foot for exactly that reason, and a curb quote cannot be compared with a slab quote per square foot at all.

The formula

Two different shapes of calculation, which is the whole point:

walk = A × t/12 curb = (section in sq in / 144) × L

A, t: the walk's area and thickness, the ordinary flatwork calculation
section: the curb's cross-section in square inches, including the gutter pan if there is one
L: the run length, which is the only dimension the curb volume shares with the walk

The walk scales with two dimensions and the curb with one. Widen the sidewalk and the curb volume does not move at all; lengthen the run and both move together. Which is why the two are quoted in different units and why adding them into a single price per square foot destroys the information.

Whose sidewalk is it

A sidewalk in the public right of way is usually not yours to design. The municipality has a standard detail, and it will specify the width, the thickness, the mix, the jointing and often the finish. It will also come with a permit and an inspection, and in many places their contractor does the work.

So this page does arithmetic on the dimensions you give it and does not assume a section. There is no national standard sidewalk. Widths, thicknesses and curb profiles vary from city to city, and publishing one would be inventing a specification.

The one code figure that applies is the mix. IRC Table R402.2's nearest row covers porches, carport slabs, steps and garage floors: 3,500 psi and mandatory air entrainment in a severe weathering region. A sidewalk is none of those four things, but it lives in the same weather and takes the same freeze-thaw punishment, which is what that row is protecting against.

Joint spacing is not here either. The panel ratio the calculator prints is arithmetic on your own numbers, not a recommendation. The guidance that exists lives in ACI documents that are not free to read, and a spacing invented here would be exactly the thing this site does not do.

Prices for ready-mix and bagged concrete

The published figures for ready-mix and bagged concrete are on the concrete calculator, with the byline, the publication date and the caveats that go with them. They are not repeated here, because the same table on two pages is worth less than one table you can find.

This site publishes no price of its own. Why, and what that means for these figures.

Why a curb is quoted by the foot and a slab by the square foot

It looks like a billing convention. It is a fact about the geometry.

A slab is a thickness spread over a surface, so its volume moves with two dimensions. Make the patio wider and longer and the concrete goes up with the product of both.

A curb is a cross-section carried along a line, so its volume moves with one. The section is fixed by the detail, and the only variable is how far it runs. That is a linear quantity in the same way a length of pipe is.

Which means the two cannot be added into a rate per square foot without losing the information. A quote of so many dollars per square foot for a walk with a curb depends entirely on how wide the walk is, because the curb term does not care. Narrow the walk and the same curb becomes a much bigger share of it.

The worked example shows the size of that: 15.8% of the pour on a 4 ft walk. On a 3 ft walk the same curb would be over 20%.

The panel ratio, which is arithmetic rather than advice

A sidewalk is the most joint-dependent flatwork there is, because it is long and thin and there is a great deal of length for shrinkage to happen along.

The calculator prints the panel ratio and nothing else. Sixty feet with joints at five gives twelve panels of 5 by 4 ft, a ratio of 1.25 to 1. That is a number you can check with a tape and it needs no source.

What it means is not published here. The relationship between panel proportion and where a slab cracks lives in ACI documents that are not free to read, so this page will not print a rule. What it will say is that a panel much longer than it is wide has a preferred place to crack that is not where you cut, and that the ratio is the thing to look at rather than the spacing alone.

And that the joint has to be deep enough to work. A saw cut or a tooled joint is creating a weak plane, and a shallow one simply does not make one. If the crack turns up beside the joint rather than in it, the joint was decoration.

Your municipality's standard detail will specify all of this for a public walk, which is another reason to have it before forming.

Frequently asked questions

How much concrete for a 60 ft sidewalk?: A 4 ft wide, 4 in thick walk is 240 square feet and 2.96 cubic yards. Add a 6 by 6 in curb alongside and it goes to 3.52, because the curb is another 0.56 cu yd, and 4.00 once a 10% allowance is on and the supplier rounds to the quarter yard.
How do you calculate concrete for a curb?: Not by area. Work out the cross-section in square inches, divide by 144 to get square feet, and multiply by the run length. A 6 by 6 in curb is 36 sq in, which is 0.25 sq ft of section, so 0.93 cubic yards per hundred feet. A curb and gutter with an 18 in pan is 144 sq in, a full square foot, and four times that.
Why is curb priced per linear foot?: Because its volume depends on one dimension, not two. The cross-section is fixed by the detail and the only thing that varies is how far it runs. A slab is a thickness over a surface and moves with two dimensions, which is why the two cannot be combined into a single rate per square foot without losing information.
How thick should a sidewalk be?: For a public walk, whatever your municipality's standard detail says, and that is the only answer that matters because they inspect it. There is no national figure and the IRC does not cover exterior flatwork. Four inches is the common convention for pedestrian traffic.
How far apart should sidewalk joints be?: This page will not print a spacing, because the guidance lives in ACI documents that are not free to read. What it does print is the panel ratio your spacing produces, which is arithmetic you can check. A panel much longer than it is wide will crack across itself rather than at the joints, so the proportion matters as much as the distance.
What strength concrete for a sidewalk?: IRC Table R402.2's nearest row, covering porches, carport slabs, steps and garage floors, gives 2,500 psi in a negligible weathering region, 3,000 in moderate and 3,500 in severe, with air entrainment mandatory in the last two. A sidewalk is not one of those four things but it takes the same freeze-thaw punishment.
Do I need a permit for a sidewalk?: For anything in the public right of way, almost certainly, and often their standard detail and their inspection too. For a path inside your own property, usually not. The dividing line is the property boundary and it is worth confirming exactly where that is before you form anything.

Check these numbers yourself

2018 Seattle Residential Code, Chapter 4 FoundationsSeattle Department of Construction and Inspections. Read 2026-09-09. Source of Table R402.2, the only code figure on this page, and read in full to confirm that exterior flatwork is otherwise absent from the IRC.

How every figure here is verified: Sources & Method. Who builds this: About. Found something wrong? Tell us and it gets fixed or removed.

Figures on this page last checked against the source documents on 2026-09-09. Codes are amended locally; confirm against the edition your jurisdiction enforces.

Related calculators

A public sidewalk or curb is built to your municipality's standard detail, not to anything on this page. Their detail specifies the section, the mix, the jointing and the finish, and it comes with a permit and an inspection. What is here is arithmetic on the dimensions you enter. Joint spacing is not published because the guidance is in ACI documents that are not free to read, and the panel ratio the calculator prints is a measurement rather than a recommendation.