How many tiles each measuring 3.5m*2 5m are required to cover a rectangular room whose length and breadth are 14m and 10m,respectively?Find the cost of tiles at Rs45 per tile.
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Answers
To be precise, in theory*, you’ll need 300 tiles of 20 x 20 cm.
How? Well each metre would require five 20 x 20 cm tiles laid side-by-side.
So for the length of 4m, you would need 20 (4 x 5) tiles across and for the breadth of 3 m, you would need 15 (3 x 5) tiles across.
So in total you would need 20 x 15 = 300 tiles to cover the floor.
* remember I mentioned “in theory” above? Why?
Because in practice you would need a few more tiles. Why?
As a backup: Tiles can break when laying or cutting (if needed) and hence cannot be used as they would be aesthetically unpleasing. Hence to cover this wastage you would need more.
Skirting: Tiled floors often have a few cm (about 10) of skirting on the walls so that place where the walls meet the floor do not get dirty when mopping etc. So if you need to add 10 cm (4″) of skirting all around your room, you would need to cut each 20 cm tile into half (10 x 20 cm rectangles) for the skirting, hence each tile will cover 40 running cm of length. This means you will need 2.5 (100/40) tiles per running metre of your room perimeter. You room perimeter is 14 m (4+4+3+3). This will mean you will need 35 (14 x 2.5) additional tiles for skirting.
Laying pattern: The above calculation is based on the orthogonal laying pattern (the tile edges match and run parallel to walls). Some times people prefer diagonal (criss - cross or diamond) laying pattern (where the tile edges are at 45 degree angles to the walls) for aesthetic pleasure or just to hide wall irregularities. Either case it means more cutting of tiles and thus more wastage. So you may need more tiles to cover this. That said, any other non standard pattern may require more tiles.
Room dimensions: The above calculation was based assuming your room is exactly 4 m x 3 m (or marginally smaller). If the room is even slightly larger than that, you would need an additional row of cut tiles to cover the gap. Also if the room walls are not exactly at right angles, some tiles would be needed to cover the gaps.
Hope this answers your question!