Concrete

Our ready mix concrete costs from around £181 to £194 per cubic metre including VAT, depending on the mix. A general-purpose Gen 1 sits at the bottom of that range and the stronger reinforced mixes such as RC28/35 at the top. Three things move the price from there: your postcode, because delivery distance from the batching plant is built into the figure the site shows you; the load size, because small loads cost more per metre than a full 6m³ or 8m³ barrel; and extras such as a pump, a guaranteed time slot or waiting time on site. Enter your postcode on any mix page for an exact price. 

Mixing your own is only cheaper for very small jobs, roughly under half a cubic metre. Above that, ready mix wins on both cost and quality. To mix 1m³ yourself you need around two tonnes of ballast and a dozen or more bags of cement, which costs close to the price of a delivered cubic metre before you count the mixer hire and a full day of hard work. Using bagged dry concrete is far dearer again, at over £1,000 per cubic metre. Ready mix also arrives at a tested strength with the water content controlled, which hand mixing cannot match. For a few fence posts or a small repair, bags make sense; for a base or footings, order it mixed. 

It takes around 100 to 110 bags of 20kg dry concrete mix to make one cubic metre, because each bag produces only about 9 to 10 litres of wet concrete. That is why bags are for small jobs. A 20kg bag of our 40N concrete will fill a typical fence post hole with room to spare, and three or four bags will do a small pad for a washing line post or a bin store. Once a job needs more than about 25 bags, which is a quarter of a cubic metre, ready mix delivered by our Mini Mix service is cheaper, quicker and more consistent. 

Choose by what the concrete has to do. Gen mixes are general-purpose concretes for housing work with no steel in them: Gen 1 for footings and mass fill, Gen 3 for shed bases and floor slabs. ST mixes are basic standard mixes made to a set recipe, from ST1 for kerb bedding and blinding up to ST4 for garage floors and workshop bases. RC mixes are for any concrete that contains reinforcing steel, from RC20/25 for a lightly reinforced floor to RC28/35 for workshops and agricultural floors; they have a controlled water content so they protect the steel. FND2 is a foundation mix for ground that contains sulphates, which attack ordinary concrete. If a drawing or engineer has specified a mix, use that one. 

For unreinforced strip or trench-fill footings in normal ground, use Gen 1 or ST2, which are the standard footing mixes for houses and extensions. If a soil report shows sulphates in the ground, which is common on clay sites, use FND2 instead; it is made with cements that resist sulphate attack and is specified for ground classed DC-2 to DC-4. Where the footings contain reinforcing steel, use RC25/30. Your building control officer or structural engineer will confirm the ground class and specify the mix on the drawings, so check that before ordering. For the floor slab on top of the footings, Gen 3 is the usual choice. 

Multiply length by width by depth, all in metres. A shed base 4m long, 3m wide and 100mm (0.1m) deep is 4 x 3 x 0.1 = 1.2m³. For footings, work out each trench the same way and add them together: a trench 10m long, 600mm wide and 1m deep is 10 x 0.6 x 1 = 6m³. Then add 5 to 10 per cent for uneven ground and spillage, because running short mid-pour is far more expensive than a little left over. Our online concrete calculator on the concrete service page does the sums for you in millimetres, inches, feet or metres. We deliver from 1m³ upwards. 

Cement is one ingredient; concrete is the finished material. Cement is the grey powder that binds everything together, and concrete is cement mixed with sand, stone and water. When people search for ready mix cement they almost always mean ready mix concrete delivered by truck, which is what this page sells by the cubic metre. If you do need cement on its own, for mortar or for mixing your own small batches, we sell 25kg bags of cement alongside our bulk bags of sand and ballast. 

Usually next working day, and often the same day if a truck is passing your way. We deliver from batching plants within about 15 miles of each site, so the concrete does not spend long on the road. If you need the load at a specific time rather than within the day, give us 48 hours’ notice to guarantee the slot. Our Mini Mix service for 1m³ to 4m³ loads runs separately from the commercial orders and can be booked up to seven days ahead. The full notice periods and charges are on our delivery and collections page.