Miscellaneous Metals Calculator

Total Misc Metals is a straight sum of four line items, each priced with a flat average unit weight: 75 lbs per 10 LF handrail section, 1,000 lbs per stair flight, 15 lbs per embed plate, and 35 lbs per loose lintel. Because a single stair flight assembly is modeled at roughly 13 times the weight of a single handrail section and more than 25 times an embed plate, the count you enter for Stair Flights has the largest real influence on the total tons at this calculator's default quantities -- at the defaults (10 handrails, 4 stair flights, 25 embed plates, 30 lintels), the four stair flights alone account for about two-thirds of the total weight, even though there are more handrail sections and lintels by count. Of the four line items, Loose Lintels and Handrail Sections are the ones where a modest count change shows up cleanly, since their default quantities are large enough that a 10% nudge lands on a different whole count; Stair Flights, with a smaller default count of 4, only shows movement when you change it by at least one whole flight.

Estimated Cost applies a single flat $5,000/ton rate to the combined weight regardless of which line items make up that weight -- it does not price handrails, stairs, plates, and lintels at different per-ton rates even though real unit pricing for these trades varies. Intensity Ratio (lbs/sq ft) simply divides the total weight by Total Building Area, so a larger building area always produces a lower ratio for the same fixed item counts, useful for sanity-checking a takeoff against industry benchmarks.