hi I'm Tom Stevenson and welcome to understanding construction drawings today we're going to be looking at how to use a tape measure how it reads I'm finding that a lot of new people to construction you know maybe for whatever the reason uh they really weren't told how tape measures work and how fractions of an inch on a tape measure are shown as well in Canada we also have metric that we have to contend with in the US it's going to be all Imperial but it's really good to have the fundamentals down of how a tape measure works and how to read it and so we'll go right from the very Basics today now if you're new to my Channel please click subscribe I have everything about construction on various different playlists on my channel if you click notifications you'll see as I post new notifications everything from Microsoft project construction business management construction project management the technical side right the way through so looking forward to building this community together all right let's get started so we have a tape measure here I've got the listed from you can see it's listed from one two three four inches on this image and what we have here is we've got this broken up into fractions of an inch most tape measures you're going to find go to the nearest sixteenth of an inch and what that means is that this is broken down into 16 equal spaces so I can count these one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen and the last one here is 16. so we've got 16 increments 16 spaces each one of these is a fraction of an inch so we're measuring to the nearest sixteenth of an inch typically I'll show you another example in a minute but typically we're doing that and you can visually that's the visual cue you get used to when you're looking at a measurement is it in the middle between two inches and three inches there's 12 inches and a foot recall and so is this in the middle well then that's a half an inch if it's between the two inch and the half inch well then it's a quarter of an inch if it's between the two and the quarter it's an eighth of an inch and between basically the two and the first tick a sixteenth of an inch right so these are how things are broken up and these are things that are measurements that we use in construction so here I've got three tape measures on the top one to be honest I've never seen a tape measure like that where it's got all of them but this one actually did I kind of like that for demonstration purposes for sure it really sort of spells it out through the tape measure the different sizes the other thing that as we'll zoom in a little bit on this one the other thing that you'll notice it kind of changes at the one foot mark it goes into up to the one foot Mark it's actually even more detailed it goes to the nearest 32nd of an inch because that's an eighth of an inch then half of an eighth well then we got a sixteenth and half of a sixteenth is a thirty second so basically the denominator keeps doubling as you go to smaller and smaller increments usually framers you know when we're doing house on work and that sort of thing they might even call down to each other I need a piece that is 12 and a quarter light if they say 12 and a quarter light what they're really saying is 12 and 3 16. it's just saying it's a little bit on the light side it's not quite an eighth it's more than an eighth and it's not quite a quarter it's less than a quarter right or they might say a quarter full and that would typically mean that you're in between a quarter and 3 8 instead of saying well we're at 5 16 right then there's a little bit of more math that's involved with that in your head and it keeps it a little bit simpler when you're yelling instructions to each other but basically our measurements in Imperial they're not in decimals I find a lot of my students in that they're so used to the metric system or used to decimals that they think that this is basically okay so yeah so that the 12 and 12.5 5 inches right and it is there but it kind of loses itself when they start looking at these and Counting them like they're decimals because it's broken up into 16 spaces 16 sections that's why we've got 16 of an inch that we're measuring to and typically like I said the tape measure it'll be you know in sixteenths you'll you'll give measurements very often to the nearest 16th or even to the nearest eighth or you might use the full or the light aspect and that's pretty easy to communicate that way now going back to this shot here you can also see we've got metric on the bottom of these tapes to my friends in the U.S you probably typically just used to the Imperial which actually makes it less likely to make a lot of mistakes when you're going jumping between systems it's easier to make mistakes our building code is all in metric and the way we actually build things it's a combination of both you know our sheep Goods like our drywall and our plywood they come in four foot by eight foot sheets and so we actually lay out to specific centering with material like 16 inches on Center 12 inches on Center 24 inches on Center these are standard spacings but our building code says 400 on Center or 40 centimeters as that's being shown right 400 millimeters on Center well you can see by this image 400 millimeters which is indicated by 40 here which is indicating 40 centimeters the nice thing about metric it is decimal you can just add a zero to that and now you've got millimeters which is 400 millimeters which is not quite 16 16 inches and if we were to lay out our plywood and our drywall at 400 it wouldn't line up the sheet would miss like it wouldn't be a perfect setup especially as we go from sheet to sheet so in Canada we understand the fact that if the drawing say 400 we can lay it out to 16 inches on Center if the drawings say 600 we can lay it out to two foot on Center if the drawing say 300 millimeters on Center we can lay it out to 12 inches so that you have to know when you work in the construction industry here in the states it's 12 inches this on Center is 12 inches 16 inches is 16 inches so there's no room for confusing confusion going on there now you notice this little Diamond here those of you that work in construction is anybody familiar with that why would they have this diamond here by the way they got another one uh uh after 38 inches right and it goes on there's little diamonds that are placed here and you can see in this one too uh the all uh Imperial one right this one it's a cheaper tape measure so it doesn't have it so that's the difference between getting uh pretty good tape measures and a cheaper tape measure it doesn't bother to put those things so in this particular case 19.2 it's another standard spacing 19.2 divides evenly into eight foot five times 19.2 gives you 96 inches so if you're looking for on-center spacing there's some builders that will build with 19.2 on Center for their studs it widens the stud cavity you buy your bad Insulation at 19.2 insulation it'll friction fit in that space and you have less wood in the wall it improves the effect of R value of that wall so it makes the effect of our value better for the wall as in total so you're improving the insulating qualities of the wall you're reducing the studs there's a lot of advantages and a lot of ways to that so it's just another spacing requirement that's kind of uh wasn't as commonly used until the last 10 or 12 years I would say I see some production builders that are using it quite commonly that way because you can save a lot on the materials and make a more energy efficient house at the same time so yes we have these different spacings that we have here that that breaks this down we have the nice thing is if you have a metric and basically a imperial one you can do quick conversions like you can see where you're at with your measurements very very quickly so that it's not hard to manage that or visualize those differences there's no conversion or that sort of thing you can lay it out very quickly the disadvantage is if you're laying stuff out it's nice to be able to lay it out that you can mark it on both sides of the tape when it's Imperial right so that's why a lot of if if you're working in low-rise residential where we predominantly do things in Imperial it's nice and quick to do your layouts using just and Imperial tape but if you're working in an area where you're converting back and forth it may be to your advantage to have a imperial and Metric tape that has both um that way and so when we look at measurements on a drawing like this one here you know you can see the measurements and you notice that the measurements they have a dash between them so it's like uh three foot Dash 11 inches right that's separating feet from inches so you're separating feet from inches so when you go back here you notice here it is saying uh 16 inches 17 inches well your drawings aren't saying that your drawings would say one foot four inches one foot Dash four inches so you gotta watch on the difference between what you're reading on a drawing and how it actually gets measured and laid out because that I find causes confusion for newbies right like this is three foot eleven it's not 311 inches like there's there's places where I can see and sometimes on drawings it's not always that clear like it might be 12 and then they didn't put the dash uh and or 14 and they didn't put the dash and there's like a nine but there's the dash and for the uh basically the feet and the inches and then some people misread it and we'll say oh that's four that's 149 inches no it's 14 foot 9 inches right 14 foot 9 inches so those little mistakes can be costly and you know if you're visualizing it there's not a huge difference between 14 foot nine and 149 inches but it's going to be a problem right so you have to be careful of how the measurements are indicated on the drawing so you can see feet with a single Dash the Double Dash is uh inches and the dash is that that little hyphen is separating them the feet from the inches get separated on our drawings with this sort of zoom in that you can see things a little bit better that way and so when you're measuring one foot six inches or ten foot it would say 10 foot at some point six inches you're looking for the foot indicators and then you're doing the small amounts if for some reason somebody's written on a sketch because that happens too and they might just say oh it's 77 inches by 44 inches then you got to be looking over here right the 44 inches not four foot four 44 inches again 44 inches right uh is 44 inches 4 four foot four is 52 inches so you got to be careful that you don't make those mistakes in the measurements this one as I said it doesn't have this is actually pretty good the way that they've done this because they've got all this other stuff here right they got metric they got basically the feet and they basically put the inches right but they also put in the side one foot two one foot three one foot four one foot five for that line so they put that interpretation there just like this put that there so they've actually managed on this one tape to fit a lot of information here so it's very detailed that way for some you might find out I like it more I'm less likely to make a mistake I'm using this right this one I would say is is not so good because you know again it's 13 uh one foot 13 inches 14 inches 15 inches I was about to make a mistake there myself pretty easy to do if it says on the drawing one foot four I gotta do okay one foot okay so that's one two three four if I'm doing this all day I'm gonna make some mistakes just even though I know what I'm doing I'm gonna make some mistakes you always gotta look at the tools that you're using and how you can make something less likely for you to make a mistake so while this tape measure may only cost you know seven bucks and this tape measure May cost 20 bucks and this tape measure May cost 23 bucks you're probably going to want to decide between these two better quality tape measures not all things are created equal uh as well you know how well is this you know that adjustment the adjustment part when you're pulling on that that adjustable part so it moves the thickness of the edge of the tape right is it high quality does it move freely because it's not a mistake that it moves it should be able that you hook on the edge or you push it against something it's allowing for the thickness of basically the hook in that movement so that's important too when you're purchasing a tape and that it's functioning properly when you're using the tape measure because over time tape measures wear and there's problems and that could seize up for a variety of reasons I've seen pretty much everything with tape measures that goes on and carefully looking at what the measurement is and you know maybe you're not the framer maybe you're basically a site super assistant site super a field coordinator uh project coordinator and you're asked to do some measurements and checks right make sure that you're looking at what does the drawing say six foot four inches and then you're looking onto that tape measure to find six foot four inches and that if we're dealing in fractions it's dealing in sixteenths of an inch typically but if you're not sure you can just count them out if I count them out over here they'll come out to 32 right so if I count them out at that earlier part here that'll work out to 32 30 seconds of an inch right not common but just so you know you can always figure it out by counting it and seeing what it is like I did earlier and that's the breakdown of you know a tape measure and these measurements that are in fractions of an inch if we need to convert a fraction of an inch to decimals well then we just have to divide the numerator by the denominator so just like if I take uh this uh this um well I'll find it here if I take 5 divided by eight that's going to give me 0.625 right 0.625 just like if I divide one by four it's going to give me 0.25 so this is where your decimals if you need to convert to decimals of an inch can come into play if there's any kind of conversions you need to do there's all kinds of uh metric Imperial conversion calculators you can download onto your iPhone or Android device one of the better ones is um his Construction Master for construction works it's very good for roof layout stair layouts and a whole bunch of other things that's got a bunch of pre-defined buttons in the app that you can use so I would recommend that uh I think it's it's used to be a little bit expensive but it does a a very good job and so these things are in the long run very not costly to you as you learn things going forward so that's what I wanted to cover in measurements today hopefully you got something that you were missing before especially if you're new to the industry I think if you've been in the industry for a while you get this but if not this is your introduction so I'm Tom Stevenson oh by the way don't forget to click subscribe and we'll see you next time have a wonderful day bye for now