Deck cost estimator

Negative quantities or prices are rejected with invalid_input so a typo never invents a refund line.

How total deck cost is computed from four material lines

This estimator multiplies each quantity by its unit price and adds the four products: decking_cost equals decking times decking_price, framing_cost equals framing times framing_price, fasteners_cost equals fasteners times fasteners_price, and footing_cost equals footing times footing_price.

How to call the API and what comes back

Example: forty-eight decking units at twelve point five, thirty-two framing units at eighteen, five fastener packs at twenty-four, and twelve footings at thirty-five yields a clear four-line breakdown and a single total you can drop into a homeowner quote. Prefer sending numbers rather than pre-formatted strings when you control the client; when you must send strings, avoid currency symbols, thousand separators, or unit suffixes that would fail the finite-number pattern. Send a JSON body with eight required finite non-negative numbers: decking (aliases decking_qty, decking_count, n_decking, boards), decking_price (aliases price_per_decking, decking_unit_price, board_price, decking_cost), framing (aliases framing_qty, framing_count, n_framing, joists), framing_price (aliases price_per_framing, framing_unit_price, joist_price, framing_cost), fasteners (aliases fasteners_qty, fastener_count, n_fasteners, screws), fasteners_price (aliases price_per_fasteners, fasteners_unit_price, screw_price, fasteners_cost), footing (aliases footing_qty, footings, n_footing, piers), and footing_price (aliases price_per_footing, footing_unit_price, pier_price, footing_cost). Optionally send precision (aliases decimals, dp) as an integer from zero to fifteen; when omitted it defaults to two decimal places for money-style rounding. Each field may arrive as a JSON number or as a strict finite numeric string; non-finite values, missing fields, empty strings, and negatives fail with invalid_input naming the field and are never charged. On success the response echoes the eight inputs rounded to precision, sets decking_cost, framing_cost, fasteners_cost, and footing_cost to the four line products, sets total to their sum, and includes formula, message, and steps as an ordered substitution log. Pricing is a flat $0.002 per successful request with unit item.

Practical tips, limits, and related searches

Keep magnitudes inside the published absolute range so products remain finite in IEEE double precision on the Worker and in the browser. When teaching or writing tests, pair a realistic backyard mix (decking, framing, fasteners, footings) with a zero-footing surface refresh and a deliberate negative price to prove the invalid_input path. This landing targets people searching for a deck cost estimator, deck cost calculator, how much do decking framing fasteners and footings cost, or total deck materials budget online; it is not a deck board count tool by itself, not a beam span table, not a labour-hour scheduler, and not a multi-currency converter. Failed tasks that return invalid_input do not consume prepaid balance, which keeps exploratory scripts cheap when you deliberately send a negative footing price to verify error handling.