Divide the patio width (16 ft 3 in) by 3.75 in: Either convert 16 ft 3 in to inches or convert 3.75 inches to feet. 16 feet 3 inches = 16 1/4 feet = 65/4 feet.
65/4 feet times the conversion factor 12 in / 1 foot results in 195 in; dividing that by 3.75 in results in 52.
What does this mean? We'd have to lay 52 bricks side by side (long side to long side) to cover the patio width 16 ft 3 in.
Now let's look at the length of the patio and determine how many rows of bricks, laid short dimension to short dimension, are required to cover the 19 ft 8 in patio length? Remember that each brick is 8 in long. Convert 19 ft 8 in to inches and then divide the result by 8 in:
19 ft times conversion factor 12 inches / 1 foot comes out to 228 inches; then 19 ft 8 inches is the same as 228 inches + 8 inches, or 236 inches.
Divide 236 inches by 8 in (the brick length): 236/8 = 29.5 rows of 8" long bricks.
In summary, 52 bricks laid long side to long side are required to cover the 16 ft 3 in WIDTH of the patio. To cover the 19 ft 8 in patio length, we'd need 30 rows of bricks. How many bricks does this come to? 52 bricks WIDTH times 30 bricks LENGTH = 1560 bricks. Note that because the actual LENGTH of the patio is not quite 30 bricks (it's 29.5 bricks laid end to end), not quite 1560 bricks would actually be needed. Suppose we were unimaginative and simply cut the last row of 52 bricks in half, discarding 52 halves, to obtain 29.5 rows of 52 bricks each.
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