Landscape Material Calculators, One Weight at a Time

Choose your material

A single general aggregate calculator is the tool most people expect and the one that causes the trouble. Volume is volume, but tonnage is not: a cubic yard of shredded mulch is published here at about 600 lb, while a cubic yard of dense graded base is about 3,000 lb. Same cube, five times the weight. That is why this is a set of landscape material calculators rather than one, with each tool carrying the weight this site publishes for its own product.

Tools for the Stone That Has to Carry a Lane or Pad

• Gravel calculator for drives, paths and pads in tons of crushed or decorative rock.
• Road base calculator for the compacted layer under lanes, long drives and equipment pads.
• Crusher run calculator for a dense graded base under a shorter drive, a pad or a shoulder. It carries the same 1.50 tons per yard as the road base tool, so the choice between the two is settled on the product page, not on the tonnage.
• Paver base calculator for the compacted layer that keeps a patio flat through a freeze-thaw winter.

Tools for Loose Stone, Drainage and Bedding Layers

• Stone calculator for graded stone: #57, 3/4 inch, screenings, ballast.
• Pea gravel calculator for paths, patios and play areas.
• River rock calculator for borders, beds and dry creek runs.
• Rip rap calculator for a scouring ditch bank or a shoreline, in layers rather than a spread depth.
• Sand calculator for mason and washed sand, and paver sand calculator for bedding by the ton and joint sand by the bag.

Tools for Soil, Fill and Beds on Heavy Clay

• Topsoil calculator for new lawns and finish grading.
• Soil calculator for garden beds, planters and raised beds.
• Dirt calculator for filling low spots and raising grade.
• Mulch calculator for beds and borders.

The Fields You Fill In, and the Limits on Each

Pick a shape first: a rectangle, a circle by its diameter, or multiple areas, up to five, totaled together. Lengths, widths and diameters go in as feet. Depth goes in as inches, anywhere from 0.25 to 24. Choose the material, and tick the box to add 5 percent for compaction and spillage if the layer will be rolled or driven on. The result comes back as cubic yards, tons and cubic feet, and it can be emailed.

The arithmetic behind it:

Cubic yards = (length ft x width ft x depth in ÷ 12) ÷ 27

Tons = cubic yards x the material's tons per yard

A worked example, entered as a circle. A 12 foot fire ring apron is 6 feet of radius, so the area is 3.14 x 36, about 113 square feet. At 3 inches, that is 113 x 0.25 = 28.3 cubic feet, and 28.3 divided by 27 is 1.05 cubic yards. In #57 stone at 1.40 tons per yard, call it 1.5 tons. It is a sample layout, not an order.

The Weights Behind Every Figure These Tools Return

Driveway and walkway gravel, pea gravel at 3/8 inch, and crushed stone at #57 or 3/4 inch are each published at roughly 2,800 lb per cubic yard, which is 1.40 tons. Crusher run, road base and paver base are roughly 3,000 lb, or 1.50. Stone screenings, #4 stone and railroad ballast are roughly 2,900 lb, or 1.45. River rock at 1 to 3 inch, mason and washed sand, and paver sand are roughly 2,700 lb, or 1.35. Screened topsoil is roughly 2,200 lb (1.10), fill dirt 2,400 (1.20), blended garden soil 2,000 (1.00) and shredded mulch 600 (0.30). RipRap and armor stone are the heaviest at roughly 3,100 lb, or 1.55.

Nine figures cover fourteen tools, and three of them return 1.40 and three 1.50, so choosing between those does not move the tonnage. What moves is the depth: an inch of bedding sand under pavers, two to three inches of mulch, four to six of topsoil under seed, a foot or more of clean stone in a saturated trench, and riprap placed in layers rather than spread.

Depth is where estimates go wrong far more often than area. A pad measured carefully at 15 by 6 takes three times the stone at 6 inches that it takes at 2. Check the depth on the product page before you trust the tonnage, and how a load is delivered before you decide where it lands.

Common questions