Landscape Material Calculators for Tennessee Ground
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Hardly anything on a hill lot here measures itself. The drive bends around a rock ledge, the bed follows the fall of the slope, and on cherty clay the depth you actually need at the bottom of a run is not the depth you needed at the top. So the honest order of work is this: measure the shape, decide the depth, and only then turn it into something you can buy.
Cubic yards, tons, and the reason mulch and crusher run are not comparable
Bulk material is measured either by volume or by weight. A cubic yard fills a three foot cube, and a ton is a ton. The conversion between them is the material itself.
Shredded mulch is about 600 lb per cubic yard on this site's published figures. Crusher run is about 3,000 lb. Same volume, five times the weight, which is why a single general purpose gravel calculator will give you the wrong tonnage most of the time. Each tool below carries the published weight for its own material, so the tonnage it returns is the one that goes on the order.
Between those two ends the figures repeat rather than fanning out. Nine of them cover the fourteen tools: the gravel, pea gravel and stone tools all convert at 1.40 tons a yard, the crusher run, road base and paver base tools all convert at 1.50, and the two sands and river rock all convert at 1.35. Where two tools agree on the tonnage, what actually separates them is the depth the material is laid at, which is why the guidance sits with each one.
Stone, sand and gravel are sold by the ton. Soils and mulch are sold by the yard. Both figures are returned either way, so you can order in whichever unit the product page asks for.
Entering a rectangle, a circle, or five pieces of an awkward yard
The tool takes three shapes. Rectangle asks for length and width in feet. Circle asks for a diameter in feet. Multiple areas lets you add up to five separate pieces and totals them, which is how an L-shaped drive or a bed that wraps a corner gets handled.
Depth goes in as inches and accepts anything from 0.25 to 24. Pick the material from the select list, and tick the option to add five percent extra for compaction and spillage if the material is going to be rolled. The result comes back as cubic yards, tons and cubic feet, and there is a button to have the figure emailed to you.
Depth, the field that doubles an order
Multiply length by width for the area in square feet. Divide the depth in inches by 12 to get feet, multiply that by the area for cubic feet, then divide by 27 for cubic yards. Multiply cubic yards by the material's density for tons.
Cubic yards = (length ft x width ft x depth in / 12) / 27
Take a hypothetical bed 20 feet by 10 feet at three inches of washed stone. That is 200 square feet, times 3, divided by 12, which is 50 cubic feet. Divided by 27 it is 1.85 cubic yards. At about 2,800 lb a cubic yard, or 1.40 tons, that is 1.85 x 1.4, roughly 2.6 tons.
Area is usually measured. Depth is usually assumed, and it is the one that doubles an order. The same 200 square feet at six inches needs twice the stone.
Which tool for a drive, a bed, a trench or a bank
For a drive or pad, size the base with the crusher run or road base tool and the wearing course separately with the gravel tool. Graded washed sizes go through the stone tool, and a soft spot or a French drain is sized there too. Beds and borders use mulch, river rock or pea gravel. Ground work splits between fill dirt, topsoil and garden soil. A patio takes two passes, paver base and then paver sand, and an eroding creek bank is sized with the rip rap tool. Bedding and mix sand has its own sand tool.
Once you have a figure, pick the quantity and a date on the product page, and check the access to your drop spot before you book.
Common questions
Which number do I order against, the cubic yards or the tons?
Whichever unit the product is sold in. Stone, gravel and sand are sold by the ton here, and soils and mulch by the yard. The tool returns both, so the safest habit is to read off the unit that matches the product page you are about to buy from rather than converting it yourself. Cubic feet is the third figure, which is mostly useful when you are comparing against a bagged product.
Should I always tick the five percent extra option?
It starts ticked. Leave it on when the material is being compacted or moved twice, since anything wheelbarrowed across a lawn loses a little on the way. Crusher run, Dense Grade Base and paver base all lose height under a roller, which is why the crusher run, road base and paver base calculators use ten percent instead. Untick it for a drainage trench or a mulch bed, where the measured depth is the finished depth. On soft, wet ground, five percent may not be enough, because the first lift partly disappears into the subgrade before it starts building.
My drive is not a rectangle or a circle. How do I measure it?
Break it into pieces that are. An L becomes two rectangles, a T becomes three, a rounded turnaround becomes a circle or half of one. Make sure the pieces do not overlap, then enter them as multiple areas, up to five. For a curved path, measure along the centerline for the length and average two or three widths. If it needs more than five pieces, run the tool twice and add the results.
How accurate is the tonnage figure?
It is accurate for the measurements and the weight it was given. The weights used are this site's published figures per cubic yard, and real material varies a little with moisture, which matters most for soils and fill. The bigger source of error is nearly always depth, since a quarter inch difference over a large area moves the tonnage more than most people expect. Measure the depth in a few places on uneven ground and use the average.
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All 24 materials in these calculators are in stock, delivered free across Tennessee.