Mason Sand for Tennessee Mortar Tubs, Paver Joints and Sandboxes

The sand that ruins a patio and the sand that finishes one look almost identical in a pile, which is why this product gets ordered for the wrong job more often than anything else in the catalogue. Mason sand is the fine, soft, washed one. It is the sand that goes into a mortar tub, sweeps into a paver joint and fills a sandbox. It is not the coarse material that builds a bed under paving and it is not a base. Get that line straight and the rest of the page is arithmetic.

Reading the spec: ultra-fine grain, washed clean of clay and silt

Two things define it. The grain size is ultra-fine and consistent, so a handful runs smooth rather than gritty and the material screeds to a flat surface with a straight board. And it has been washed, which takes out the clay, the silt and the organic matter.

That washing is not cosmetic. Clay in a sand is what makes mortar go short and what makes a bedding layer hold water and move. Silt does the same thing on a smaller scale. A washed sand behaves the same way from the top of the pile to the bottom, which is what a mason wants when a wall is going up over two days.

Locally, fine material for bedding work is often specified as screenings, Size No. 10, which is a different product with a different texture. Mason sand is the softer, cleaner material, and the two are not swaps for each other.

Mason sand on a hobby-farm job list, and where it drops off

The pattern is simple enough to remember. Where the finish shows and the load is light, this is the sand. Where something has to carry weight or hold a grade, it is not.

Humid summers, hard rain and sand that has to stay put

A fine washed sand is the loosest material you can have delivered. There is no binder in it, nothing to hold the surface, and it is the one product on this list that a thunderstorm can genuinely move while you are inside waiting it out.

That drives three habits on a Tennessee job. Cover the pile the day it lands, because a tarp costs nothing and half a load washing down a drive costs a morning. Do not screed a bed and leave it open overnight in a summer forecast, since the pavers should follow the screed board straight away. And where the sand is the finished surface, such as a play area or a court, edge it. A timber, a paver course or a low block edge is what keeps a sand surface from spreading into the grass after each storm.

Humidity has one more effect worth knowing about: sand that has sat in the open never dries out completely, and damp sand screeds beautifully but is heavier to wheelbarrow than the pile looks.

Splash pad, wall cap and pond edge: three yardages worked

Three hypothetical examples, worked the way the site calculator does it: length times width times depth in inches, divided by twelve, divided by twenty seven.

Paver splash aprons under four downspouts, each 3 feet by 5 feet, bedded one inch. 4 x 15 = 60 square feet. 60 x 1 = 60, divided by 12 = 5 cubic feet. Divided by 27 = 0.19 cubic yards. That is the useful lesson about bedding sand: the quantity is tiny, so it is worth combining with other work on the same order rather than ordering it on its own.

A paver cap and seating area behind a low retaining wall, 18 feet by 10 feet, bedded one inch. 180 square feet. 180 x 1 = 180, divided by 12 = 15 cubic feet. Divided by 27 = 0.56 cubic yards. Note that this is the sand for the paving on top only. The zone behind the wall itself takes washed stone, not sand.

A sand edge at a farm pond, 26 feet by 12 feet at four inches. 312 square feet. 312 x 4 = 1,248, divided by 12 = 104 cubic feet. Divided by 27 = 3.9 cubic yards, which at this site's published weight for mason and washed sand of about 2,700 lb a cubic yard, roughly 1.35 tons, is approximately 3.9 x 1.35 = 5.3 tons. Edge it and expect to top it up, because a pond edge is the one place where the water does the moving.

Those figures are cubic yards. For the tonnage to order, run them through the sand calculator, or the paver sand calculator if the job is a bedding course under paving.

Getting the pile off the drive before a thunderstorm finds it

Fine sand is easy to shovel and awkward to store, which makes the day of delivery the day that matters.

Pick a drop spot on a hard surface if you can, with a tarp underneath and a second one for the top. Sand dropped on grass leaves a dead patch and takes half of itself with it into the turf. Have the wheelbarrow route clear, the screed rails or boards cut, and the pavers or the block on site, because a bed that is struck and then rained on has to be struck again.

Delivery is arranged at checkout by ZIP code and the truck needs clear access to somewhere it can tip. The delivery page explains how that gets set up. Work out your area, run the arithmetic, then choose quantity and a date on this page. For a tight side gate, a long wheelbarrow run or a job where the sand has to go through a house yard, describe it through the contact page first.