Landscape Material Calculator Tools for Yards, Tons and Depth

Choose your material

Pace out the area, push a tape into the ground at the low corner, and you have almost everything a landscape material calculator needs. What you do not have yet is the unit the material is sold in, and that is the gap these tools close: measurements in feet and inches at one end, cubic yards and tons at the other.

What a cubic yard looks like next to your drive

A cubic yard is a cube three feet on every side. Spread three inches deep it covers about 108 square feet, roughly a 10 by 10 patio with a little over. That figure holds for every material on this site, because it is pure volume.

Weight does not hold. A cubic yard of shredded mulch runs about 600 lb; a yard of crusher run about 3,000 lb. Same hole, five times the weight. That gap is why a general aggregate calculator gets tonnage wrong and a per-material tool does not.

Why stone leaves here by the ton and mulch by the yard

Gravel and stone are sold by the ton. Soils and mulch are sold by the yard. Every tool below returns both numbers, so you can order in whichever unit the product page uses without converting anything by hand.

The published weights the tools work from:

• About 2,800 lb a cubic yard, or 1.40 tons: driveway and walkway gravel, pea gravel at 3/8 inch, crushed stone at #57 and 3/4 inch.
• About 3,000 lb, or 1.50: crusher run, graded aggregate base, paver base.
• About 2,700 lb, or 1.35: river rock at 1 to 3 inch, mason and washed sand, paver sand.
• About 2,900 lb, or 1.45: screenings and stone dust, #4 stone and railroad ballast.
• About 3,100 lb, or 1.55: RipRap and armor stone.
• And the light end: fill dirt about 2,400 lb (1.20), screened topsoil about 2,200 (1.10), blended garden soil about 2,000 (1.00), shredded mulch about 600 (0.30).

That is nine figures across fourteen tools. Three tools sit on 1.40 and three on 1.50, so the same pad run through the gravel tool and the stone tool comes back at the same tonnage. What separates the fourteen is not the weight but the depth each material is laid at and the job the layer is doing.

The arithmetic each tool runs

Cubic yards = (length in feet x width in feet x depth in inches divided by 12) divided by 27. Tons = cubic yards x the tons-per-yard figure above.

Take the shape the tool opens with, a 20 by 10 area at 3 inches. That is 20 x 10 x 0.25 = 50 cubic feet, and 50 divided by 27 is 1.85 cubic yards. In #57 granite at 1.40 that comes to 2.59 tons. In shredded mulch at 0.30 the same 1.85 yards is 0.56 tons. The volume never moved.

Fourteen landscape material calculators, and which fits your pile

Every tool takes a rectangle, a circle or up to five separate areas, a depth between 0.25 and 24 inches, and an optional 5% for compaction and spillage. Results come back as cubic yards, tons and cubic feet, and can be emailed.

• Gravel, Stone and Crusher Run for drives, pads and paths
• Road Base for the graded aggregate base layer under a lane or a long drive
• Paver Base and Paver Sand, which are always two separate calculations
• Pea Gravel and River Rock for patios, play areas and dry creek beds
• Sand for bedding and mixes
• Topsoil, Soil and Dirt for lawns, beds and low spots
• Mulch for beds and tree rings
• Rip Rap for a creek bank or a slope facing storm runoff

Checking depth at the low corner, not just the middle

Area gets measured. Depth gets estimated, and it moves the total more than anything else: the same patio at 4 inches takes twice what it takes at 2. Strip the turf and soft topsoil first, or the base sinks into it and your measured depth was never there. And on Piedmont clay that has been wet, check the depth at the low corner as well as the middle, because the soft spot is where the material disappears.

Once the figure looks right, open the matching product page on the materials list to set quantity and date, and check what the truck needs on arrival before you pick a drop spot.

Common questions