Landscape Material Calculators for New Hampshire Loads
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The mistake this page exists to catch is a unit mistake. Someone works out that a bed needs four cubic yards, orders four tons, and ends up either half short or with a pile they will be raking into the woods all summer.
Volume and weight are not the same number, and no landscape material calculator can guess which one you meant.
A cubic yard is a cube three feet on every side
Start there and the rest follows. Length times width gives square feet. Multiply by the depth in feet, which means dividing your inches by twelve, and that gives cubic feet. Divide by twenty-seven and you have cubic yards.
Cubic yards = (length ft x width ft x depth in ÷ 12) ÷ 27
Tons = cubic yards x the weight of one yard of that material.
Sold by the ton, sold by the yard
The distinction matters at checkout, not just here.
| Sold by the ton | Sold by the yard |
|---|---|
| Crushed gravel, crusher run, driveway and walkway gravel, crushed stone, pea stone, river rock, mason and washed sand, riprap | Screened loam, garden soil, fill dirt, shredded mulch |
Stone and sand go by weight. Soil and mulch go by volume. Every calculator on the site returns cubic yards, tons and cubic feet, so you always have both.
A yard of mulch and a yard of crusher run are two different loads
Same hole in the air, wildly different weight. Shredded mulch is about 600 lb a cubic yard, or 0.30 tons. Garden soil is about 2,000 lb (1.00), screened loam about 2,200 (1.10) and fill dirt about 2,400 (1.20). River rock and the mason, washed and paver sands are about 2,700 lb (1.35). Driveway gravel, pea stone and the #57 and 3/4 inch stone are about 2,800 lb (1.40). Stone dust, #4 stone and ballast are about 2,900 lb (1.45). Crusher run, crushed gravel and paver base are about 3,000 lb (1.50). RipRap is about 3,100 lb (1.55).
Mulch against crusher run is a factor of five on the same volume. Between those two ends, though, the figures repeat rather than fan out: nine of them cover fourteen tools, with three apiece sitting on 1.40, on 1.50 and on 1.35. Two tools from the same group hand back the same tonnage, so what you are really matching is the job and the depth it is laid at, which is how the list below is sorted.
Fourteen tools, sorted by what you are building
- Drives, roads and pads: gravel, crusher run, road base
- Graded and decorative stone: stone, river rock, pea gravel
- Flatwork: paver base, paver sand, sand
- Ground and beds: topsoil, soil, dirt, mulch
- Banks and outlets: rip rap
Shapes, depths and the five per cent box
A shape first: rectangle, circle, or up to five separate areas totaled together. Then length and width in feet, or a diameter if it is round, and a depth in inches between 0.25 and 24. Then the material.
There is a box to add five per cent for compaction and spillage. Tick it for anything that will be driven on or run over with a plate compactor; untick it for loose cover in a bed. Results come back as cubic yards, tons and cubic feet, and there is an option to have a written quote emailed.
Two local adjustments the tool cannot make for you. Probe for ledge in several spots and enter the depth you can genuinely fit, not the one you drew. And if the subgrade is still soft from the thaw, fix that before you order, because soft ground takes more stone than any calculation predicts.
With a tonnage in hand, the materials list is the next stop, and the delivery page covers what the truck needs when it arrives.
Common questions
Which calculator do I open if I am comparing two materials?
Both of them. Put the same length, width and depth into each and read off the tons. The volume will always match. The tons will only separate if the two materials sit on different published figures, and a fair number of them do not. If the two lines come back the same, that is the answer rather than a fault, and the choice moves to stone size, drainage and the depth each one wants.
The estimate lands between two quantities. Which way do I go?
Up. Ledge, a crown and a soft subgrade all take more than a flat rectangle suggests, and leftover stone fills potholes. Coming back for a small second load is the more expensive way round.
My trench is deeper than the twenty-four inch limit. What then?
Enter half the depth and double the result. The arithmetic is linear, so that works cleanly for a trench, a drywell or a deep fill.
Should I tick the five per cent box?
For a drive, a pad or anything compacted, yes. For mulch in a bed or river rock in a border, no. The allowance is for what compaction and spillage take out of a load, not a safety margin on your measuring.
I have the tons. What happens next?
Open the product page for that material, set the quantity and choose a delivery date. Delivery is arranged at checkout from your ZIP code.
Priced it? It ships free.
All 24 materials in these calculators are in stock, delivered free across New Hampshire.