Sand Calculator for Pool Bases, Sandboxes and Leveling Work
Enter your project dimensions
The order this sand calculator most often has to head off is a base course. Somebody measures a shed pad or a walk, types six inches of sand into the depth field, and buys a layer that rolls sideways under load and holds water right through the freeze.
Sand beds things and fills things. It does not carry anything. Stone carries. Keep that straight and the rest of this page is measuring.
Where does the tape go: the ring, the box, the low patch?
Everything goes in as feet.
A round pool. Circle mode, and the diameter is measured straight across the widest point, outside the track the wall sits in.
A sandbox or a planter. Rectangle, inside the frame rather than outside it. A 6 inch wall over an 8 foot span is close to a square foot of material by itself.
A low patch in a lawn. Lay a straight board across it from firm ground to firm ground, measure the gap at three or four points, and average them. One reading off the deepest spot buys about twice what you need.
Several areas at once. Multiple areas totals up to five pieces into a single figure, so a pool base and the walk beside it come back as one delivery quantity.
Measure to where the sand stops, not to the edging that happens to be in the way.
How deep does sand go, job by job?
Depth changes the order far more than area does, so this is not the field to guess at.
| Job | Depth |
|---|---|
| Bedding under pavers | 1 inch, screeded |
| Base under an above-ground pool | 2 inches of mason sand, screeded level |
| Sandbox | 6 inches of washed sand |
| Leveling a lawn | a quarter to a half inch, worked into the soil |
A deeper bedding layer under pavers is the classic false economy. The more sand there is under a unit, the further it can move, and a patio that rocks in its second autumn is nearly always sitting on two or three inches of it.
On a lawn, keep it thin and rake it in. A solid sheet of sand over till makes a layer that roots stop at.
Hypothetical pool base, 14 feet round at 2 inches:
- 3.14 x 7 x 7 = 153.9 sq ft
- 153.9 x 2, divided by 12 = 25.6 cu ft
- 25.6 / 27 = 0.95 cu yd
- 0.95 x 1.35 = 1.28 tons
Hypothetical sandbox, 5 by 8 feet at 6 inches, works out at 20 cubic feet, 0.74 yards and 1.00 ton, which is a useful sense of scale: a child's sandbox really is a ton of sand.
What does a yard of it weigh when it lands?
About 2,700 lb per cubic yard, which is 1.35 tons. Mason and washed sand share that figure here, so swapping between them in the dropdown does not change the result.
Rain changes the handling, not the order. Soaked sand is a heavier shovel and a screed that smears rather than slides. Volume is what you bought, and volume is what is still there when it dries.
Cubic yards = area sq ft x depth in, divided by 12, divided by 27. Tons = cubic yards x 1.35.
Worth keeping in your head: one cubic yard spread an inch deep covers 324 square feet, and a ton covers about 240 square feet at the same depth. At 6 inches, that ton is down to 40 square feet.
Tarp the pile the day it arrives. Left open through a week of spring rain, it is a week before it screeds properly again.
Should the 5% box be ticked for sand?
The form offers 5% extra for compaction and spillage, and it is optional.
Tick it where sand is going into a container that has to be filled to the brim, or where the pile lands on rough ground and some of it will stay in the grass.
Untick it for a screeded bedding layer. That inch wants to be an inch, and buying an extra twentieth of a ton does not help you screed it.
The rest of the form: rectangle, circle or multiple areas, feet for the dimensions, inches for the depth from 0.25 up to 24, and the material select. Results come back as cubic yards, tons and cubic feet, and Email my quote puts them in writing.
Mason or washed in the dropdown?
Two products, two habits.
Mason sand is the finer, more even grain. Mortar, joints, pool bases, anywhere a smooth finish matters.
Washed sand has had the silt and clay rinsed out of it. Bedding, sandboxes, and general site mixes.
For site-mixed concrete and mortar, allow about a ton of sand to every 7 or 8 bags of cement and follow the ratio your mix calls for.
One material that is not in this dropdown and often should be: stone dust, the New England default under flagstone and patio work.
When does this page hand the job over?
Three jobs go elsewhere.
Pavers. Bedding sand is exactly one inch and has its own arithmetic, on the paver sand calculator. The compacted stone underneath it is a separate order again, sized on the paver base calculator.
Anything structural. A pad, a lane, a shed base. That is crushed gravel or crusher run, not sand.
Joint sand. The material swept between pavers comes by the bag and is not measured by volume here at all.
When the tonnage looks right, open the product page, choose a quantity and a date, and delivery is arranged at checkout by ZIP code. The truck needs firm ground and room to tip clear of the pool liner or the box you are about to fill.
Common questions
Does the 5% cover what gets lost screeding a pool base?
More or less, for one pile on flat ground. It is a handling allowance, not a compaction figure, and sand under a liner is not compacted anyway. For a 2 inch screed, the safer habit is rounding the tons up rather than relying on the box.
The low ground falls away toward the field. What depth do I enter?
The average, not the deepest point. Run a string line level from the high side, measure down to the soil at several places along it, and take the mean. On a genuine slope, split it into two or three areas and enter each with its own average depth.
The pool has a deck wrapping round it in an L. One run or two?
One. Use multiple areas, enter the pool as a circle and each leg of the deck as its own rectangle, and the tool totals them. Up to five pieces. Measure the legs so they do not overlap at the corner, or you pay for that corner twice.
Do I include the timber edging in the area?
No. Measure the inside face to inside face. Edging takes up real width, and on a small box or bed it is enough material to notice. The exception is bedding under pavers, where the layer runs out past the paved edge to support the restraint.
The patio needs stone under it and sand over it. Is that one order?
Two, and two separate calculations. Run the compacted stone at its own depth on its own tool, then run the bedding inch here or on the paver sand page. They are different weights per yard, and the results have to be read separately even though both arrive on the same day.
Related calculators
Two sands, one free truck.
Mason and washed sand by the ton, delivered free across New Hampshire.
