Sand Calculator

Enter your dimensions above and the calculator returns the answer in the units suppliers actually sell in — cubic yards, cubic feet, tons and bags.

Typical sand depth by application

Masonry sand and concrete sand are sold by the cubic yard; play sand and polymeric sand come bagged for joints and small areas.

What the numbers assume

The result uses a bulk density of 100 lb per cubic foot and a default waste allowance of 10%. Both are typical values, not measurements of your material — bagged products and different aggregate sources vary by 10% or more. Change the waste field if your subgrade is uneven or you are pouring against forms with complex edges.

Bedding sand goes down at 1 inch and is screeded, not dumped — a 2-inch sand bed under pavers shifts and the surface will rock within a season.

Costs shown are material only, based on a national average price you can edit. They exclude delivery, short-form fees, equipment rental and labour.

There is no such thing as "sand" as a single material. Masonry sand, play sand, concrete sand and backfill sand are different products with different gradations and different particle shapes, and buying the wrong one is the most common way a weekend project fails into a full rebuild. The sand calculator returns yards, tons and bags once you know which layer you are buying for — this page is about getting that decision right first.

Bedding under pavers: one inch, screeded, sharp

The bedding layer does one job: it gives every paver full, even contact with the compacted base underneath so load spreads instead of concentrating on a corner.

The number is 1 inch, and it is not a suggestion. Bedding sand should be coarse and sharp — angular grains that interlock under the paver and resist moving sideways. Masonry sand is the usual product. Screed it with a straight edge on rails, lay the pavers onto the loose sand, then vibrate them in. Polymeric sand is not bedding sand: it is a joint material, swept in and cured after the pavers are laid, and it will not support one.

Work the arithmetic for a 12 × 16 ft patio:

192 ft² × 0.0833 ft  = 16.0 ft³
16.0 ft³ ÷ 27        = 0.59 yd³
0.59 × 1.10 waste    = 0.65 yd³

Two-thirds of a yard. At 100 lb per cubic foot that is about 1,600 lb, or roughly 1.1 tons — one delivery, and small enough that bagged material is worth pricing against it.

Why two inches of bedding is worse than one

People add sand depth because it feels like a safety margin against an uneven base. It does the opposite.

At 1 inch, the sand is thin enough that a plate compactor or a rubber mallet drives each paver down until it bears on the base. The load path runs paver → sand → compacted base, and the sand is a bearing interface.

At 2 inches, the sand becomes a compressible layer. It cannot be compacted into a rigid plate, so it consolidates unevenly — more under the pavers you walk on, less at the edges. The pavers rock, joints open, and the surface fails within a season or two. The sand has not become stronger by being thicker; it has become a cushion, and a cushion is the last thing you want under a wearing course.

If your base is uneven, fix the base. Adding sand to hide it relocates the problem to next spring. The base itself has to be built in compacted lifts with the right material, which the paver base calculator covers — including why clean gravel without fines never locks up.

A sandbox is the one place fine sand belongs

Play sand is fine, rounded and washed. Rounded grains slide past each other instead of locking, which is exactly wrong under a paver and exactly right in a sandbox — no sharp edges, no dust, and it drains.

Fill depth is 6–12 inches, with 8 inches a good working depth for a child to dig in without hitting bottom. For a 5 × 5 ft box at 8 inches:

5 ft × 5 ft × 0.667 ft = 16.7 ft³
16.7 ft³ ÷ 27          = 0.62 yd³
16.7 ft³ × 100 lb/ft³  = 1,670 lb

That is about 1.7 tons, or 17 bags at 50 lb each — which is why a sandbox is a bagged purchase in practice. Cover the box when it is not in use.

Concrete sand in a mix, and why "washed" matters

Concrete sand is washed and graded so the fines are removed. That matters because silt and clay coatings on the grains interfere with the cement paste bonding to the aggregate. If you mix your own concrete, washed concrete sand is correct; masonry sand is acceptable; play sand is not.

A general-purpose mix runs about 1 part cement to 2 parts sand to 3 parts gravel by volume. Working from a cubic yard of finished concrete (27 ft³):

cement : sand : gravel  =  1 : 2 : 3  (4.5 ft³ : 9 ft³ : 13.5 ft³)
sand volume             =  9 ft³ ÷ 27 = 0.33 yd³
sand weight             =  9 × 100   = 900 lb

Roughly a third of a yard of sand, about 900 lb, per cubic yard of concrete — a nominal mix by volume, and a plant mix batched by weight will not match it.

Compare the total before you commit. If you are pouring more than about a yard, the concrete calculator will show the bag counts — an 80 lb bag yields about 0.6 ft³, so one yard is around 45 bags — and at that scale ready-mix delivered by truck is usually cheaper and less work than hauling sand, gravel and cement separately. Mixing your own is for small pours, odd shapes and remote sites.

Backfill over drainage, and the fabric decision

Sand is a filter and bedding medium for perforated pipe, and the standard detail is 6 inches of sand over the pipe, letting water in while keeping soil particles out so the voids around the pipe do not silt up.

Two things separate a drain that works for twenty years from one that clogs in three. Wrap the pipe and the sand in filter fabric, or use a socked pipe — sand alone does not stop fine soil migrating in, fabric does. And do not backfill with the clay you dug out directly on top of the sand without a separation layer. Clay over sand under a driveway is a recipe for a pumping, sinking surface, the same mechanism that destroys a paver base without proper drainage. If you are ordering sand alongside soil for the same job, keep the two orders separate — fill dirt is cheap bulk volume, and sand is a graded product with a specific job.

Sand also serves as a 2–4 inch compacted base under a concrete slab in some details, though crushed stone is more common there because it drains better and compacts harder.

The bulk density trap when you haul it yourself

Sand is sold by volume and limited by weight, and those two numbers disagree. Dry sand is 100 lb per cubic foot, so a cubic yard is 2,700 lb; damp sand runs 10–15% heavier, call it 3,000 lb or 1.5 tons per yard.

A half-ton pickup is rated for roughly 1,000 lb of payload, so a cubic yard of damp sand is triple its limit. Even a ¾-ton truck rated at 2,000 lb is over at one yard, and a 5 × 8 single-axle utility trailer at 2,000 lb capacity is at the edge before trailer weight.

Physical volume is the second half of the trap: a cubic yard is 27 ft³ and a contractor wheelbarrow holds about 6 ft³, so one yard is roughly five barrow loads whether you can legally carry it or not. You have three options — have it delivered, split the order across trips, or ask the yard to load by weight rather than volume. What you should not do is assume a yard of sand is a yard of mulch; mulch weighs about 25 lb per cubic foot, and sand is four times that.

Order for the job, not for the pile

Sand is cheap per yard and expensive per mistake, because the failure mode is a rebuild rather than a top-up. One inch of sharp sand under pavers, 8 inches of play sand in a box, washed concrete sand in a mix, six inches of sand over a socked drain pipe. Four jobs, four products, and none interchangeable with the others.

The default prices in the calculator — about $38 per cubic yard for bulk masonry or concrete sand as a US national average, and about $4.25 for a 50 lb bag — are material only. Delivery, minimum orders and short-load fees are extra and often larger than the sand line on a small job. Type your own supplier's number into the price field; it takes ten seconds and it is the difference between an estimate and a guess. If you are laying pavers, price the sand and the base together, because the base is where the money and the failure risk actually sit.