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One important thing to think about when planning a landscaping rock job is how much rock you will need.
Doing the math right can save you time and money. You don’t want to order too little rock and not have enough to cover your whole area. If you order too much, though, you’ll waste money and time moving it around.
When figuring out how much landscape rock you need for your project, there are two things to keep in mind:
Measure the length and width of your job area to figure out the size. When you multiply those two numbers together, you get the space that you cover in square feet. That means you can cover 360 square feet if your project is 18 feet long and 20 feet wide.
Next, choose how much coverage you want. About 2 inches of cloth will be enough for most uses. If you’re using things that are bigger than 2 inches, the depth will probably depend on the rocks. In this case, you’ll only need one layer of rocks that are 3 to 8 inches thick.
What kind of rock or gravel you want to use will help you figure out how much gardening rock you’ll need.
To figure out how much stone costs, you can either measure its volume in cubic yards or its weight in tons. We’ll show you how to figure out what you need in either unit of measure.
First, measure the length and width in feet to figure out how much space you need to cover.
How much space does a yard of rock take up? First, you need to measure the area you want to cover. This is true whether you are mulching a garden bed, covering a road, or making a dry creek. In feet, how long is it? In feet, how wide is it? Once you have those numbers, use the formula you learned in grade school to multiply them:
Area = Length x Width
You might need help figuring out how deep your stone covering should go. When you use stone as mulch, for instance, 1 ½ or 2 inches is enough. At least 4 inches is what you should use to cover a road.
Get in touch with us if you’re not sure which color is best; we’ll be happy to help.
Once you know how deep you want your artistic stone to be in inches, use this other process:
Area X Depth = ??
All you have to do to find out how many cubic yards of artistic stone you need for your project is multiply all three numbers by each other.
??? / 324 = cubic yard
First, measure the length and width in feet to figure out how much space you need to cover.
Get out your tape measure and measure the fire pit, path, or focus point you want to fill with stone. Write down the length and width of the area. Make sure your measures are in feet, and then multiply them to find the area.
Area = Length x Width
Step 2: Measure how high you’d like the rock in feet (depth).
How deep you put down rock depends on the job. If you want to keep weeds from growing when you use stone as a groundcover, put down at least 3 inches of rock. Remember that a foot is 12 inches long.
Take the last number and multiply it by the number of inches you want to go down.
Area X Depth = ??
Step 3: Split this number by 21.6, which is how many cubic feet are in a ton.
The amount of rock you need, which we turned into cubic yards with the last method, is what you have now. Now that you know the weight, divide your answer by 21.6. This will tell you how many tons you need for your job.
??? / 21.6 = tons
