Topsoil Calculator: Half an Inch or Four Inches Over Clay
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Most people arrive at the topsoil calculator with a lawn to start, and the lawn is waiting on the ground rather than on the calendar. Work in this state runs close to year round, but a soil delivery does not: clay that has been under rain for two weeks will not rake out, it smears, and a soaked pile weighs about a third more on every shovel. The job goes in when the ground has dried enough to walk on without leaving prints. Book the soil into the week you intend to spread it, and use the days before that to measure properly, because depth moves a topsoil order far more than area does.
One back lawn, two orders eight times apart
Take a 2,000 square foot back lawn. Topdressed at a half inch it takes 3.1 cubic yards. Rebuilt at 4 inches over a loosened subgrade it takes 24.7. Same tape measure, same lawn, eight times the delivery, and the only thing that changed was what the soil is being asked to do.
So settle the depth first. A topdressing over living grass is a quarter to a half inch, raked in so the tips still show. Preparing for overseeding takes a half inch to an inch. A new lawn going down as seed or sod wants 4 to 6 inches above a subgrade that has been broken up. A flower bed takes about 6 inches mixed into what is underneath. A raised vegetable bed at 12 inches is really a job for a blend rather than plain screened soil, and the soil calculator covers those.
Getting square feet out of a lawn with beds cut into it
Lawns are rarely rectangles by the time the borders, the patio and the drive have taken their share. Break the grass into the two or three rectangles it is actually made of and put them in as separate areas rather than measuring the whole plot and guessing at a deduction. A patio or a shed base in the middle genuinely does not need soil, and on a small lawn that is a yard you would otherwise be paying to have tipped on your drive.
Where the lawn falls away, run the tape along the slope rather than across the plan, since that is the surface being covered. Write every reading as a decimal, and measure twice anywhere the shape changes.
Sending a seeded area and a trench scar to the topsoil calculator
Pick Rectangle, Circle or Multiple areas at the top of the form, with up to five areas totaled in one calculation. Lengths and widths go in as feet, a circular feature by its Diameter in feet, and Depth in inches anywhere from 0.25 to 24, which is what makes a quarter-inch topdressing and a four-inch rebuild possible in the same tool.
Set the Material select to screened topsoil so the tonnage uses the right weight. The tick marked "Add 5% extra for compaction & spillage" is optional and is the only allowance the form carries. On a lawn it is worth leaving on, because rough ground eats material at the edges. Press Calculate material needed for cubic yards, tons and cubic feet at once, and "Email my quote" will send the figures over with the measurements attached.
A 1,750 square foot rebuild and a trench scar across the side yard
Both are illustrative rather than customer work.
The rebuild: 1,750 square feet at 4 inches. 1,750 x 4 / 12 = 583.3 cubic feet. 583.3 / 27 = 21.6 cubic yards. At 1.10 tons a yard that is 23.8 tons, or 22.7 yards and 25.0 tons with the five percent ticked. Where the ground also has to come up in height, that lift belongs to fill dirt underneath, with topsoil kept for the top four inches where roots live.
The trench scar left by a line across the side yard: 60 feet long, 2.5 feet wide, needing 3 inches to bring it back to grade. 60 x 2.5 = 150 square feet. 150 x 3 / 12 = 37.5 cubic feet, which is 1.39 cubic yards and 1.53 tons. Finish a repair like that about half an inch proud of the lawn around it, because it will settle.
And the topdressing, for comparison: 2,050 square feet at a half inch is 85.42 cubic feet, 3.16 cubic yards, 3.48 tons.
Yards for the lawn, tons for the truck, at 2,200 pounds apiece
A cubic yard of screened topsoil weighs about 2,200 lb, or 1.10 tons. That is the published figure for the material as sold, and it is what the tool applies; a soaked yard weighs more than that. Rain adds weight and no volume, so a wet load covers exactly the same ground as a dry one; it just takes longer to move.
Coverage is the same arithmetic read backwards. A cubic yard spreads across about 648 square feet as a half-inch topdressing, 162 square feet at 2 inches, 81 at 4 and 54 at 6. For a new lawn, allow roughly 1.25 to 1.85 cubic yards for every 100 square feet at 4 to 6 inches deep, which is a useful sanity check on whatever the form returns.
The low corners that swallow the last yard
Round up. A lawn is never as flat as the tape suggests and the last yard always disappears into the corners, the edge along the drive and the dip nobody noticed until the soil went down. Five percent covers spillage rather than a rough, scarified surface, so on ground that has been torn up, add to the order beyond the tick.
Spread it gently. Loosen the top inch of the subgrade first so the layers knit together, since four inches of soil over sealed clay will hold water like a plugged sink. Set the grade falling away from the house, about six inches of drop over the first ten feet. Settle the soil by watering rather than stamping it; a footprint in properly settled topsoil is about half an inch deep.
Squeezing a moist handful, and what the three soils are each for
Top Soil is natural surface soil that has been run over a screen to take out rock, roots and clods, which is why it rakes out cleanly. It should look dark, fall apart when you squeeze a moist handful and poke it, and smell of a forest floor rather than a pond. Material that ribbons between your fingers is heavy with clay and material that will not hold together at all is mostly sand.
That is the right material for lawns and finish grading. Beds and planters want Garden Soil, which has compost blended through it. Anything below the growing layer, raising a grade or filling a hollow, is Fill Dirt, sized in the dirt calculator. Once you have a yardage, browse the bulk soils, set a quantity and a date on the product page, and clear a drop spot the truck can reach. Delivery is arranged at checkout by ZIP code, and the driver needs clear access to firm ground. If something in a delivered load looks wrong to you, photograph it and raise it through the contact page before it goes down.
Common questions
The lawn is only thin in patches. Do I calculate the whole thing?
Only if the whole thing is being topdressed. For patch repairs, measure each bare area as its own rectangle in Multiple areas and use the depth needed to bring it level, which is usually an inch or two. Calculating the full lawn at repair depth will roughly triple an order you do not need.
The load ran out three yards short of the fence. What happens now?
You get a strip at the back that sits lower than the rest and seeds unevenly. Stop the spread at its proper depth rather than thinning it out to reach the fence, and leave the far strip bare until the top-up arrives. A lawn that is thin in one place is easier to fix than one that is thin everywhere.
How exact is the yardage on ground that rises and falls?
The arithmetic is exact for the numbers you enter, and the uncertainty lives in the depth rather than the area. On uneven ground, take several depth readings against a string line and average them rather than using the deepest point, then leave the allowance ticked and round up to the next half yard.
Which product page takes the yardage once I have it?
Screened topsoil for lawns and grading, which is what this calculator is set up around. If the measurements were really for beds or planters, move to the garden blend, and if the ground needs raising more than a few inches, most of that volume is fill dirt with topsoil only on top.
Twenty-odd tons of soil has to go somewhere. What do I clear?
A flat, firm spot the truck can back onto and pull away from, as near to the lawn as you can manage without the pile sitting where the soil is going. Twenty tons makes a pile most people underestimate badly. If the only option is the driveway, put a tarp down first, and expect the wheelbarrow route to be the slowest part of the job.
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Lawn math done? Soil's on us to deliver.
Screened topsoil by the cubic yard, free delivery across North Carolina.
