Paver Sand Calculator: One Inch Below, Bags Between

Stand on a patio in its third Missouri spring and both paver sand jobs are usually in front of you. The joints between the pavers have dropped a quarter inch after a run of thunderstorms and a winter of freezing and thawing, and under the pavers, out of sight, sits the one inch bed that was screeded before any of them went down. Same two words, two completely different orders. The paver sand calculator sizes the bed in tons; the joints are counted in bags off a chart.

The Bed Is a Delivery, the Joints Are an Errand

Take a 16 by 11 ft landing, free-standing on all four sides, as a worked example.

The bed covers the base, which runs 6 inches wider than the pavers on every exposed edge, so it is 17 by 12 ft, or 204 sq ft. At one inch:

• 204 x 1 / 12 = 17 cu ft
• 17 / 27 = 0.63 yd3
• 0.63 x 1.35 = 0.85 tons. Order a ton.

The joints on the same patio cover the 176 sq ft of paver surface, and at the usual 1/8 to 1/4 inch spacing a 50 lb bag reaches 40 to 75 sq ft. That is three to five bags. One delivery and an armful. Read them as one number and you will either buy twenty-odd bags of the wrong material or try to sweep a ton of coarse sand into joints it will not fit.

The Depth Field Stays at 1, Whatever the Pavers Weigh

The depth field is the part people fight. It takes anything from 0.25 to 24 inches, and for bedding the answer is 1, every time, on every patio, whatever the pavers weigh. Extra sand does not fix an uneven base; it gives the pavers somewhere to sink into.

Everything else is straightforward. Rectangle, circle, or up to five areas totaled together for a patio with a landing or a path off it. Length, width and diameter in feet. Enter the base area including the 6 inch skirt rather than the paver area, since that is what gets screeded. Choose the material, tick the optional 5 percent for compaction and spillage, which on a one inch bed is really an allowance for what blows off the screed and gets walked out of the edges, and calculate. Cubic yards, tons and cubic feet come back together, and the figures can be emailed.

Enter the loose screeded thickness, not a compacted one. Bedding sand stays loose until the pavers are down; the compactor run over the finished surface seats them into it. That is the reverse of the base underneath, where every depth is a compacted depth.

1.35 Tons to the Yard, and 320 Square Feet From One

Cubic yards are area in square feet times depth in inches divided by 12, all divided by 27. Tons are those yards times 1.35 for mason or washed sand.

Both output figures earn their place. Tons are what sand is ordered by, and cubic yards are what tells you the pile is knee-high rather than shoulder-high before it lands on the drive. A useful check to carry in your head: at one inch, 100 sq ft takes 0.42 tons, and one cubic yard of sand spreads across roughly 320 sq ft. Multiply your square footage by 0.0042 and you should land within a rounding of whatever the tool returns.

Wide Joints Take Twice the Bags Narrow Ones Do

Paver thickness and joint width move those numbers about, so take the label on whatever bag you buy as the guide and round up. Hold a bag back for the first wash-in, when the joints settle and drop. Sweep, compact, then mist, and do it on a dry day. Around downspouts and at the bottom of a patio that drains towards the lawn, joints empty faster than anywhere else, which is the first place to look when sand keeps disappearing.

Round the Bedding Up and Keep the Spare Tarped

Round the bedding order up to the next half ton. Sand left over levels a stepping stone run, tops up a sandbox, or goes under the first course of a block edge. Keep it tarped: sand that has been rained through screeds badly, and saturated sand will not screed at all, while damp sand is fine.

Coarse and Angular, Not the Sand From the Play Box

Bedding wants angular, coarse grains that lock together under load, which means washed sand of a concrete grade or mason sand. Play sand is rounded and fine, and it will travel under pavers and out of joints. Use one bedding material across the whole patio rather than switching halfway, because two materials settle at different rates and the surface shows it.

Joint material is a bagged product bought by the bag, either plain fine sand swept in and topped up every season or two, or a polymeric sand that sets once wetted and holds for years. Whichever goes in the joints, keep plain coarse sand underneath.

Which tool you want depends on whether the depth is fixed. This page assumes the one inch bedding layer and is the right one for a paver assembly. The sand calculator is for jobs where you set the depth yourself, such as a sandbox, a leveling course under a shed floor or sand going into a mix. The stone below both of them is sized on the paver base calculator, and screenings make a firmer bed than sand but leave far less room to level a paver by hand.

With the tonnage settled, choose the quantity and a delivery date on the product page. Delivery is arranged at checkout by ZIP code, and the truck needs clear access to a dump spot, so pick a firm corner of the drive where a tarp can go under the pile. Anything unclear about the bedding quantity can go to the contact page.

Common questions

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