Paver Sand Calculator: The Bedding Inch Over a Limerock Base
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The sand already in your yard is the reason the patio needs a base at all, and it is not the sand that goes under the pavers. Native Florida sand is fine and rounded, which is why a tire sinks into it. Bedding sand is coarse and angular, so the grains lock instead of rolling, and it goes down at exactly one inch over compacted limerock. This paver sand calculator sizes that inch in tons. The sand that fills the joints is a separate material, counted in bags, and mixing up the two is how people end up with a ton of the wrong thing.
Twenty-two feet of front walk, one inch deep, in tons and bags
Take a hypothetical front walk running 22 feet from the drive to the door at 9 feet wide, which is 198 square feet of paving.
Bedding goes over the base, and the base was carried six inches past every open edge, so the bedding footprint is 23 by 10 feet, or 230 square feet. At exactly one inch, 230 x 1 = 230, divided by 12 is 19.17 cubic feet. Divide by 27 and you have 0.71 cubic yards. Coarse sand is published on this site at about 2,700 lb a cubic yard, which is 1.35 tons, so 0.71 x 1.35 comes to 0.96 tons. Order a ton.
Joints are a different sum entirely. Across the 198 square feet of actual paving, at standard joints of an eighth to a quarter inch, a 50 lb bag covers somewhere between 40 and 75 square feet, so three to five bags does it. One ton of bedding and four bags of joint fill, on the same walk, from two different aisles.
What the paver sand calculator locks and what it leaves open
Two things on this page are fixed by the job rather than by you. The depth is one inch, and it stays one inch. The joints are bought by the bag, so no tonnage figure applies to them.
Everything else is yours to enter. Rectangle takes a length and a width in feet, Circle takes one diameter, and Multiple areas adds up to five separate pieces for a walk that changes width or a patio with a landing at the step. Depth is in inches and accepts anything from a quarter inch to 24, so you will be entering a 1 there deliberately rather than by default. The material select decides the weight behind the tons line, and a checkbox offers an optional 5 percent extra for compaction and spillage. Results come back as cubic yards, tons and cubic feet, with an option to email the figure.
Screed that inch with guides, close the screed tracks as each paver lands, and stay off the leveled surface: work from the pavers already set. Compact the finished surface so the units seat down into the sand, not before.
An inch, a cubic yard and 2,700 pounds of coarse sand
The inch is the whole discipline of this page. Two inches of bedding will feel like a fix for a base that is not quite flat, and it will move under load until the pavers rock. Build depth into the stone underneath, not into the sand.
The arithmetic is short enough to do on a phone. Area in square feet, times 1, divided by 12, divided by 27, times 1.35. Two rough rules fall out of it and both are worth carrying to site: one cubic yard of bedding covers about 320 square feet at a single inch, and every 100 square feet of patio takes roughly 0.42 tons.
Both Mason Sand and Washed Sand are published at about 2,700 lb a cubic yard here. Coarse, angular grain is what matters. Fine rounded play sand, which is close cousin to what is already under your lawn, will not hold pavers still in bedding or in joints.
Ordering the half ton you will lose into a dished base
The 5 percent checkbox is worth ticking on bedding, but be clear about what it covers. On a 0.7 yard order it is roughly a wheelbarrow, enough for spillage and the sand that sticks to the tarp. It does not cover a base with dips in it. Sand poured into a hollow to level a patch swallows far more than five percent, and it leaves a soft spot that settles later.
If the base is not flat, fix the base. If the base is flat and you are still between two figures, take the larger. Damp sand screeds cleanly and soaked sand does not, so cover the pile if storms are due, and keep the joint bags dry and unopened until the pavers are down and the surface has had a dry day.
Joints need topping up after the first wash-in, when they settle a quarter inch or so, and plain sand needs sweeping in again every season or two as rain, ants and leaf blowers pull it out. Polymeric sets in the joint and holds far longer, but it has to go down completely dry, which in the rainy season means watching the forecast rather than the calendar. Use low blower power around filled joints after a storm has left grit on the surface. Joint bags are a local purchase, made at a builders' supply or a garden center. Nothing on this site is sold in a bag.
Mason sand, washed sand and the sand already in your yard
Two calculators on this site handle sand, and they are not interchangeable.
Use this page when the sand is bedding under pavers. The depth is locked at one inch, the footprint includes the base overhang, and the joint fill is counted separately in bags.
Use the sand calculator for every other bulk sand job, where you choose the depth: leveling under a shed floor, backfill, bedding a run of pipe, filling a sandbox, a leveling layer under a slab. Same products, same published weight, but you set the inches.
For the compacted rock below all of this, the paver base calculator sizes Limerock Base at its own weight, and Stone Screenings makes a firmer setting layer than sand if you would rather trade forgiveness for stiffness. Whichever you pick, keep one material across the whole area. When the tonnage looks right, open the product page to choose a quantity and a delivery date.
Common questions
The patio is a circle around a fire pit. How do I size bedding for that?
Switch to Circle mode and measure the diameter across the finished paving, then add a foot to it so the base overhang of six inches on each side is included. A 14-foot circle becomes 15 feet, which is 177 square feet. At one inch that is 14.7 cubic feet, 0.55 cubic yards, and 0.74 tons at 1.35 a yard.
Can I check the tool's answer without a calculator on site?
Yes. Allow about 0.42 tons for every 100 square feet of bedding at one inch. The 230-square-foot walk above works out at 230 divided by 100, times 0.42, which is 0.97 tons, and the longhand sum gave 0.96. The other rule to carry is that a single cubic yard spreads about 320 square feet at that depth.
Why does one inch of sand weigh less than one inch of base rock over the same area?
Because the tons line is volume multiplied by the published weight of whatever you selected. The 0.71 cubic yards under that walk is 0.96 tons as coarse sand at 1.35 a yard, would be 1.06 tons as limerock base at 1.50, and only 0.21 tons as shredded mulch at 0.30. Same hole, same inch, three different tickets.
Should I tick the 5 percent box on a one-inch bedding order?
For spillage, yes. For a base with low spots in it, no. Five percent of a one-inch layer is about a twentieth of an inch across the whole job, which does not fill a dip you can feel underfoot. Level the stone first, then order bedding with the box ticked and no more.
The walk falls away from the door for drainage. Does the slope change the quantity?
Barely, and you should still measure along the surface rather than across the plan. A patio wants a fall of two to three percent anyway, and the bedding follows that grade at a constant inch, so the tonnage is effectively the same. What the slope does change is the joint fill, since water running across a sloped surface pulls plain sand out faster.
Related calculators
One ton of bedding beats 25 bags.
Mason and washed sand delivered free; keep the bags for the polymeric sweep.