How Much Sand Do I Need for Pavers?

Whenever you’re installing brick and cement pavers, you can’t afford to ignore the value of paver sand. Paver stones are typically built on a crushed pea gravel or stone foundation, that’s covered with a 1-inch layer of sand. The sand has the critical role of creating a soft, level bed so that once the installation is done and the pavers start to settle, they do so evenly. Sand is also critical as it allows for proper drainage. So how much sand do I need for pavers?

How Much Sand Do I Need for Pavers? — Preventing Future Paver Problems

In this article, we’ll discuss the amount of sand needed for pavers. We’ll break down how to calculate the amount of sand you need to install pavers.

Because the sand has a crucial role to play as much as the type of gravel that you decide to go with, you need to determine the right amount of sand for your application. You can figure out the right amount of sand by making a few mathematical computations or simply making a rough estimation.

Determine The Square Footage

The first thing you need to do when determining the amount of sand is to calculate the paved area’s square footage. This is fairly simple to do if you’re dealing with a square or rectangular area, for example. All you need is to multiply the length by the width. For instance, a 20-foot patio that stretches out for a length of 30 feet is 600 square feet, as 20 x 30 = 600.

Look At The Area As A Collection Of Shapes

If you’re working on an oddly shaped area, break it up into components that you’ll have an easier time measuring such as triangles, rectangles, or squares then you add all the areas together.

Find The Cubic Amount Of Sand

Bear in mind that you need 1-inch of sand under the pavers, so getting the square footage of the area alone is not enough because you also need to consider all three dimensions of the space. This is important if you don’t want to have to kill weeds in between your pavers in the long run.

Using the example above of a 600 square foot area, you’ll need 600 cubic feet of sand (20 x 30 x 1 = 600).

Reduce The Foot Depth To An Inch Depth

The example above is not accurate as you need an inch layer rather than a full foot. Since one foot has 12 inches, divide 600 cubic feet by 12, which comes to 50. As such, you’ll need 50 cubic feet of sand for the patio.

Convert To Cubic Yards

1 yard has 3 feet so 1 cubic yard is equivalent to 27 cubic feet (3'x 3’ x 3’). Making this conversion is critical because sand is typically sold in cubic yard measurements. As such every 27 cubic feet is equivalent to 1 cubic yard. Divide the 50 cubic feet from 27 to calculate how much sand you’ll need in cubic yards.

Bottom Line

While this method includes a lot of conversions, at the core it’s very basic calculations. Making the conversions is not difficult and sparing a few moments to do it can have a financial and practical impact on your paver project.