Two inches or three is the whole mulch quote

The homeowner says she wants the beds freshened up. You measure them. Four beds, about 600 square feet in all.

The math is simple. Square feet times depth in inches, divided by 324, gives you cubic yards.

At two inches, 600 square feet is 3.7 yards.

At three inches, it's 5.6.

Same beds. Fifty percent more mulch. The only thing that changed is what she meant by freshened up.

Two inches is a top dress on a bed that already has mulch in it. Three is a new bed, or one that's gone bare. Price one when she was expecting the other and somebody ends up unhappy, and it's usually you.

Put the depth on the estimate

Ask her which she wants. Then write it down where she can see it: 600 square feet at 2 inches. There's no argument later about why the beds look thin, or why your number came in higher than the neighbor's.

Kevin Goodwin runs jobs in Alabama. He measures every bed on its own, length times width, adds them up into one order, and then adds one more yard. Every time. Mulch gets dropped, gets spread a little thick at the edges, and never comes out exactly to the math. One extra yard costs less than a second trip to the supplier.

Yardstick prints the depth on the estimate, right beside the yards.