Ordering paver base rock by the yard when the quarry sells it by the ton

Say the patio is 14 by 20, so 280 square feet, and you want 4 inches of compacted base under it.

You do the math the way you'd do mulch. Square feet times inches, divided by 324. 280 times 4 is 1,120, and 1,120 divided by 324 is 3.46 cubic yards.

So you call the yard and ask for three and a half yards of base. Say your yard sells base by the ton, and the man on the phone asks how many tons that is.

Now you're guessing at a weight. Guess light and you're short on the day, with a plate compactor sitting there and half the patio still dirt. That's the one truck you can't fix by ordering again before lunch.

Measure in yards, order in tons

The hole is in yards. The bill is in tons. What turns one into the other is what a compacted yard of that rock weighs, and the number that counts is your quarry's, off their own ticket.

Say your quarry's base weighs 1.8 tons a compacted yard. 3.46 times 1.8 is 6.22 tons. Say you order ten percent over to cover what you lose off the edges and in the truck bed. 6.22 times 1.1 is 6.84. Round up to the half ton and you order 7 tons.

Now say a different quarry's ticket says 2.0. 3.46 times 2.0 is 6.92, times 1.1 is 7.61, and you order 8 tons. Same patio, same depth, a ton apart, and that ton is on the invoice either way.

It's the same lesson as the pallet you didn't plan for: price on what the supplier sells you, not on what the job measures. And just like mulch depth, put the base depth on the estimate, so 4 inches is a number she can see.

Yardstick turns your base depth into tons of rock at the weight you set, rounded up to the half ton.