How Do I Figure Out How Much Gravel I Need For My Driveway?

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How Do I Figure Out How Much Gravel I Need For My Driveway?

4 Answers

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Answer 1

100 lbs. Per cubic foot is a pretty accurate average for gravel. That would be 20 cubic ft. Per ton. (Nomad1 may be more accurate than myself. Weights vary greatly depending on various factors) If you put it down 6 inches deep, every square foot would take 0.5 cubic feet (6/12 x 1 x 1). If the driveway were 10 feet wide and 50 feet long: 1. Determine square feet (10 x 50) = 500 s.f. 2. Multiply 500 x 0.5 = 250 cubic feet times 100 lbs./c.f. = 25,000 lbs divided by 2000 = 12.5 tons or 1. 10 x 50 x 0.5 = 250 cubic feet divided by 20 (cubic feet per ton) = 12.5 tons I would recommend that you call the supplier and ask for a wt. Per cubic foot. Determine the thickness you will use, convert the inches of thickness to feet and substitute those numbers in the above formula. If they don't have a weight for you, ask them how much one ton covers at the thickness you plan to use.

Answer 2

John answered

27 cubic ft is one ton of gravel.. L' x W' divide by 27 should give you a starting point for figuring out how much you need..

Answer 3

We recently moved into a new home and completely redid the existing driveway.

We used a special geotextile grid which we then filled with gravel. The amounts used were specified on the manufacturer's website. If you choose to use a similar form of plastic ground reinforcement, then the amount of gravel required might vary, but in our case we used the following supplier and referred to their detailed DIY page: http://www.gridforce.co.uk/diy-driveways.html.

This details the amount of materials (including gravel) required for making a gravel driveway. However, to be honest we simply approximated the amount we needed (much like the fellow who responded to your question above), purchased what we believed to be a sufficient amount of gravel, and followed the instructions given by our grid supplier. On the webpage above, it does specify that you should not use a gravel smaller than 10mm in size. There is a video on the page that details it further.

Answer 4

The amount of gravel needed is dependant on the size of your driveway. Larger driveways will need more, and smaller drives will need less.

The depth of the gravel should be at least 2 times the length of the stones you are using, and no more than approximately 3 times the stone size.

Most gravel driveways use stones approximately 10-20mm in diameter. So if you choose 10mm stones, the minimum depth should be 20mm and the maximum depth should be 30mm. As such, for 10mm gravel stones it is a good idea to aim for a depth of around 25mm. Too few stones and you will see the ground underneath, but too many stones and your driveway will act more like the gravel pits along the outside of racetracks.

The next step is to calculate the size of your driveway. If your driveway is 100 square metres, you will need enough gravel to cover this space to a depth of 25mm (0.025m). To calculate this, times the area of your driveway by the required depth of the coverage, which in this case is 100 (area) x 0.025 (depth) = 2.5 cubic metres. So, if your driveway is 100 square metres, and you require a depth of 25mm, you will need 2.5 cubic metres of gravel.

1 cubic metre is approximately 1.92 tonnes, so for the job above you will require approximately 4.8 tonnes of gravel

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