How much pea gravel you need
Multiply the area by the depth, add 10% for waste, and you have the loose volume to buy. A patio 10 feet by 12 feet, 3 inches deep, is 10 × 12 × 3/12 = 30 cubic feet, or 1.11 cubic yards. With waste that is 1.22 cubic yards, which a landscape yard rounds up to 1¼, or 33 cubic feet, which is 66 bags of 0.5 cubic feet. It weighs about 1.71 short tons (3,422 lb), at 1.4 short tons a yard.
Pea gravel is not compacted. The stones are round, so they roll past each other instead of locking, and a plate compactor only moves them around. That is why this page has no compaction question: the depth you type is the depth you rake out, and the yards you buy are the yards that go down. The waste is for what works into the soil, spills past the edge and stays in the truck bed.
How deep to spread it
- Paths and walks: 2 inches is the usual depth. Deeper than about 3 and it is like walking on a beach.
- Patios and seating areas: 3 inches, on a compacted base of crushed stone so the pea gravel does not sink into the soil.
- Never thinner than twice the stone: the gravel roads guide of the Federal Highway Administration asks for a layer at least twice as deep as its largest stone. Pea gravel is about ⅜ inch, so ¾ inch is the floor, and that only for a top-up.
- Play areas have surfacing rules of their own. Check the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's Public Playground Safety Handbook before you choose a depth under swings or a climber.
The 2 and 3 inch figures are what suppliers recommend; no agency publishes a depth for a garden path. Edging matters more than an extra inch: without a border the stones walk out onto the lawn, and the path gets thinner every month.
One cubic yard covers
| Depth | One yard covers | Bags per 100 ft² |
|---|---|---|
| 2 in | 162 ft² | 34 |
| 3 in | 108 ft² | 50 |
| 4 in | 81 ft² | 67 |
Those are before waste, and the bags are rounded up: 100 square feet at 2 inches is 16.7 cubic feet, which is 33.3 bags, so you buy 34. The page adds the waste once, on the loose volume, and counts the bags from that.
Bags or a yard delivered
A bag holds 0.5 cubic feet, so a cubic yard is 54 bags. Bags make sense for a top-up or a small bed; past about a yard they are a lot of lifting. The patio above is 66 bags — at about 50 lb each, 3,300 lb, which is three trips in a full-size pickup at the 1,500 lb payload we assume — or one dump from a truck. At the reference $5.48 a bag that is $361.68. Type the yard's price per cubic yard and its delivery fee into the comparison under the shopping list, and the page says which costs less and from what amount the delivery wins. The delivered prices start at a dated reference estimate; they vary by region, so type your yard's.
A path 3 feet wide and 40 feet long at 2 inches, ending at a round seating area 8 feet across, is two areas on this page: 20 cubic feet for the path and 8.4 for the circle. That is 1.16 yards loose with waste, or 63 bags. Add an area for each piece of the layout, and subtract one for a tree or a bed you leave out.
What a yard of pea gravel weighs
About 1.4 short tons, or 2,800 lb, though suppliers quote anywhere from 1.25 to 1.6 depending on how wet it is and how evenly it is screened. Only supplier figures were found; no quarry data sheet. The number is a box under Assumptions: if your yard sells by the short ton, type its own figure and the weight follows. We are not connected with any supplier.