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An Easy Way To Determine How Much Mulch You Will Need For Your Project

We are lucky that mulch is sold by the cubic yard. Since this measurement involves volume, a cubic yard is always the same size. Being so we can determine how much mulch can be spread over a given area, allowing us to discover how much mulch is needed to complete our project.

A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. Imagine a box 3' wide by 3 ' long by 3' high. A cubic yard is just that, 3' x 3' x 3'. This is just an example to give you an understanding on the size of a cubic yard. Mulch weighs approximately 1,000lbs per cubic yard, so you don't want to order more than necessary. If you do it is often hard to find places to put it!

Speaking of ordering too much mulch, let's get started on calculating coverage per yard. Mulch will cover 100 square feet at 2.5" of depth per yard. This is quite helpful because our ideal mulch depth is also 2.5". This makes calculating the needed mulch amount that much easier. Also, like I said before, a cubic yard is a measurement of volume. This means that this formula can be used for any other bulk products sold by the yard.

Now that we know the coverage area per yard, we just need to figure out the square footage of our mulch beds. To do this take a tape measure and a helper to the areas you wish to mulch. We need to determine the area of each mulch bed, and this is done by measuring length times width.

Example. We have two mulch beds that are 3' wide by 30' long. These are along both sides of our home. All that we need to do to determine the amount of mulch is multiply 3' times 30', which gives us 90 square feet. Since we have two identical areas we can double this, and end up with the actual square footage of both beds. The square footage for both would be 180 square feet. So 180 divided by 100 (1 yard will cover 100 square feet at 2.5" of depth) leaves us with 1.8, which tells us 1.8 cubic yards of mulch is needed. Since mulch is usually sold by the cubic yard, or in half yard increments, we will have to order 2 cubic yards of mulch. Always round up when dealing with mulch. The extra money it costs for the mulch is much less than paying for another delivery fee if you run short.

Read the full article here:  An Easy Way To Determine How Much Mulch You Will Need For Your Project