Paver sand calculator for Texas

A 300-square-foot patio needs about 1.25 tons of bedding sand and only 4-8 bags of joint sand. Same word, two jobs, a twenty-fold quantity difference, and we spend more phone time talking people out of joint-sand tonnage than into anything else on this page. The calculator below sizes the bedding layer, exactly 1 inch of coarse sand at 1.35 tons per cubic yard. The bag chart under it handles the joints, including polymeric coverage per 50 lb bag.

The two calculations

1. Bedding: the paved area (plus the base's 6-inch overhang) times exactly 1 inch. Never more; a fat sand bed is future paver wobble.
2. Joints: skip tonnage entirely and count bags. Standard 1/8 to 1/4 inch joints take one 50 lb bag per 40-75 square feet.

Joint sand in bags

Coverage swings with paver thickness and joint tightness, so check the bag label and round up. Leftover joint sand is exactly what you'll want after the first wash-in settles the joints a quarter inch.

Bedding rules worth taping to the wheelbarrow

• One inch, screeded over pipes or rails, grooves filled as you lay. Done.
• Coarse and angular only: mason or concrete-grade sand. Rounded play sand shifts under load in both bedding and joints.
• Don't compact the bedding before the pavers go down; the pavers bed themselves when you compact the finished surface.
• Don't walk the screeded bed. Lay forward, standing on placed pavers.
• Screenings bed slightly firmer and level slightly less forgivingly than sand. Pick one for the whole surface.

Polymeric or plain joint sand

Polymeric sand hardens after wetting and holds joints against weeds, ants and rain. It costs several times more per bag, must go down bone dry, and one badly timed sprinkle wastes the whole sweep. Plain fine mason sand costs little, sweeps in fast, and asks to be topped up every season or two. Sloped, high-traffic and driveway pavers earn polymeric. A flat garden path does fine on mason sand. Either way the bedding underneath is plain coarse sand; polymeric is a joints-only product.

The re-sanding schedule nobody tells you about

Joints lose sand to rain, ants and leaf blowers. Plain mason sand joints want a top-up sweep every year or two; polymeric holds 5-10 years before edges start to open. Sweep on a dry day, compact, mist. And turn the leaf blower down around sanded joints. Half the joint sand we replace left the patio through a nozzle, one autumn at a time.

Worked example: the 20 x 15 patio

Bedding: about 320 square feet with the overhang, at 1 inch = 27 cubic feet = 1 cubic yard, 1.35 tons. Order 1.5 tons of mason sand. Joints: 300 square feet of standard joints is 4-8 bags of polymeric, or 2-3 bags of mason sand. The base below both layers is 4-plus tons of crusher run, sized on the Paver Base Calculator. Tarp the sand pile on site; damp-to-dry screeds clean, soaked doesn't.

Bedding and joint sand, sorted

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