Sod Calculator
Measure the lawn the way it actually is: add a row for every rectangle and every circle, then add a second list for the patio, the drive, the pond or a planting bed, and those come off the total. Set the waste allowance you want and type what one roll covers, from your own supplier's quote, because that figure is the reason two sod calculators give two different answers for one lawn and it is a field here rather than a number chosen for you. The answer comes back as four separate figures you can check a quote against: the lawn area, the area once your waste allowance is added, the rolls rounded up, and, once you give the rolls per pallet, the pallets, shown as full pallets plus the loose rolls on top and again as whole pallets for a farm that sells pallets only. Add a price per roll or per pallet and it totals the order. Feet, yards or metres, and every figure the count used is printed underneath it.
Rolls to order
What this count assumed
- Rolls are counted from the coverage you typed, 10 square feet a roll. No supplier's roll size is assumed here.
- A waste allowance of 10 percent was added to the net area before the rolls were counted. It is the figure you set, not one chosen for you.
- 1,100 square feet over 10 square feet a roll rounds up to 110 whole rolls.
- At 45 rolls a pallet that is 2 full pallets and 20 loose, or 3 whole pallets if your supplier sells pallets only.
The fields open on a worked example: a 40 ft by 25 ft lawn, rolls that cover 10 sq ft and 45 rolls to a pallet. Those are the example's numbers, not your supplier's. Take the coverage and the pallet size off your own quote and type them over, because they vary from farm to farm: clear the coverage and this page asks you for it rather than filling one in.
Exact on the lawn you describe, and plain about the rest. Exact arithmetic on the area and the coverage you enter, with rolls and pallets rounded up because a supplier sells whole ones. It cannot know your supplier's actual roll size or how an awkward shape will cut, so take the coverage figure from your quote and treat the waste percentage as the allowance you chose. It counts material for an area and stops there: nothing here grades ground, sizes a base or sets a watering plan.
Common questions
- How much does a pallet of sod cover?
- It depends on the farm, which is why this page asks rather than assumes. Sod is cut in several formats: small slabs of about 16 by 24 inches, rolls around 2 feet by 5 feet that cover about 10 square feet each, and big rolls a metre or two wide that cover far more, so a pallet commonly works out somewhere between 400 and 700 square feet. Two calculators built around two different farms will disagree about the same lawn for exactly that reason. Take the coverage per roll and the rolls per pallet off the quote or the farm's own page, type them into the two fields here, and the count follows your supplier instead of ours. Clear the coverage field and this page asks you for it rather than filling in a roll size of its own.
- How much waste should I allow?
- The allowance covers the offcuts a shape forces, the strips trimmed along an edge and the odd damaged roll. A plain rectangle wastes very little, so people commonly allow about 5 percent; a lawn with curves, corners or a lot of edging usually gets 10 percent, and a heavily shaped one 15 percent or more. The waste field takes anything from 0 to 100 percent, and whatever you set is added to the lawn area before the rolls are counted, so a 1,000 square foot lawn at 10 percent is ordered as 1,100 square feet, which is 110 rolls of 10 square feet. The figure is yours: nothing is folded in behind it, and with the field at 0 the count is the bare area rounded up to whole rolls.
- How do I measure an irregular lawn?
- Split it. Add one row per rectangle and one per circle until the rows cover the shape, and the areas add up: a lawn 40 by 15 feet at the front and 40 by 10 at the back is the same 1,000 square feet as one 40 by 25 rectangle. A round bed or a fully round lawn is a circle row, measured across at its widest, since a circle row counts the whole circle from the diameter you type. A rounded end is only part of a circle, so box it as a rectangle at its widest and its depth: that orders a little more turf than the curve needs, and the extra is visible in the area rather than hidden in the waste. Anything that is not lawn goes in the second list and is subtracted, so a 60 by 30 foot garden with a 12 by 10 patio in it is 1,800 square feet less 120, which is 1,680. If the exclusions add up to more than the lawn above them, the page says so rather than returning a negative area.
- Should I order by the roll or by the pallet?
- Many farms sell full pallets only, some sell loose rolls at a higher price per square foot, and plenty do both, so the page gives you all three numbers and lets you compare them against the quote. It shows the rolls rounded up, then the same order as full pallets with the loose rolls left over, and then the number of whole pallets that covers the lot. At 45 rolls to a pallet, 110 rolls is 2 full pallets and 20 loose, or 3 whole pallets. Put a price in either price field and the cost follows the same split: with both prices the full pallets are priced as pallets and the rest as rolls, and with only a pallet price the cost buys whole pallets and says so in the lines under the result.
- How many rolls of sod do I need for 1,000 square feet?
- With rolls that cover 10 square feet each and a 10 percent waste allowance, 1,000 square feet is 1,100 square feet ordered, which is 110 rolls. At 5 percent waste it is 105 rolls, and with no allowance at all 100. Change the coverage and the count moves with it: the same lawn measured in metres, at 1.5 square metres a roll, is 69 rolls, because 1,000 square feet is 92.9 square metres, 10 percent takes it to 102.2, and that over 1.5 rounds up. Rolls are always rounded up, because a supplier does not sell a tenth of one, and an area that lands exactly on a roll boundary is not pushed up an extra roll.
- Does it work in metres?
- Yes. The units switch takes feet, yards or metres, and the coverage per roll is read in the square of whichever unit is selected, so metres means square metres a roll and feet means square feet a roll. The lawn area is also printed in the other squares a quote tends to be written in, square feet and square metres, which is useful when the tape is metric and the quote is not. Nothing is converted behind your back: the figures are worked in the unit on the screen and the assumption lines under the result name the coverage and the allowance that produced the count.
- What does this calculator not cover?
- It counts material for an area and stops there. It does not tell you how to prepare the ground, how much topsoil or grading a site needs, what to do about drainage or irrigation, which grass to lay or when to lay it. It cannot see the site either: how an awkward shape cuts, how much a delivery is short, and what your supplier's actual roll measures are all outside it, which is why the coverage is a field and the waste is an allowance you set. For the soil under the lawn, the soil calculator works out a volume, and the area calculator handles shapes this page does not.
- Is anything uploaded, and does it cost anything?
- No. The arithmetic runs in your browser, there is no account and nothing is sent anywhere. The rows you typed, the coverage, the pallet size, the waste and the prices are kept in your browser's own storage so the page opens where you left it, and clearing your browser data clears that too. Start over above the heading forgets them immediately, and Back to the example puts every field back to the 40 by 25 foot lawn the page opens with.
Exact arithmetic on the area and the coverage you enter, with rolls and pallets rounded up because a supplier sells whole ones. It cannot know your supplier's actual roll size or how an awkward shape will cut, so take the coverage figure from your quote and treat the waste percentage as the allowance you chose.