finally getting to the grading & planting stage..  Got the bid from the excavator today for bringing in black dirt & grading.  We have roughly 1/3 acre lot (95x200ish).  The back 10 yards, for sure, are wooded & won't have lawn.  We were told that we need 200 yards of black dirt for our lawn.  This seems like an insane number to me.  From what I remember, I think a normal pickup truck load is about 2 yards, which make this the equivalent of 100 truckloads!!  Does this seem crazy to anyone else or am I missing something?

The lot has been completely graded with the clay soil that was on site - we just need a couple inches of black dirt on top to get something other than weeds to grow.

I'm out of town right now & haven't been able to talk to anyone to get an explanation on this one - just going on the email I received..

There is 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard and 144 cubic inches in a cubic foot. So you can do the math, you have 19,000sf (don't know how much is yard). 200yds x 27 x 12 / 19,000sf = 3.41 inches in depth. Not too deep, depends on how much is to be grass. But that will be fluffy inches. I don't get a lot of black dirt but when I get gravel I get about 1.5 times as much as the math tells me to get, because of compaction.

For the most part if you trust your contractor, you can trust what he says you need.

Easy rule of thumb is 1 yard of topsoil covers 100 ft^2 of ground at a nominal dept of ~4 inches.  I would ballpark that you need 190 but I would round up anyway.  around here that is around 18-20$ cubic yard or 3600 dollars.

Personaly I like weeds. 

Eric

Your average dump truck handles about 14 yards in a load.

About 4" is what you need if you want anything to grow. Hopefully your grading will accept the topsoil without readjustment. In my college days as a surveyor laying out subdivisions, soil subgrade was always set 6" below finish grade and we used 6" of topsoil.

Bruce

Based on the initial post I'm assuming your lot is 200 ft deep and the back 10 yards won't have any fill added because of existing trees. That leaves 170' x 95' = 16,150 sq ft. Subtracting ~2000 sq ft for the house and ~500 sq ft for the driveway and sidewalks leaves 13,650 sq ft. 1 cubic yard of material will cover 81 sq ft at a depth of 4". Dividing 13,650 sq ft by 81 sq ft per cu yard = 168.5 cubic yards. So, the 200 yard estimate isn't far off the mark, especially if you need a little more than 4" depth in some areas. Assuming a medium sized 2 or 3 axle dump truck with a 13/14 yd bed results ~12-15 loads of topsoil. Around here, that size load goes for ~$150, so you would be looking at ~$1800-$2250.

I'm not a fan of good soil sitting on clay - see if you can get them mixed or tilled together somewhat.

Computations sound pretty close.. but plan on more than a "couple of inches" of soil. You will need more than that to grow a decent lawn. And if the lawn isn't established fairly fast, you'll have erosion where nothing will grow. Yep.. landscaping is expensive! But it adds mega value to your finished home.

Jerry Wright Homes, Inc.
Killeen Copperas Cove Ft Hood Tx