How Many Yards Is That Concrete Slab? The One-Line Formula
Length times width times thickness, in feet, divided by 27 is a cubic yard. Add about 5 to 10 percent so you do not run short mid-pour. Planning estimates only.
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Transcript
Want to know how much concrete that slab needs? Here's the one-line formula. Length times width times thickness, in feet, then divide by 27. That's a cubic yard. Thickness has to be in feet, so four inches is one-third of a foot. A 10-by-20 foot patio at four inches is about two and a half yards. Most crews add a little extra, around five to ten percent, so you don't run short mid-pour. Running short can leave a cold joint. Work it out by hand, or use the slab calculator at concretenear.com. It also shows bags, and when a short-load truck makes more sense. Then find a local ready-mix or short-load plant at concretenear.com.
Photo credits
- Residential slab being placed from a ready-mix chute. Unknown · Pexels License (free to use; attribution not required, recorded anyway) · Pexels photo 33405139 — concrete workers building driveway in Fort Worth.
- Broom / squeegee finish on fresh concrete (U.S. Marine Corps). Unknown · Public domain · File:USMC-110311-M-3545V-007.jpg.
Original teaching diagrams drawn in Python (PIL/NumPy). No AI-generated imagery. Music: none.