About Yards of Material

Yards of Material is a free set of landscape, concrete and firewood calculators for US homeowners. It answers one question for anyone planning a yard, driveway, patio or firewood order: how much do I need, and roughly what will it cost? You give it a few measurements. It gives you an order you can read to a supplier: cubic yards, tons, bags or cords, rounded up to what you can actually buy.

Everything here, from the calculators to the cost guides, is paid for by ads, which are kept away from the inputs and buttons. How we calculate sets out the formulas, where the data comes from and where the results stop being reliable.

Who builds it

I’m Umair Amjad, a software engineer. I’ve spent more than five years building web applications and, more recently, quoting and pricing systems for building-material suppliers.

The work behind this site is the same kind of math I build for those businesses:

• A quoting engine for a North American architectural tile distributor. It converts square feet into whole cartons, linear feet of trim into pieces, and adds the freight weight of every line. Quotes that used to take reps hours now come back in under a minute, and they match the manufacturers’ price lists to the cent.
• A price-list conversion engine that reads messy supplier spreadsheets and PDFs. Every converted price is checked against more than 9,700 verified prices before anything goes live.
• Automation for a US digital marketing agency (more than 60 production workflows) and an appointment-booking system for a landscaping company.

I studied artificial intelligence, and the rule I take from that work is simple: AI can read and summarize, but arithmetic belongs to tested code. Every result on this site is computed by code that is checked by automated tests, from data with a cited source, or from numbers you type in yourself.

What I’m not

I’m not a landscaper, mason or paving contractor, and the site doesn’t pretend otherwise. The densities, bag yields and recommended depths come from published sources: university extension services, the USDA Forest Service, NIST, state transportation departments and manufacturers’ data sheets. Each one is listed with its link and the date it was checked. Where sources disagree, you see a range instead of a falsely precise number.

For anything structural, such as retaining walls, footings or driveways for heavy vehicles, follow your local building code and a licensed professional. Before you dig, call 811.

How the site makes money

Yards of Material is free to use and is funded by display advertising. Ads never sit next to calculator inputs or buttons, and they don’t change any result. No supplier pays to be recommended.

Corrections

If a number looks wrong, or your supplier sells something differently from how we describe it, tell me. Corrections are made quickly and the page’s “Last updated” date changes with them. You’ll find the address on the contact page.