How much sod do I need?
Sod is sold by the slab, the roll and the pallet, and your lawn is measured in square feet. Here is how those convert, what a pallet weighs when it lands on your driveway, and the honest comparison against a bag of seed.
How much sod do you need?
Working out a whole yard rather than one bed? Sketch it to scale in the planner and every area is measured, costed and totalled together.
What a slab covers
There is no single standard, which is the first thing to know. Most northern growers cut a slab 16 by 24 inches, which is 2.67 square feet. Southern growers handling St. Augustine and zoysia more often cut 16 by 48, which is 5.33 square feet, and some sell big rolls that cover 10 square feet or more and need two people to move.
So do not order by the slab count until you have asked what a slab is. Order by the square foot and let the farm do the division. That is the number they actually work in.
| Cut | One piece covers | Pieces per 450 sq ft pallet |
|---|---|---|
| 16 × 24 in slab | 2.67 sq ft | about 168 |
| 16 × 48 in slab | 5.33 sq ft | about 84 |
| 24 in × 5 ft roll | 10 sq ft | about 45 |
Pallets
A pallet is the unit sod is delivered on, and it covers somewhere between 400 and 500 square feet depending on the farm and the cut. Four hundred and fifty is the figure to plan around until yours tells you otherwise.
The part that surprises people is the weight. A pallet of sod runs 1,500 to 3,000 pounds. The soil in it is most of that, and a farm that cut in the rain is at the top of the range. That is a forklift or a tailgate delivery, not a pickup, and it is why sod is a job you clear a day for rather than a Saturday morning.
It is also perishable. Sod is a living plant with its roots cut off, and stacked on a pallet in summer it starts composting itself from the middle. Lay it the day it arrives. If that is genuinely impossible, break the pallet down, spread the slabs out in shade and water them, and accept that day three is a gamble.
Add for cuts, but not much
Five per cent is the right allowance. Sod is trimmed with a knife to follow a bed line rather than cut around like a paver, and most offcuts are big enough to lay somewhere else, so the waste is genuinely small. A yard that is all curves and island beds might want ten.
The exception is a long thin strip, like a parkway or a side return, where you are cutting nearly every piece lengthwise. Order fifteen per cent there.
What goes under it
Sod laid on compacted builder's clay dies, and it dies slowly enough that people blame the watering. It needs four to six inches of loose topsoil to root into. If you are starting from bare subsoil, that is a separate order and often a bigger one than the sod: 450 square feet at four inches is about 5.5 cubic yards of topsoil, which is a delivery on its own.
Grade it before the pallet arrives, not after. Set the finished soil level about an inch below any path, patio or driveway it meets, because the sod itself is roughly an inch thick and you want the mower to run over the join instead of into it.
Sod or seed
Sod costs roughly five to ten times what seed does per square foot, and the whole premium buys one thing: time. A sodded lawn is a lawn the afternoon it goes down. A seeded one is a lawn in one to three months, and it is bare mud in the meantime.
- Sod for slopes, where seed washes away before it germinates; for anywhere the dog and the children cannot be kept off; and for a front yard that has to look finished for a sale.
- Seed for large areas, where the price difference is measured in thousands; for anywhere you can leave alone for two months; and for shade, where the grass types that actually cope are easier to buy as seed than as sod.
The crossover is mostly about area. Under a thousand square feet the difference is a few hundred dollars and sod is an easy yes. Over five thousand it is a five-figure decision and worth a season of patience.
Ordering
- Ask the farm what their slab size and pallet coverage actually are before you convert anything.
- Book the delivery for the morning you can lay it, and have the ground graded and watered the day before.
- Order the topsoil first and let it settle. Sod laid on fresh fill sinks unevenly.
- Water the first two weeks like it is your job, because it is. Roughly an inch every day for a week, then taper.
Measure your lawn in the planner
Trace the lawn over an aerial photo of your address and the planner gives you the square footage of the shape you actually have, beds and driveway taken out, rather than the rectangle you would have guessed.