How Much Sod for 300 Square Feet?
Pallets to buy
1 pallet
300 square feet of new lawn, nothing deducted, 10 sq ft pieces, five percent waste.
When the figures look right, the sod material list downloads as a real PDF with your business details on it, built inside your own browser. Nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.
How that number is worked out
These are the figures this page was built with and every line the calculator produces from them. Change anything above and all of it moves.
- Lawn length30 ft
- Lawn width10 ft
- Beds and hardscape to deduct0 sq ft
- Piece sizeRoll, 2 by 5 ft
- Pallet coverage450 sq ft
- Topsoil to spread2 in
- Waste allowance5 %
Pallets to buy1 pallet
| Gross area | 300 sq ft |
|---|---|
| Beds and hardscape | 0 sq ft |
| Net area | 300 sq ft |
| With waste | 315 sq ft5 percent |
| Pieces needed | 3210 sq ft each |
| Pallets to buy | 145 pieces on a 450 sq ft pallet |
| Left over on the last pallet | 135 sq fta pallet does not divide |
| Sod weight | 0.87 tons1,733 lb at 5.5 lb a sq ft |
| Topsoil to spread | 1.85 cu yd2 in over the net area, order 2 because bulk soil sells by the whole yard |
| Water, one inch | 187 gal0.623 gallons a sq ft |
The material list this produces
| Sod pallets | 1 |
|---|---|
| Or sod pieces | 32 |
| Starter fertilizer, bags | 1 |
| Topsoil, cu yd | 2 |
Lawn area compared
Every small lawn size on this list, at the same piece and pallet coverage. Watch the last column rather than the first: the pallet count steps, and the square feet you pay for and do not use swings from almost nothing to most of a pallet between one size and the next.
| Lawn area | Pallets to buy | Pieces needed | Left over on the last pallet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 sq ft | 1 pallet | 6 | 397.5 sq ft |
| 100 sq ft | 1 pallet | 11 | 345 sq ft |
| 200 sq ft | 1 pallet | 21 | 240 sq ft |
| 250 sq ft | 1 pallet | 27 | 187.5 sq ft |
| 300 sq ft | 1 pallet | 32 | 135 sq ft |
| 400 sq ft | 1 pallet | 42 | 30 sq ft |
| 500 sq ft | 2 pallets | 53 | 375 sq ft |
| 600 sq ft | 2 pallets | 63 | 270 sq ft |
| 700 sq ft | 2 pallets | 74 | 165 sq ft |
| 800 sq ft | 2 pallets | 84 | 60 sq ft |
| 1,000 sq ft | 3 pallets | 105 | 300 sq ft |
What else matters here
Three hundred square feet is 32 pieces, and before any of it arrives the thing that is there now has to be gone.
Sod does not go over grass. Laying it on top of an existing lawn puts a layer of dead thatch between the new roots and the soil, which holds water against the new sod, stops the roots getting through, and gives every weed underneath a warm dark place to push up from. It also raises the finished level by the thickness of whatever was left, which shows up along every path and every edge.
Removing it is either chemical or mechanical. A non selective herbicide needs a couple of weeks and a second pass on anything that survived, and the label will say how long before planting. A sod cutter does it in an afternoon and leaves you with the old lawn to dispose of, which for 300 square feet is a surprising amount of heavy material. Either way it is the step people skip, and it is the step that decides the result.
What this calculator assumes
- Sod is bought by the pallet and a pallet does not divide, so the order is rounded up to a whole pallet and the leftover is printed rather than hidden. Pallet coverage is a yard by yard number, from 400 to 600 square feet, which is why it is a field here instead of a constant.
- Waste sits at five percent rather than the ten a sheet material gets. Sod cuts around a curve with a knife and the offcut usually goes somewhere, so the loss is real but smaller.
- Weight is figured at 5.5 pounds a square foot, which is a pallet around two and a half thousand pounds. Freshly cut or wet sod runs heavier, and that is the number that matters when you decide whether it goes in a pickup or on a delivery truck.
- Topsoil is the amount to spread and grade before the sod goes down, not the amount already there. Two inches is the common starting point on a bare or stripped yard and none at all is right on ground that is already good.
- A pallet line and a piece line are both printed because yards sell sod both ways, by the pallet on a big lawn and by the piece on a patch. Only one of those two lines gets bought.
- Starter fertilizer is figured at a bag per five thousand square feet, which is where most starter products land. Read your bag rather than this line, because the spread rate is printed on it.
- The water line is one inch over the whole lawn, which is 0.623 gallons a square foot. New sod wants roughly that much every day for the first week, which is the part of a sod job people underestimate.
Questions people ask
How many pieces of sod for 300 square feet?
32 pieces at 10 square feet each, including five percent waste. That is one pallet with 135 square feet left over.
Can you lay sod over existing grass?
No. The old grass becomes a layer of dead thatch that holds water, blocks the new roots and shelters weeds, and it raises the finished level along every edge and path.
How do I remove an old lawn before sodding?
A non selective herbicide with a couple of weeks and usually a second pass, or a sod cutter in an afternoon. The cutter is faster but leaves a lot of heavy material to dispose of.
The sod calculator takes any dimensions you like and hands back the same list.