How Much Sod for 5,000 Square Feet?
Pallets to buy
12 pallets
5,000 square feet of new lawn, nothing deducted, 10 sq ft pieces, five percent waste.
Sod does not keep. It is a cut plant and in warm weather it wants to be down and watered within a day of leaving the farm. 12 pallets is more than a two person crew lays in a day, so either stage the delivery or put more hands on it.
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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 length100 ft
- Lawn width50 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 buy12 pallets
Sod does not keep. It is a cut plant and in warm weather it wants to be down and watered within a day of leaving the farm. 12 pallets is more than a two person crew lays in a day, so either stage the delivery or put more hands on it.
| Gross area | 5,000 sq ft |
|---|---|
| Beds and hardscape | 0 sq ft |
| Net area | 5,000 sq ft |
| With waste | 5,250 sq ft5 percent |
| Pieces needed | 52510 sq ft each |
| Pallets to buy | 1245 pieces on a 450 sq ft pallet |
| Left over on the last pallet | 150 sq fta pallet does not divide |
| Sod weight | 14.44 tons28,875 lb at 5.5 lb a sq ft |
| Topsoil to spread | 30.86 cu yd2 in over the net area, order 31 because bulk soil sells by the whole yard |
| Water, one inch | 3,115 gal0.623 gallons a sq ft |
The material list this produces
| Sod pallets | 12 |
|---|---|
| Or sod pieces | 525 |
| Starter fertilizer, bags | 1 |
| Topsoil, cu yd | 31 |
Lawn area compared
Every large lawn size on this list, at the same piece and pallet coverage. The last column is what a pallet not dividing costs you, and at this scale it is worth checking whether trimming or extending the area slightly lands you on a whole pallet.
| Lawn area | Pallets to buy | Pieces needed | Left over on the last pallet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 sq ft | 5 pallets | 210 | 150 sq ft |
| 2,500 sq ft | 6 pallets | 263 | 75 sq ft |
| 3,000 sq ft | 7 pallets | 315 | 0 sq ft |
| 3,500 sq ft | 9 pallets | 368 | 375 sq ft |
| 4,000 sq ft | 10 pallets | 420 | 300 sq ft |
| 5,000 sq ft | 12 pallets | 525 | 150 sq ft |
What else matters here
Twelve pallets and 14.44 tons is more sod than can be laid before the last pallet has gone past its day, and the answer is to stop treating it as one delivery.
Split it. Take what can be laid and watered in a day, lay it, and have the rest come the following morning. Most growers will schedule a job this size across two or three drops because they would rather do that than replace a cooked pallet, and the sod that arrives on the second morning was cut that morning. A single drop of twelve pallets guarantees that some of it goes down two days old.
It also solves the site problem. Twelve pallets is a lot of ground covered by pallets, on ground that has just been graded and is about to be sodded, and every square foot they stand on has to be raked out again after they move. Two drops of six is half the footprint and half the raking.
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 pallets of sod for 5,000 square feet?
12 pallets, which is 525 pieces at 10 square feet each including five percent waste.
Should a large sod order be split into several deliveries?
Yes. Take what can be laid and watered in one day and have the rest arrive the next morning, freshly cut. Most growers prefer this to replacing a pallet that cooked on site.
How much does 5,000 square feet of sod weigh?
14.44 tons at about 5.5 pounds a square foot, spread over 12 pallets. It is heavier still if it has been rained on.
The sod calculator takes any dimensions you like and hands back the same list.