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how do you calculate square footage, please. I just had some very nice small gravel laid over my driveway. The young man came down to $p.50/sq ft. Is that a good price?? If so , what is the typical price. I praise God for this as my drive was bare after 14 years living here and only "topping off" once.
they just drove by as I was taking out some fallen branches to the curb and asked if I wanted any gravel. They apparently had finished a job and had some left over.
I got to witness to 3 young men who are believers in Jesus and now will probably be checking out my church, Calvary Chapel of the Triad...very exciting things happening...oops...sorry for getting OT
UH...I thought sq ft = length x width...and then cubic ft would = lngth x wdth x ht BUT I have not done any type of math equations in hmruh
I'm not sure how they charged you $.50/square foot because you can't sell gravel by the square foot, it would be sold either by weight (tons) or more often by volume (which would be cubic feet, yards, etc) Or did they charge you $.50 for each square foot of driveway that they spread gravel over?
You are correct that square feet is length times width and cubic feet is length times width times height, but since your height will likely be in inches rather than feet make sure you convert the inches to feet first before you do your multiplication, otherwise you'll find yourself way off on your calculations. Many times materials like that are sold by the cubic yard (sometimes just called "yard" for short)...to convert cubic feet to cubic yards, just divide by 27.
I may be remembering wrong (and prices are probably different in different parts of the country), but I think I've paid ~$30-35 for a yard of gravel, and having it delivered and having someone put it down for you would also increase the cost above that. So if what they charged you was $.50 for a CUBIC foot (not square foot) then that works out to be about $13/yard and since they delivered it & spread it for you that's a good price.
On the other hand, if they charged you $.50 per square foot of driveway that they spread the gravel on, if you assume that they spread it 3" deep, then that works out to about $55/yard which is not really a bargain. It may be close to what you would have paid if you'd had someone deliver and spread it for you, so you might not have been ripped off but you didn't get much of a bargain either.
well, my drive is about 100x12 and they charged me $500...it had already been spread. did I get ripped off?
they ran the truck down the drive twice,so probably about 2-4" thick, + did a little walkway to my steps
thanks!!
It will make a difference how thick they spread it--if it was 2" then you paid $67/yard which is high (for the material alone), but if it was 4" thick then it would have been $34/yd which is in line with what I've paid (again for materials only not delivery/labor). It would really help if you knew how many yards they'd given you--since you already had some gravel on the driveway and you were topping it off, I'm sure the thickness that they applied varied across the driveway so it's really hard to calculate how many yards they actually used, which makes it hard to say whether they gave you a great deal or not. Assuming you paid closer to the $35/yd end of that range then you basically just paid for the materials, which means you saved money over what you would have paid someone to deliver it and spread it over the driveway for you.
