Sod Calculator - Pallets, Rolls, Pieces & Cost

How to use it

1. Measure the lawn in pieces. Break the yard into rectangles, circles and triangles rather than trying to measure it as one odd shape, and add a row for each. If you already know a square footage, type it straight in with the Square feet shape. Pace it out if you have no tape: a normal adult stride is close to 3 ft, and pacing is far more accurate than guessing at a whole yard.
2. Add the areas to skip. The house footprint, the driveway, the patio, the shed pad, the planting beds, anything that is not getting grass. These subtract from the total, and the difference between a lot size and a lawn size is often half the order.
3. Pick the grass. Each preset sets the things that follow from it: whether the farm cuts slabs or rolls, the typical pallet coverage for that grass, a starting price per square foot, and the season it should go down in. Pick Something else and every one of those fields is yours to set.
4. Check the pallet coverage against your farm. This is the single most important field on the page and the one every other sod calculator hardcodes. Call the farm, or read the coverage off their price list, and set 400, 450, 500 or a typed figure. Everything downstream, the pallet count, the weight, the per pallet price, moves with it.
5. Choose the yard shape so the waste factor is honest. Straight edges carry 5 percent, curves and obstacles carry 10 percent, and you can type your own. The waste is real: every cut around a curved bed throws away the offcut, because a sod strip cut to fit an arc has nowhere else to go.
6. Read the order in the headline. It is phrased the way you would say it on the phone, for example 2 pallets plus 57 slabs, with the exact pallet figure underneath. Below it, the whole pallet alternative is spelled out too, because a farm will sell you loose pieces and a big-box store will not.
7. Check the weight against your truck. One pallet is roughly 1,500 to 3,000 lb dry and can reach 4,000 lb after rain, which is the entire payload of a half ton pickup. The result panel says plainly whether this is a pickup job, a two trip job or a delivery.
8. Read the lay plan. The diagram shows your lawn as the rows of sod it will actually become, laid in a running bond with the joints staggered half a piece, and the pallet strip under it shows how many pallets that order is. It is the install plan and the order in one picture.
9. Edit the cost ledger to your own quotes. Every line is a planning number, never a quote: sod at your price per square foot, delivery, starter fertilizer, a roller rental and an optional install labor rate if you want a yardstick to hold a contractor's bid against. The big-box comparison beside it shows what the same square footage costs at Home Depot or Lowe's pallet pricing.

At a glance

• 1,000 sq ft back lawn, Bermuda slabs, 450 sq ft pallets: 25 x 40 ft, straight edges so 5 percent waste, order 1,050 sq ft. That is 394 slabs, or 2 full pallets plus 57 slabs, or 3 whole pallets with 300 sq ft spare. About 5,250 lb, so a farm delivery rather than a pickup. At $0.55 a square foot: $577.50 of sod, $75 delivery, $25 fertilizer, $677.50 all in.
• 630 sq ft curvy front yard, bluegrass rolls, 500 sq ft pallets: Two sections minus 120 sq ft of beds, curves so 10 percent waste, order 693 sq ft. That is 70 rolls, or 1 full pallet plus 20 rolls. About 3,120 lb across 2 pallets. At $0.60: $415.80 of sod plus $75 delivery and $25 fertilizer, $515.80.
• Quarter acre re-sod, St. Augustine on 400 sq ft pallets: 10,890 sq ft lot minus house, driveway and patio is 8,190 sq ft of lawn, order 8,600 sq ft. That is 21 full pallets plus 75 slabs, or 22 whole pallets, about 48,400 lb, which is several truck trips. $4,300 of sod at $0.50 against $12,285 for the same job installed at $1.50.

How the math works

Everything on this page comes off one chain, and every step of it is visible in the result. Start with the area. Each section of lawn is measured on its own and summed: a rectangle is length times width, a circle is pi times the radius squared, a triangle is base times height divided by two, and a square footage you already know goes straight in. The skip list is summed the same way and subtracted, floored at zero, which gives the net lawn area. That subtraction is where most over-orders come from, because a quarter acre lot is 10,890 sq ft and the lawn on it is often nearer 8,000 once the house, drive and patio come out. Next the waste. Sod to order is the net area times one plus the waste factor: 5 percent on a lawn with mostly straight edges, 10 percent where there are curves, trees, paths and slopes. This is the same 5 to 10 percent the sod farms themselves recommend, with one difference: they give you a range to apply yourself and this page carries the arithmetic through to the pallet count, so you can see that 1,000 sq ft at 5 percent is 1,050 and that the extra 50 sq ft is 19 more slabs. Then the pieces. Sod is cut into slabs of 16 by 24 in, which is 2.67 sq ft each, or rolls of 2 by 5 ft, which is 10 sq ft each, or big rolls of 60 sq ft and up that only go down by machine. Pieces are the order divided by the piece size and rounded up, because half a slab is not a thing you can order. Then the pallets, which is where this page departs from every competitor. The exact pallet figure is the order divided by your pallet coverage, so 1,050 sq ft at 450 sq ft a pallet is 2.33 pallets. Full pallets are the whole part of that, 2, and the remainder is 1,050 minus 900, which is 150 sq ft, which is 57 more slabs. Both halves of the answer are useful, because a sod farm will sell you two pallets and 57 loose slabs while a home center will only sell you three whole pallets and leave you 300 sq ft of spare grass to give away. Pieces per pallet is shown as a reference line, coverage divided by piece size, so 450 over 2.67 is about 169 slabs and 500 over 10 is 50 rolls. Weight is the exact pallet figure times your pallet weight assumption, defaulting to 2,250 lb, which is the middle of the real 1,500 to 3,000 lb range, and wet sod can push a pallet toward 4,000. That number drives the haul guidance: a half ton pickup carries one pallet and no more, a three quarter ton with a trailer will manage two, and anything beyond that is a delivery truck. Starter fertilizer is the net area divided by 5,000 sq ft a bag, rounded up. Finally the cost ledger, which is nothing more than each quantity multiplied by a price you typed: sod is the order times your price per square foot, delivery is a flat trip fee, fertilizer is bags times bag price, the roller is a day rental, and labor, if you switch it on, is the net area times a rate per square foot. The total divided by the net area gives the effective cost per square foot of finished lawn, and the sod line divided by the whole pallet count gives the per pallet equivalent, which is the number a farm will quote you back.

1. 1. Measure the lawn in pieces, and subtract what is not lawn

   Do not try to measure an irregular yard as one shape. Break it into rectangles wherever you can, use a circle for a round bed of turf and a triangle for the wedge beside a driveway, and add each as its own row. Rectangle is length times width, circle is pi times half the diameter squared, triangle is base times height over two. Then list what is not getting grass: the house footprint, the driveway, the patio, the shed, the beds. A 10,890 sq ft quarter acre lot with an 1,800 sq ft house, a 600 sq ft driveway and a 300 sq ft patio is 8,190 sq ft of lawn, which is 25 percent less sod than the lot size would have had you buy. If you have no tape, pace it: a normal adult stride is close to 3 ft and pacing a boundary beats guessing at an area every time.

2. 2. Add the waste factor that matches the shape of your yard

   Sod to order is the net area times one plus the waste. Five percent covers a squared off lawn where offcuts from one row can be used at the end of the next. Ten percent covers curves, trees, paths, slopes and anything you have to cut an arc around, because a strip cut to follow a curve leaves a crescent of grass that fits nowhere. On 1,000 sq ft that is the difference between 1,050 and 1,100 sq ft, which sounds small and is 19 slabs. Order flat, with no waste at all, and you will be short: not by much, but a shortfall on the last row means either a second delivery fee or a bare strip along your best edge.

3. 3. Turn square feet into whole pieces

   Pieces are the order divided by the piece size, rounded up, because farms sell whole slabs and whole rolls. A slab is 16 by 24 in, which is 384 sq in, which is 2.67 sq ft. A roll is 2 by 5 ft, which is 10 sq ft flat. Big rolls run 60 sq ft and up and are laid by machine on contractor jobs, so if that is what your farm cuts, type the size in. For the reference job: 1,050 sq ft divided by 2.67 is 393.75, so 394 slabs. In rolls the same job would be 105 rolls. This is the number you count against as the pallets come off the truck, and it is worth counting, because a pallet short-loaded by ten slabs is a real thing that happens and it is very hard to argue after the plastic wrap is off.

4. 4. Split the order into pallets at YOUR farm's coverage

   This is the step every other sod calculator gets wrong by assuming. The exact pallet figure is the order divided by your pallet coverage: 1,050 divided by 450 is 2.33 pallets. Full pallets are the whole part, 2, and the remainder is 1,050 minus 900, which is 150 sq ft, which is 57 more slabs at 2.67 sq ft each. Now change one input. The same 1,050 sq ft against a 400 sq ft St. Augustine pallet is 2.63 pallets, so 2 full plus 94 slabs, and against a 500 sq ft fescue pallet it is 2.1 pallets, so 2 full plus 38 rolls. Same lawn, three different orders, and the only thing that moved was a number the farm can tell you in one sentence. Ask them before you order. Southern farms commonly cut 400s, cool season farms 500s, and the 450 average belongs to nobody in particular.

5. 5. Decide between loose pieces and whole pallets

   Both answers are on the page because both are real. A sod farm will sell you 2 full pallets plus 57 loose slabs, priced by the square foot, and that is the cheapest way to buy exactly what you need. A big-box store sells whole pallets only, so the same job is 3 pallets with 300 sq ft of spare grass you have 24 hours to find a use for. The judgement call: a partial order saves money, a whole pallet saves you from a shortfall, and a second delivery trip to fix a shortage costs $50 to $150, which is usually more than the extra grass. If your measurements were paced rather than taped, round up.

6. 6. Weigh the load before you offer to haul it

   Total weight is the exact pallet figure times the pallet weight, defaulting to 2,250 lb, which sits mid range in the real 1,500 to 3,000 lb band. Sod cut wet, or rained on while it waited, can push a pallet to 4,000 lb. So the reference job at 2.33 pallets is about 5,250 lb of grass. Now compare that to your truck: a half ton pickup is rated at roughly 1,500 to 2,000 lb of payload, which is one pallet and nothing else, and that assumes the pallet is dry. A three quarter ton with a trailer will move two. Anything past that is a delivery truck with a forklift, and the delivery fee is the cheapest line on this whole estimate.

7. 7. Add the prep, the fertilizer and the real cost

   Sod needs 4 to 6 in of decent topsoil under it, graded smooth and firmed, and that is a separate order you can size on the topsoil calculator. Starter fertilizer is one bag per 5,000 sq ft of new lawn, applied to the soil before the sod goes down rather than on top of it. A rented roller, about $25 a day, presses the pieces into contact with the soil so the roots find it. Then the ledger: sod at your price per square foot, delivery, fertilizer, the roller, and labor only if you want a yardstick. Divide the total by the net area for the effective cost per square foot of finished lawn, and compare that against the $1 to $2 a square foot that professional install runs, which is the honest frame for deciding whether to do it yourself.

Worked scenarios, start to finish

Real jobs with the numbers carried all the way through, so you can see how the estimate is built and check your own figures against them.

The judgement calls a pro makes

Decisions the tool cannot make for you, and how someone who does this for a living thinks them through.

Confirming pallet coverage with your farm, not with an average

Every sod calculator on the first page of Google either hardcodes a coverage or hides it. The real world ships 400, 450 and 500 sq ft pallets, and which one you get depends on the farm and the grass, not on an average. Warm season farms in the South commonly cut 400 sq ft pallets of St. Augustine, most Bermuda and Zoysia comes on 450s, and cool season farms in the North cut 500s and sometimes 600s of fescue and bluegrass. The consequence of guessing is not a rounding error: on a 8,600 sq ft order, 450 against a real 400 is two whole pallets missing. One phone call settles it, and the coverage will be on the farm's price list next to the price. Set it here before you read any other number on this page.

Whether to round up to whole pallets

A farm sells partial orders by the piece, so 2.33 pallets can be bought as 2 pallets plus 57 slabs and you pay for what you use. A big-box store sells whole pallets, so the same job is 3 pallets and 300 sq ft of leftovers. When your measurements were taped and the yard is a simple shape, buy the partial. When you paced it, when the yard has curves, or when the delivery fee is more than $75, round up: a shortfall means either a second trip fee or a bare patch, and the extra grass at $0.55 a square foot is cheaper than either. The one case against rounding up is timing. Leftover sod is worthless in 48 hours, so if there is genuinely nowhere to put it, take the partial and measure twice.

Whether one pallet will fit in your truck

Usually not, and this is the mistake that costs a suspension. A pallet is 1,500 to 3,000 lb dry and up to 4,000 lb after rain, and the payload sticker on the door jamb of a half ton pickup typically reads 1,500 to 2,000 lb, including passengers. So one dry pallet is the whole truck, and one wet pallet is over it. Never stack two. An SUV or a minivan is not in this conversation at all. If the farm delivers for $50 to $150, that is the cheapest line item on the estimate, and it also means the sod arrives on a forklift instead of coming off the tailgate slab by slab.

When to lay it, which matters more than what you pay

Cool season grasses, fescue and bluegrass, go down best from mid August to mid October. The soil is still warm enough to root, the air is cooling, and the lawn gets two months to establish before winter and eight months before its first real heat. Spring is the second best window and it works, but the lawn spends its first July surviving rather than thickening. Warm season grasses, Bermuda, St. Augustine, Zoysia and centipede, go the other way: they root on soil temperature above about 65 F, so late spring through summer, and sod laid on cold soil in March sits there thinning until the soil catches up. Laying warm season sod in October in a place that gets frost is the worst combination available, because it has no time to root before dormancy.

How much prep to do before the sod arrives

Sod is not a covering, it is a transplant, and it roots into whatever is under it. That means 4 to 6 in of decent topsoil, graded to drain away from the house, raked out and lightly firmed so it does not settle into hollows a month later. Kill and remove the old lawn rather than laying over it. Set the final grade about one inch below any hard edge, driveway, walk or patio, because sod is roughly an inch thick and you want it flush, not proud. Do all of it before delivery day, because once the pallets are on the drive the clock is running and the grading is not something you can do around them.

Whether to buy from a farm or a home center

Price is the obvious difference and it is large: farm direct runs $0.30 to $0.85 a square foot while a big-box pallet works out to $1.08 to $1.20. But the real difference is freshness and format. A farm cuts to order, often the same morning, and will sell you loose pieces to finish the job. A home center pallet was cut somewhere and trucked, has been sitting on the lot for an unknown number of hours, and comes only in whole pallets. Where big-box wins is availability on a Saturday when you need 200 sq ft to patch, and a national warranty policy if the grass fails. For a whole lawn, call the farm.

Sod or seed, honestly

Seed costs 10 to 20 times less in materials, roughly $0.03 to $0.08 a square foot against $0.30 to $0.85 for sod, and for a large area that gap is thousands of dollars. What seed costs you instead is a season: germination, a fragile few weeks of constant watering, an inevitable weed flush, and usually an overseed the following year before it looks like a lawn. Sod is a finished lawn on day one, walkable in two to three weeks, and it holds a slope while it roots where seed washes off. Choose sod for slopes, for erosion, for the front yard, for a house going on the market, and for warm season grasses like St. Augustine that do not come from seed at all. Choose seed for a big back acre, a tight budget, or a fall window you can plan around.

Common mistakes, and the fix

• × Assuming every pallet of sod covers 450 sq ft.

  ✓ Ask your farm and set the number. Four hundred, 450 and 500 sq ft pallets all ship, and Southern St. Augustine is usually 400. Guessing the 450 average on a 400 sq ft pallet under-buys by 12 percent, which on a quarter acre re-sod is more than two pallets of grass missing on install day.

• × Ordering the measured square footage with no waste factor.

  ✓ Add 5 percent on a straight edged lawn and 10 percent where there are curves, trees and paths. The offcut from a strip cut to follow an arc fits nowhere else, so it is real waste, not padding. Coming up one row short means patching later from a different cut that never quite matches the rest.

• × Measuring the whole lot instead of the lawn.

  ✓ Subtract the house footprint, the driveway, the patio, the shed and the beds. A 10,890 sq ft quarter acre lot often has 8,000 sq ft of actual lawn, so ordering to the lot size buys roughly 25 percent too much grass, which at $0.55 a square foot is over $1,300 of sod that dies stacked on a pallet.

• × Planning to haul a pallet home in a half ton pickup or an SUV.

  ✓ Read the payload sticker inside the driver's door. A pallet is 1,500 to 3,000 lb dry and can reach 4,000 lb wet, which is at or over the payload of a typical half ton, and an SUV is not rated for any of it. Pay the $50 to $150 delivery fee. It is the cheapest line on the estimate and the sod arrives on a forklift.

• × Letting a Friday delivery sit until Sunday.

  ✓ Book the delivery for the morning you lay it. Sod is living grass with an inch of soil, and stacked on a pallet it heats from the inside: yellow in 24 to 48 hours in summer, dead in the middle of the stack soon after. If it must wait a few hours, put the pallets in shade and water the outside of the stack lightly.

• × Pricing the whole project from big-box per pallet prices.

  ✓ A 500 sq ft Harmony pallet at $539 to $599 works out to $1.08 to $1.20 a square foot. Local farms deliver the same grass at $0.30 to $0.85, which is roughly half. Use the big-box figure as the honest upper bound and call two farms before you accept it.

• × Splitting the order across two farms, two deliveries or two weeks.

  ✓ Order it all at once from one farm. Sod is a living crop and colour, blade width and thickness vary between fields, between cuts and between suppliers, so a lawn laid from two orders can show a visible seam down the middle that never blends. If you must split it, put the second order behind the house.

• × Laying sod on unprepared or unlevelled ground.

  ✓ Grade and firm 4 to 6 in of topsoil first, and set the finished soil about one inch below any hard edge so the sod finishes flush with the walk. Sod laid on lumps roots unevenly and telegraphs every hollow within a month, and no amount of rolling afterwards fixes a grade you should have fixed first.

Material and unit specifics

Slabs, the southern cut

A slab is 16 by 24 in, which is 384 sq in or 2.67 sq ft, and weighs 5 to 8 lb depending how wet it is. It is how warm season grasses are cut through the South, because Bermuda, St. Augustine, Zoysia and centipede are dense enough to hold together as a folded rectangle. A 450 sq ft pallet holds about 169 slabs, a 400 sq ft pallet about 150 and a 500 sq ft pallet about 188. One person can carry one slab comfortably, which is why a whole pallet moves in an afternoon with two people and a wheelbarrow.

Rolls and big rolls, the cool season cut

A standard roll is 2 by 5 ft, so 10 sq ft, and weighs 15 to 30 lb. Fescue and bluegrass farms cut this way because the sod is thinner and rolls without cracking, and it lays fast: unroll along a row and you have covered ten square feet in one motion. A 500 sq ft pallet holds 50 rolls. Big rolls run 60 sq ft and up, some as wide as 4 ft and 40 ft long, weigh several hundred pounds and are installed by a machine on the back of a tractor. Those are contractor orders, not a Saturday, and the tool lets you type the size your farm cuts.

Pallet coverage, the number that decides the order

There is no standard pallet. The three that ship in the United States are 400, 450 and 500 sq ft, and it varies by farm, by region and by grass. Southern warm season farms, particularly Florida St. Augustine growers, commonly cut 400 sq ft pallets. Most Bermuda and Zoysia is 450. Northern cool season farms cut 500 and occasionally 600. Weight follows coverage but not perfectly, because a thicker cut of a denser grass weighs more per square foot. Always confirm it with the farm you are ordering from, and set the number on this page before you read the pallet count.

Grass types by region, season and price

Bermuda: full sun, South and lower transition zone, slabs, 450 sq ft pallets, $0.35 to $0.75, laid late spring through summer. St. Augustine: Gulf South and Florida, the best shade tolerance of the warm season grasses, slabs, usually 400 sq ft pallets, $0.35 to $0.80, late spring through summer. Zoysia: South and transition, takes light shade, slabs, 450, $0.40 to $0.90, late spring through summer. Centipede: Southeast on sandy acid soil and low input, slabs, 450, $0.35 to $0.75. Tall fescue: transition zone and North, good shade tolerance, rolls, 500, $0.35 to $0.65, and mid August to mid October is its best window. Kentucky bluegrass: North, full sun, rolls, 500, $0.30 to $0.60, same fall window.

Weight, and what a pickup can really carry

A pallet of sod runs 1,500 to 3,000 lb dry, with 2,250 lb a fair planning figure, and rain can take it to 4,000. A half ton pickup is typically rated at 1,500 to 2,000 lb of payload including everyone in the cab, so one dry pallet is the entire truck and a wet one is over the limit. A three quarter ton handles one comfortably and two on a trailer. The sensible reading: if the order is more than one pallet, it is a delivery, and the $50 to $150 fee buys a forklift as well as the trip.

What sod actually costs in 2026

Farm direct is $0.30 to $0.85 a square foot depending on grass and region, which puts a typical pallet at $160 to $380. Big-box pallets, the nationally shipped Harmony product at Home Depot and Lowe's, run about $539 to $599 for 500 sq ft, which is $1.08 to $1.20 a square foot. Delivery is $50 to $150 a trip. Professional installation, which includes stripping the old lawn, grading, the sod and laying it, runs $1 to $2 a square foot all in. Starter fertilizer is about $25 a bag covering 5,000 sq ft, and a rented lawn roller is about $25 a day. Every one of these is an editable field on this page, because a national average is nobody's actual price.

The prep layer underneath

Sod roots into 4 to 6 in of decent topsoil, and that is a separate bulk order you should size before the grass arrives. Four inches over 1,000 sq ft is 12.3 cubic yards, which is a full dump truck: work it out properly on the topsoil calculator rather than eyeballing it. Grade it to fall away from the house, rake it smooth, firm it lightly, and set the finished level about an inch below any walk or driveway so the sod lands flush. Broadcast starter fertilizer on the soil, not on the new grass, at one bag per 5,000 sq ft. After laying, roll it and water deeply within 30 minutes.

Laying it: running bond, tight seams, water fast

Start along the longest straight edge, a driveway, a walk or a fence, and lay the first row dead straight, because every row after it follows. Butt the seams tight without overlapping and without stretching the piece, which is easy to do with a warm roll and leaves a gap when it shrinks back. Stagger the joints half a piece on every second row, exactly like brickwork, so no seam runs more than one piece long: that is what stops a joint opening into a straight crack across the lawn. Cut around beds and sprinkler heads with a sharp knife or an edging spade. On a slope, lay across the slope rather than down it, and peg the top row. Then water within 30 minutes of the first piece going down, and keep going until the soil under the sod is wet, not just the grass.

Reading your result

Read the headline as a shopping order, not a total. Two pallets plus 57 slabs is what you say on the phone, and the exact figure under it, 2.33 pallets, is what tells you how close you are to the next whole pallet. Sitting at 2.9 means one bad measurement puts you over three, so round up. Sitting at 2.1 means you are buying a pallet to cover 45 sq ft, so re-check the waste factor and the skip list before you commit to it. The two pallet answers are both correct and they are for different sellers: the partial is what a farm will sell you, the whole pallet count is what a home center will. Neither is the right one in general. The weight line is a go or no go, not a fact for interest. If it says delivery, that is because moving it yourself would take more trips than the fee is worth, and because a pallet at the top of your truck's payload is a suspension and a set of brakes you are gambling with. The number to compare it against is on the door jamb of your own truck, not on a forum. The cost ledger is a planning ledger and nothing more. Every line is a quantity from the geometry multiplied by a price you typed, so the total is exactly as good as the prices you put in. Use it to size the job, to sanity check a quote, and to see the shape of where the money goes: on almost every job the sod itself is 80 to 90 percent of the materials and delivery is the rest. The effective cost per square foot at the bottom is the useful number to carry around, because it compares straight against the $1 to $2 a square foot that installed sod runs, and that comparison is the real decision most people are making on this page. The big-box comparison beside it is deliberately shown as a range rather than a single figure, because that is how the pricing actually behaves. If your typed price per square foot is at or above $1.08, the tool says so: you are pricing farm grass at retail rates, and two phone calls will usually halve it. Finally, treat the season note as a hard constraint rather than advice. The arithmetic on this page is the same in March and in September, and the lawn is not.

Limitations

• This is a materials planning estimate, not a quote and not an order. Confirm the pallet coverage, the piece size and the price with your own farm, because those three numbers drive every figure here.
• Pallet coverage varies by farm, grass and region, and the presets are typical values rather than guarantees. The field is editable for exactly that reason, and the result always says to confirm it.
• Pallet weight is an assumption, defaulted to 2,250 lb. Real pallets run 1,500 to 3,000 lb dry and can reach 4,000 lb after rain, so treat the haul guidance as a floor on caution rather than a limit to test.
• Flat and gently sloped lawns measured as rectangles, circles and triangles. A steep slope has more surface area than its footprint, so add to the waste factor by hand on anything steeper than about a 4 in 12 fall.
• Prices are editable US planning figures for 2026, not quotes, and sod pricing is regional and seasonal. The installed comparison of $1 to $2 a square foot is a national band that varies widely by market.
• The lay plan draws the first rectangular section you enter, or the net area as a square if none is a rectangle. It shows the row and piece counts for that shape, not a cutting plan for an irregular yard.
• Soil prep, drainage, irrigation and grading are out of scope beyond the topsoil depth note. A lawn that fails almost always fails on the soil under it, and that is a separate job to plan.
• Imperial units, in feet, square feet and pounds, consistent with the rest of the site.

Frequently asked questions

How many square feet does a pallet of sod cover?

Between 400 and 500 sq ft on almost every pallet that ships in the United States, and there is no single standard. Warm season farms in the South, particularly Florida St. Augustine growers, commonly cut 400 sq ft pallets. Most Bermuda and Zoysia comes on 450 sq ft pallets. Cool season farms in the North cut fescue and bluegrass on 500 sq ft pallets, and occasionally 600. That spread matters more than it sounds: a 8,600 sq ft order is 21.5 pallets at 400 sq ft coverage and only 19.1 at 450, so guessing the average under-buys by more than two pallets. Ask your farm the coverage before you ask the price, then set it on this page, because every number downstream, the pallet count, the weight and the per pallet cost, moves with it.

How much does a pallet of sod cost?

Farm direct, a pallet typically runs $160 to $380 depending on the grass, the region and the coverage, which works out to about $0.30 to $0.85 a square foot. Big-box pallets are considerably more: the nationally shipped Harmony pallets at Home Depot and Lowe's run about $539 to $599 for 500 sq ft, which is $1.08 to $1.20 a square foot, roughly double farm pricing for the same grass. Delivery is $50 to $150 a trip on top, and most farms have a minimum order. Bermuda and centipede sit at the cheaper end, Zoysia and St. Augustine at the dearer. If you only need 200 sq ft to patch, the big-box premium is worth the convenience; for a whole lawn, two phone calls to local farms will usually halve the bill.

How much does a pallet of sod weigh, and will it fit in my truck?

A pallet weighs 1,500 to 3,000 lb dry, with about 2,250 lb a fair planning figure, and sod cut wet or rained on can push a pallet to 4,000 lb. Now check your truck: a half ton pickup, an F-150 or a Silverado 1500, is typically rated at 1,500 to 2,000 lb of payload including passengers and anything already in the bed, and that figure is printed on a sticker inside the driver's door jamb. So one dry pallet is the entire payload of a half ton, a wet one is over it, and two is never an option. A three quarter ton will carry one comfortably and two with a trailer. An SUV or a minivan is not rated for any of it. For anything past one pallet, take the delivery: $50 to $150 buys the trip and a forklift to set the pallets where you want them.

How many pieces of sod are on a pallet?

It depends on how the farm cuts and on the pallet coverage. Slabs are 16 by 24 in, which is 2.67 sq ft each, so a 400 sq ft pallet holds about 150 slabs, a 450 sq ft pallet about 169, and a 500 sq ft pallet about 188. Rolls are 2 by 5 ft, which is 10 sq ft each, so a 500 sq ft pallet is exactly 50 rolls and a 450 is 45. Big rolls run 60 sq ft and up, so a pallet holds only a handful and they are laid by machine. Count the pieces as they come off the truck: a pallet short-loaded by ten slabs is a real thing, and once the wrap is off and the pieces are down it is very hard to argue.

How much extra sod should I order?

Five percent for a lawn with mostly straight edges, and 10 percent where there are curves, trees, paths, sprinkler heads or slopes. That is the same 5 to 10 percent the sod farms themselves recommend, and the reason for the range is what happens to an offcut. On a squared off lawn the end piece you cut off one row starts the next row, so almost nothing is lost. On a curved bed edge, every piece you trim to follow the arc leaves a crescent that fits nowhere and goes in the barrow. On 1,000 sq ft, 5 percent is 50 extra square feet, which is 19 slabs, and 10 percent is 100, which is 38. Ordering flat with no waste at all is the one choice that reliably goes wrong, because you find out at the last row.

When is the best time to lay sod?

It depends on whether your grass is cool season or warm season, and getting it right matters more than anything you will negotiate on price. Cool season grasses, tall fescue and Kentucky bluegrass, go down best from mid August to mid October: the soil is still warm enough for roots to grow, the air is cooling, and the lawn gets two months to establish before winter and eight before its first real heat. Spring is the second best window and it works, but that lawn spends its first July surviving instead of thickening. Warm season grasses, Bermuda, St. Augustine, Zoysia and centipede, root on soil temperature, so wait until the soil is reliably above 65 F, which is late spring, and lay through the summer. Sod laid on cold soil sits there and thins out, and warm season sod laid in autumn where there is frost has no time to root at all.

Is sod or seed cheaper?

Seed is 10 to 20 times cheaper in materials: roughly $0.03 to $0.08 a square foot against $0.30 to $0.85 for sod, so on a 8,000 sq ft lawn that is a few hundred dollars against several thousand. What the saving costs you is a season. Seed needs constant light watering for two to three weeks to germinate, gets a weed flush while it is thin, cannot be walked on for a couple of months, and usually wants overseeding the following year before it looks like a lawn. Sod is a finished lawn the day it goes down, walkable in two to three weeks, and it holds a slope while it roots where seed simply washes off in the first storm. Some grasses, St. Augustine among them, are not sold as seed at all. Choose sod for slopes, front yards, erosion and a house going on the market; choose seed for a big back acre and a fall you can plan around.

How do I calculate how much sod I need for my yard?

Measure the lawn in simple shapes and add them up, subtract everything that is not getting grass, add a waste factor, then divide by the piece size and by the pallet coverage. Worked through: a 25 by 40 ft back yard is 1,000 sq ft. Straight edges means 5 percent waste, so order 1,050 sq ft. In 16 by 24 in slabs at 2.67 sq ft each that is 394 slabs. At a 450 sq ft pallet coverage that is 1,050 divided by 450, which is 2.33 pallets, so 2 full pallets plus 150 sq ft, which is 57 loose slabs, or 3 whole pallets if you are buying from a store that will not break one. There is no need to draw your yard on a map or hand over an address to get that number, which is what most of the tools on this subject ask for. A tape measure and this page do it in about two minutes.