How Much is a Yard of Concrete? (Free Concrete Calculator!)

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How Many Yards of Concrete Do I Need?

Making a new garage? Finished preparing the subgrade, sub base and the base? If yes, then you are ready to order the concrete. You may have entrusted the pour to professionals or you may be doing it yourself. Whatever the case, you need an answer to “How much is a yard of concrete?” and how many yards do you need for your concrete garage floor?

You can calculate your concrete requirement by using this simple formula:

Concrete Needed (Yards) ={Length (Feet) X Width (Feet) X Thickness (Inches)/12}/27

Concrete is generally measured in “yards” but in this case it actually means “cubic yards”. Concrete Mix is supplied in volume and of course not in length. That would be quite meaningless. In common parlance ” yards” is used as a short form of “cubic yards”.

how much is a yard of concrete

The division by 12 in the above formula is to convert inches to feet and the division by 27 is to convert “cubic feet” to “cubic yards” or yards in this case.

If you do not like to do the calculation, no worries. Just plug in the measurements in the “Free Concrete Calculator” below. It even lets you input a %age for wastage. Click the “Calculate” button and voila, you have the answer in a jiffy!

Free Concrete Calculator





This free concrete calculator can be used to calculate the concrete requirement for a concrete slab on grade or even a rectangular column or beam. Just plug in the correct dimensions.

How Much Is a Yard of Concrete in Square Feet?

Sometimes you may have a question about how many square feet of a slab you can pour with a yard of concrete.  In other words, how much is a yard of concrete in square feet?

This obviously depends on the thickness of the slab. The formula to calculate this is

Slab Area (Square Feet) = 27 / {Slab Thickness (Inches)/12}

You can also use this Table if your slab has a standard thickness.

Slab Thickness
(Inches)
Slab Area
(Square Feet)
4”81.0
6”54.0
8”40.5
10”32.4
12”27.0

How Many Yards for Standard Garage Sizes?

The standard thickness for a slab on grade foundation for a garage is 4″. This thickness does not require any rebar reinforcement and is considered sufficiently strong for a standard residential garage. The dimension of the garage depends on the number of cars for which it is built.

So for a garage built on concrete slab you could use the following table. It gives some common sizes of 1, 2 and 3 car garages along with the concrete required to pour a 4″ thick slab.

Garage SizeGarage Slab Area
(Square Feet)
Concrete Required
(Yards)
1 CAR GARAGE
12’X22’2643.26
14’X22’3083.80
14’X24’3364.15
16’X24’3844.74
2 CAR GARAGE
20’X20’4004.94
20’X22’4405.43
22’X22’4845.98
24’X24’5767.11
3 CAR GARAGE
32’X22’7048.69
36’X24’86410.67

NOTE: Please add 10% – 15% to above for wastage.

Thank you very much for reading the post. I do hope you found it informative and useful.

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