🕳️How much fill dirt does the hole take?

✓ Tested & verified Updated: Aug 6, 2026 How we calculate this

Fill dirt calculator

Length ft

Width ft

Depth

8.9 cubic yards≈ 11.1 tons

= 240 cu ft · about 160 bags (1.5 cu ft)

Weight, dry: 22,222 lb
Loads in a half-ton pickup: 13
One cubic yard covers: 27 sq ft at this depth

Depth is in inches here — a 3-foot-deep hole is 36.

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How much fill dirt do you need?

Filling a 20 × 12 ft area a foot deep takes 240 cubic feet — 8.9 cubic yards — and at 2,500 lb a cubic yard that is 22,200 lb, or 11.1 tons. Fill dirt is the heaviest common landscape soil, which is why it is quoted by the ton as often as by the yard.

Then add for compaction, because fill dirt is bought loose and used compacted. Dumped and left alone it will settle 10 to 20 percent over a season of rain; placed properly — in 6 to 8 inch lifts, each one tamped or plate-compacted — you lose a similar volume immediately but the ground stays where you put it. Order 20 to 25 percent over the calculated volume either way, so the 8.9 yards above becomes about 11.

Do not use topsoil for this. Topsoil is full of organic matter that keeps decomposing, so a hole filled with it goes on sinking for years. Fill dirt is subsoil with the organic fraction already absent, which is exactly why it holds a grade.

Fill dirt is the only material on this site where the number you calculate is deliberately not the number you order. Everything else goes down loose and stays loose. Fill goes down loose and is then compacted, and the difference between those two states is the reason so many patched lawns have a dip in them a year later.

The table is per 100 sq ft — a 10 × 10 ft patch — so multiply straight through for the area you are filling.

Depth	Cubic feet	Cubic yards	Tons
6 in	50	1.85	2.3
12 in	100	3.70	4.6
18 in	150	5.56	6.9
24 in	200	7.41	9.3
36 in	300	11.11	13.9

Past about five yards this stops being a wheelbarrow job. Check the load against your vehicle on the cubic yards to tons calculator before you decide to haul it yourself.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between fill dirt and topsoil?

Fill dirt is subsoil taken from below the root zone: clay, sand and rock with almost no organic matter. Topsoil is the upper horizon, screened, with the organic matter that makes things grow. Fill dirt compacts to a stable base and will not grow much; topsoil grows things and never stops settling. Structural fill first, then 4 to 6 inches of topsoil on top if you want grass.

How much does a yard of fill dirt weigh?

About 2,500 lb dry, in a published range of 2,200 to 2,900 lb depending on the clay content, and appreciably more when saturated. That is 1.25 US tons per cubic yard, so a half-ton pickup rated at 1,800 lb of payload is over its limit before the bed is three-quarters full of a single yard.

How much fill dirt do I need to fill a pool?

A 16 × 32 ft pool averaging 5 feet deep is 2,560 cubic feet — about 95 cubic yards, or 119 tons, before compaction. Pool removals are a machine job for that reason: 95 yards is roughly ten dump-truck loads, and the fill has to go in in lifts and be compacted or the whole footprint sinks.

How do I calculate fill for an irregular hole?

Break it into shapes you can measure and add them. Two overlapping rectangles and a triangle beat one guess every time. For a hole with sloping sides, measure the top area and the bottom area, average them, and multiply by the depth — that gets you within a few percent of the true prismatoid volume.

Can I get fill dirt for free?

Often, yes. Excavation contractors pay to dispose of it, so a site digging a basement or a pool nearby will frequently deliver clean fill at no charge or for the haulage alone. The catch is that you take what turns up: it may be wet, may contain rock or root, and it arrives when the truck is free, not when you are.

How deep should fill dirt go before topsoil?

Fill to within 4 to 6 inches of your finished grade, compact it in lifts, then cap with that depth of screened topsoil. Below a driveway or a slab the cap is gravel instead, and the compaction spec matters far more — that is a job for a plate compactor and a contractor, not a wheelbarrow.

How we calculate this

Volume is length × width × depth ÷ 12 ÷ 27 for a rectangle, π × radius² for a circle and base × height ÷ 2 for a triangle. Weight uses 2,500 lb per cubic yard for fill dirt from our density table, the working figure inside a published 2,200–2,900 lb range; tons are US short tons of 2,000 lb. Truck loads assume 1,800 lb of payload for a half-ton pickup — on fill dirt every vehicle on the list is payload-limited long before it runs out of space. The compaction allowance is applied by you, not by the calculator: the figure shown is the true loose volume of the void, and 20–25 percent on top is the standard placement allowance.

Worked example

With Length ft 20, Width ft 12, Diameter ft 12, Base ft 20, Height ft 12, Area sq ft 300, Ring diameter ft 6, Gap around trunk (in) 4, Depth 12, this page works out 8.9 cubic yards ≈ 11.1 tons. = 240 cu ft · about 160 bags ( 1.5 cu ft )

Weight, dry22,222 lb
Loads in a half-ton pickup13
One cubic yard covers27 sq ft at this depth

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