Top Soil for Regrading, Leveling and Lawn Repair

Most people buying top soil are standing on ground somebody else left them: a lot scraped flat by a grading crew, a trench line that has settled into a ridge, or the ragged strip beside a new pad where the machine tracks went. The good soil that was there went off on a truck or got buried under subsoil, and what is left will not grow grass and will not mow flat. This page is about putting a workable layer back.

Screened top soil is a blend of sand, silt and clay run through a screen so rocks, roots and clumps come out. It spreads with a rake, grades to a line, and takes seed or sod straight away.

The ground top soil gets ordered for, and the ground it has to sit on

Three jobs come up again and again around a property, and they share a shape: a hard surface goes in somewhere, and the bare ground around it needs bringing back to a level that mows and drains.

• The strip around a play area, where machines have compacted the ground and the finish has to be even enough that nobody catches a toe.
• The verge beside an RV or boat parking pad, where the edge of the pad and the lawn need to meet without a lip.
• The shoulders of a long rural lane, where grading pulls material off the crown each year and drops the edges below the track.

What the soil then has to survive depends on where you are. On heavy clay subgrade, water moves through slowly, so a layer of soil laid over untouched clay tends to perch water at the join and the grass above it drowns in a wet spring. On sandy ground the opposite happens: water disappears and the new layer dries out before roots get down into it. Neither is fixed by ordering more soil. Both are fixed by breaking up the top few inches of what is already there and blending it into the first inch or two of new material.

Climate stacks on top of that. On wet coastal ground and through the rainy parts of the south, the soil layer has to shed water sideways, which means grading to a fall rather than filling a dish. Across the north, where frost reaches 48 inches under the codes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, freeze and thaw lifts and drops a fresh layer through its first winter, so an autumn spread will need a second look come spring.

Depth around a play area, a boat pad verge and a lane shoulder

Depth is where orders go wrong, usually by being too thin.

Two things worth knowing before you spread. Loose soil is not finished soil: a layer raked out and left will lose noticeable height once rain has been through it, so aim high and let it come down. And do not spread over sod you intend to keep, or over anything still decomposing, because the layer settles unevenly over the top of it.

Where Garden Soil and Fill Dirt take the job instead

Two products on this site look similar in a pile and behave nothing alike.

Garden Soil is the blend for growing in volume: raised beds, vegetable plots, planters. If you are filling a box rather than dressing a surface, that is the one.

Fill Dirt is the opposite end. It is structural, for raising a grade, filling a hole or building a pad up before something goes on top. Nothing is grown in it. If you are bringing a low area up by a foot or more, filling most of the depth with fill dirt and finishing the last few inches with screened soil costs less material effort and gives you the same growing surface.

If the ground you are leveling needs to carry weight rather than grass, neither soil applies. That is a job for Road Base, with soil only on the verges either side.

Counting cubic yards for 300 feet of lane shoulder

Three hypothetical jobs, worked the way the tool on this page does it: length by width in feet, depth in inches, divided into cubic yards. This site's calculator figures screened topsoil at about 2,200 lb per cubic yard, or 1.10 tons per yard, so the tonnages below are approximate.

Ground around a play area. 20 x 30 feet at 3 inches: 20 x 30 = 600 square feet, 600 x 3 / 12 = 150 cubic feet, 150 / 27 = 5.56 cubic yards, and 5.56 x 1.10 = about 6.1 tons.

The verge beside a boat pad. A strip 8 feet wide by 35 feet long at 4 inches: 8 x 35 = 280 square feet, 280 x 4 / 12 = 93.3 cubic feet, 93.3 / 27 = 3.46 cubic yards, or roughly 3.8 tons.

Shoulders of a rural lane. Two strips 3 feet wide running 300 feet, at 2 inches. Each side is 3 x 300 = 900 square feet, so 1,800 square feet for both. 1,800 x 2 / 12 = 300 cubic feet, 300 / 27 = 11.1 cubic yards, which is about 12.2 tons.

The topsoil calculator turns those cubic yards into tons using the material weight and adds 5 percent by default, which is worth keeping on any job you expect to settle.

Getting a load onto the lawn without leaving a scar

Set your amount and a delivery date on this page. Delivery is arranged at checkout by ZIP code. Soil arrives as one heap, so pick the drop spot deliberately: firm ground the truck can back onto, close to the work, clear of septic lines and low branches, and ideally on a tarp or a hard surface if you care about the grass underneath. Have a rake, a landscape rake if you can borrow one, and more time than you think. If you want a second opinion on depth before ordering, American Rock Supply can be reached by call or text through the contact page.