Weight

I am thinking of building 2x2 square foot boxes and then moving them later (we own two places).



Does anybody have an idea of what a typical square foot 4x8 would weigh?

HEAVY! A 4x8 holds over 1/2 cubic yard. If the soil is saturated, you're talking hundreds of pounds. A cubic yard of sand, gravel, or dirt is in the 2-3000 pound range.

one cubic foot of compost is about 52 lbs per square 1 gallon of water
is 8.5 lbs so the answer counting wood bed is made from is about 1800 lbs

good try boffer but you guess is almost twice the real figure.
I used have job where I had weigh strange stuff for living.

Hi Gridgardener ,

I've been trolling the forums today as I've been under the weather and trying to catch up. I see you have many posts.

I would like to make a suggestion that I hope you will take kindly. We are a group of family friendly folks who are always trying to encourage others and enlighten their way. We like to do that in a positive and gentle fashion. We often have differing opinions. You can see that in many of the topics. However, we never want to have another poster leave the topic feeling badly, only encouraged.

You have a very direct style of providing your information. We would like you to continue posting, but we look forward to your posts being kinder. We have many children who post here, too. Discouraging them from visiting the site would be a sad misdeed.

Thanks, Gridgardener. I know you can do it.

Mel's mix is rather light compared to regular soil or gravel, but full of water it still would weigh a lot, probably too heavy to move even in just a 2x2 bed.. I had a load of aggregate delivered a couple of months ago and 20 cubic yards weighed 24 tons -- so Boffer is right about regular soil, sand or gravel weighing in excess of 2,000 lbs.

@gridgardener wrote:good try boffer but you guess is almost twice the real figure.
I used have job where I had weigh strange stuff for living.

boffer said it was between 2 - 3000lbs, that would be around 1500lbs, he was right!

I have six boxes. They are 42" square, and the soil is 10" deep. That is right at 10cu ft per box...or 60cuft total. I brought in about 2200 pounds of compost, soil, peat, and vermiculite to fill the boxes. Based on that...

For planning purposes, I would estimate 35 pounds per cubic foot for dry mix.