#8 Crushed Stone in Virginia: the Small Clean Size

On a Northern Virginia lot where two downspouts empty onto clay, a load of #8 crushed stone looks smaller than the ticket suggests and rattles like shot when a shovel goes into it. That sound is the whole product in one go. There is nothing in the pile but stone: no dust clinging to the blade, no gray smear left on the plywood, nothing at all to bind the pieces together when you tread on them.

Sharp, pea-sized and rattling: what a load actually looks like

The pieces run about 3/32 inch to 3/8 inch, graded to the #8 designation. Locally that number comes off the VDOT washed stone sizes, which is how yards and drawings here describe material rather than anything this storefront certifies.

Pick a handful up and three things stand out.

• Every face is broken. This is crushed rock, so the pieces have corners and flats rather than the worn curves of a river stone.
• The load is clean, with little to nothing in the way of fines. Rub two pieces together over a dark surface and almost nothing falls off them.
• Spread a shovelful and it stays loose. Press a boot into it and the stone shifts underfoot instead of firming up.

Damp from handling, it looks darker and more even in color than it will once it dries out on the ground.

Rock garden beds and splash strips: two jobs #8 crushed stone does well

A xeriscape or rock garden bed is a good fit, for a reason people often have backwards. The appeal is not that the stone holds water back. It is that it holds no water at all. On slow-draining Piedmont clay, a bed of small clean stone lets summer thunderstorm water pass through to the shaped ground below instead of standing in the crowns of the plants. Lay it into a shallow excavation over a separation layer so the clay cannot work up into the gaps, and set the edge before any stone arrives.

A splash strip under a downspout is the second one. Roof water landing at a single point cuts a hole in anything fine, and this size has the weight to take that while still packing close around an outlet in a narrow gap beside a foundation. Make the receiving area wider and deeper than the fall of water looks like it needs.

A third use is out of sight and probably the most common of all: bedding and surround for pipe and conduit, setting and joint material in permeable paver work where the build-up calls for it, and porous backfill against the drainage face of a wall. In each of those the stone does the same thing, which is to fill a space without ever sealing it.

The shed pad is the one to say no to

A base under a shed or a garage pad is the wrong order here, and it shows up within a season. Clean stone has no fines, so it cannot lock. Put weight on it and the pieces roll over one another until the corners of the building settle at different rates.

What that pad wants is a dense-graded base that packs hard. In Virginia that is 21A, carrying enough fines to compact into a firm layer. Bring the clean stone into the build only where the design calls for a drainage lift underneath, separated so the two layers do not mix.

The same reasoning rules out a walked-on path surfaced with this material alone, and any drive or turnaround where tires track the same two lines.

Depth for a bed, a splash strip and a bedding course

• Rock garden and landscape beds: about 2 inches over a separation layer. At this size that is several stones deep, enough to cover the ground and shallow enough not to smother planting pockets.
• Downspout splash strips: about 3 inches, with the stone carried right under the outlet.
• Pipe bedding and surround: follow the drawing or the pipe manufacturer's figure, since bedding thickness is part of somebody else's design.
• Permeable paver joints and setting course: follow the paver system's specified build-up rather than a general depth.

None of it is compacted to a target. The layer you spread is close to the layer you keep.

Counting the yards for a 77 square foot bed and two splash runs

Length times width in feet gives square feet. Multiply by the depth in inches divided by 12 for cubic feet, then divide by 27 for cubic yards. This site's own calculator pages put small crushed chips at roughly 2,800 lb per cubic yard, about 1.40 tons, so the yards convert straight through to a tonnage.

• Example, a rock garden bed 11 ft by 7 ft at 2 inches: 77 sq ft x 0.167 = 12.8 cu ft. 12.8 / 27 = 0.5 cubic yards, roughly 0.7 ton.
• Example, two downspout splash runs, each 8 ft by 3 ft at 3 inches: 48 sq ft x 0.25 = 12 cu ft. 12 / 27 = 0.4 cubic yards, roughly 0.6 ton.
• Example, the shed pad that should not have this stone in it, 10 ft by 12 ft at 4 inches of base: 120 sq ft x 0.333 = 40 cu ft. 40 / 27 = 1.5 cubic yards. Dense-graded base runs nearer 3,000 lb per cubic yard on this site's figures, about 1.50 tons, so that pad is close to 2.2 tons of 21A rather than 1.5 tons of clean stone.

Check any of it against the stone calculator before you settle on a quantity.

Ordering it beside #89, #57 and the screenings

When a plan or an inspector names a number, order that number and nothing near it.

Pick your quantity and a delivery date on this page. Delivery is arranged at checkout from your ZIP code, so settle on a tipping spot a loaded truck can reach and back out of before you book.