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The volume of mortar in cubic yards.
About 1.8 short tons per cubic yard for sand-cement mortar; close to concrete but without coarse aggregate.
Approximate weight
18 short tons
About 1.8 short tons per cubic yard for sand-cement mortar; close to concrete but without coarse aggregate. A planning figure, not a specification. Confirm the density with your supplier before ordering by weight.
- Conversion factor applied
- 1.8 short tons per yd³
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Mortar Cubic Yards to Tons Calculator: 18 short tons — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
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How this was calculated
Formula source(s)
- Typical bulk density used here: approximately 1.8 short tons per cubic yard
- Density varies with moisture, grading and composition — the supplier's ticket weight governs
Inputs used
- Mortar volume (yd³)
- 10
Intermediate steps
- Conversion factor applied
- 1.8 short tons per yd³
Confidence note: About 1.8 short tons per cubic yard for sand-cement mortar; close to concrete but without coarse aggregate. A planning figure, not a specification. Confirm the density with your supplier before ordering by weight.
What this calculation does not cover
- This weight is a total for the elevation, summed from joints that go in over days or weeks. Site-mixed mortar is batched to the pace of laying and carried up in tubs, so nothing — platform, hoist or floor — holds this figure at once. Where the work runs off retarded ready-to-use mortar, which arrives wet, or off a site silo of dry preblended material with the mixer at its outlet, the opposite is true: that stock stands on site in bulk, and a charged silo puts a concentrated load on whatever base it was sited on.
- A small mortar tonnage does not turn straight into an order. Site-mixed work is bought as sand and cement in units that do not subdivide — sand by the ton or the yard, cement by the bag — so a job of a yard or two rounds up to the next whole unit of each, and at that scale the rounding moves what arrives more than the density does. On a job several times that size it disappears into the total, and what the mix ratio does to the density matters more.
- The volume converted here is joint volume, and mortar in a wall is not confined to the joints. Hollow units bedded full rather than on their face shells take mortar into the cores, and a collar joint between wythes is solid mortar that no take-off of beds and perpends counts. Where either applies, this tonnage is a lower bound on what to buy.
Estimated cost — your price
This site holds no price list for this material — local prices vary too much to publish honestly. Enter your supplier's price and the result is costed with it.
Computed in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded. Presented in US customary units and US trade terminology. Where a formula follows a published standard, that standard and its edition are cited beside it on this page; where none governs, the page says so. Local amendments override model codes — verify against the code in force where you build.
Sources checked 2026-08-26 · in the site-wide review of 2026-09-06 · v1.0.0
Regulatory standards & verification citations2
- Typical bulk density used here: approximately 1.8 short tons per cubic yard
- Density varies with moisture, grading and composition — the supplier's ticket weight governs
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Mortar volume is worked out from the joint dimensions across a wall, and converting it to weight matters mainly for ordering the sand and cement that make it. The density sits below concrete because there is no coarse aggregate, only sand and binder. The figure most often underestimated is not the density but the volume itself: joints look thin, but across a full elevation the mortar in a single-wythe wall amounts to a substantial proportion of the wall's volume, and perpends consume as much as beds.