Cubic Yards Converted into 5 Gallon Buckets

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[Vikingsniper]

There is 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot X 27 cubic feet in a yard is 201.96 gallons in a cubic yard. Divided by 5 gallons = 40.392 buckets in a cubic yard of soil....Now what I am wondering is how Accurate these Calculation's are?     

[tomcat]

Are you talking about a 20 litre pail  

7.48 US gallons / cu foot
6.23 imperial gallons / cu foot  

[Vikingsniper]

Yeah 20 Litre pail or bucket (the standard ones that most prospectors use)..... 7.48 US gallons / cu foot or 6.23 imperial gallons / cu foot....so about 40 pails or buckets give or take 

[garyww]

Keep in mind that for 'irregular' shaped objects they 'pack' differently and also change depending upon whether wet or dry so a bucket of 1" rocks will be a whole lot different than a bucket of 'classified' material with respect to not only weight but volume as well so what are you trying to figure out and then maybe we can give better answers.

[Vikingsniper]

That's a very good point GaryWW   Most times I classify my gravel/clay to 1/2" and I try my best to get dry material but that doesn't always happen.

[garyww]

I did several studies on this particular issue when I was looking at sluices and came to the conclusion that one person's 'bucket' did not jive with another person's idea of a bucket-load and the variation was almost 2-gallons in some instances. What I decided to use instead was 'how many shovel-loads of material is being processed. This is much more accurate. In almost all cases in any kind of material there are about 150 shovel loads of material in one cubic yard of raw bench run gravels using a number 2 shovel.
Hope this helps and doesn't just make the issue more complicated.

[Vikingsniper]

Thank You GaryWW , Yeah it does help for sure 

[Guest]

Just to add some fuel to the fire for thought, gravels, aggrecates, weigh generally in the neighbourhood of 4200 to 4500 lbs per yard depending on makeup of material, so by your calculations a 5 gallon bucket would average about 120-125 per bucket and seeing that you can't pack one bucket with that kind of weight in it without throwing your back out and wrenching a few other things. So I would hazard a guess that you are going to have to try using two buckets with smaller loads as the two fully loaded would be up in the 225-250 lb range, so for ease of transporting the full buckets lets say you're down to half buckets, now you're tring to pack around 125 lbs, still a fair jag by any stretch of the imagination, but quite doable with a yoke to balance the two back and forth, still a lot of work and kind of brute labour to boot, but look at it this....you've cut the number of trips with the buckets in half ...so there is so labour savings to be had from this approach.... ...Grywolf

[tomcat]

  where are those old Chinese prospectors when you need them.....don't forget the funky hat 

[Vikingsniper]

I will be using buckets or like Gary said #2 shovel fulls as a measuring cup to calculate when I have dug a cubic yard roughly...I won't be carrying these for a long distance though.