LoveMyPatio Club is an independent website that publishes free planning calculators for patios, decks, gardens, and other outdoor projects. The site has been online since 2024 and is run by a small group of people who do their own backyard work and got tired of guessing at material quantities. Every tool here exists because one of us actually needed it on a real project and could not find a version that did the math the way a job site does.
This page explains who we are, how the calculators are built and checked, and where their limits lie. We think that kind of transparency matters more than a polished mission statement, especially when people are about to spend real money based on a number a website gave them.
Most outdoor projects fail at the math, not the labor. A homeowner measures a patio, eyeballs the paver count, orders what seems right, and then either runs short halfway through a weekend or ends up with three pallets of leftovers blocking the garage. Neither outcome is fun, and both are avoidable.
The problem is that the real formulas are slightly annoying. Paver coverage depends on joint width and a waste allowance for cuts around curves. Concrete volume has to account for the difference between a four-inch and six-inch slab, plus the few percent you lose to over-excavation and spillage. Mulch is sold by the cubic yard but spread by the inch of depth. None of this is hard, but it is fiddly enough that people skip it, and the skipping is what costs them.
We built LoveMyPatio Club to do the fiddly part correctly and explain it in plain language. The goal is not to replace a contractor's quote. It is to get you a number you can trust well enough to set a budget, size a delivery, and walk into a supply yard knowing roughly what you are asking for.
The site is maintained by a small independent team rather than a large company. Between us we cover three things: hands-on outdoor building experience from our own and friends' projects, the technical work of writing and testing the calculator code, and the research and writing that goes into each guide. We are not a licensed contracting firm, and we say so plainly — what we offer is careful estimation and clear explanation, not professional engineering sign-off.
Because we are small, we read everything that comes through our contact form personally. A good portion of the calculators on the site were added or refined after a reader pointed out a missing option or a case the tool handled poorly. That feedback loop is the single biggest reason the library has grown the way it has.
Every calculator follows the same process before it goes live, and the same process when we revisit it:
We treat cost numbers differently from physical-quantity numbers. The amount of gravel a trench needs is geometry and does not change. The price of that gravel changes by region, season, and supplier, so any dollar figure on this site is a national-average ballpark for planning, not a quote. Our Disclaimer covers this distinction in detail.
The calculator library is organized into four areas. A few of the most-used tools:
You can browse the full set on the sitemap or by category from the navigation. Everything is free, works in the browser, and needs no account or sign-up.
When we need an authoritative figure, we go to the source rather than to another blog. The references that come up most often across the site include the International Code Council for span and structural requirements, the Portland Cement Association for concrete guidance, and the Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute for segmental paving. Individual calculator pages cite the specific source behind their formula at the bottom of the article.
Running a website costs money, so this one is supported by advertising and may include occasional affiliate links to relevant products. That funding never changes the math. A calculator returns the same number whether or not an ad happens to load next to it, and we do not let advertisers influence which tools we build or what our guides recommend. The details are in our Disclaimer and Privacy Policy.
Questions, corrections, and suggestions for new calculators are genuinely welcome — reader input shapes a lot of what we build. The fastest way to reach us is the contact form, and we read every message.
| Reason | How to Reach Us |
|---|---|
| General questions & tool suggestions | Contact form — select "General Question" |
| Report a calculator error | Contact form — select "Calculator Issue" |
| [email protected] |
We aim to reply to most messages within a couple of business days. If you spot a number on this site that looks wrong, please tell us — accuracy is the whole point, and we would rather fix a mistake quickly than leave it sitting there.