You cannot drive a stake into asphalt, so a hard-surface tent is held down by weight. The engineer's drawing gives you pounds per leg; the yard gives you blocks of a fixed weight. The order sheet is the division between those two numbers, always rounded up.
A 20x40 frame tent with 12 legs at 450 lb each needs 5,400 lb of ballast — 135 forty-pound blocks on the truck.
The example
Three tents going onto pavement, each with its own leg count and its own engineered hold-down requirement.
| A | B | C | D | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tent | Legs | Lb per leg | Lb per block | Blocks |
| 2 | 20x20 frame | 8 | 350 | 40 | 70 |
| 3 | 20x40 frame | 12 | 450 | 40 | 135 |
| 4 | 40x60 frame | 16 | 600 | 40 | 240 |
The formula
Total required weight first, then convert weight into blocks:
How it works
Three moves, in order:
B2*C2is the total hold-down weight the structure needs. Legs is not the same as corners — a 20x40 frame tent has legs down both long sides./D2converts pounds into blocks. Block weight is a yard fact, not a preference: weigh one and lock the cell.ROUNDUP(...,0)always goes to the next whole block. Three-quarters of a block is not on the truck.- Copy down the load sheet and the column becomes the count the driver pulls before leaving the yard.
Keep the pounds-per-leg column tied to the stamped drawing for the tent and the wind rating for the site. It is the one number in this table that is not yours to round.
Try it: interactive demo
Enter the leg count, the engineered pounds per leg, and the weight of one block.
Variations
Blocks per leg for the crew
Crews stack per leg, not per tent. Divide the per-leg requirement instead so the chief can call it out at each pole.
Trailer weight added
Multiply blocks by block weight to get the load you are actually towing, which is what the hitch rating cares about.
Pitfalls & errors
Pounds per leg is not a constant. It rises with tent size, sidewalls, and the site's wind rating — sidewalls turn a frame into a sail and can double the requirement.
Round up per leg, not per tent, when the crew stacks by pole. Rounding the total can leave one leg a block short while another has a spare.
Do not swap in water barrels at their nominal size without weighing them. A “55 gallon” barrel filled to 40 gallons is 330 lb, not 460 lb, and the formula will happily under-count.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
Where do the pounds-per-leg numbers come from?
Can I mix block sizes?
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