How much mulch and firewood will your tree make?
A 16 metre gum with a 60cm trunk makes roughly 6 cubic metres of loose woodchip and about 2.4 cubic metres of firewood rounds. Six cubic metres spreads 75mm deep over about 80 square metres of garden bed, which is more bed than most Pakenham estate blocks have. Handling and carting that material is $300 to $900 of a typical 2026 removal, and keeping some of it on site is the easiest saving there is.
Measure the tree, then see the waste handling cost.
Set the height and the trunk diameter and the estimator shows what it costs in 2026 to deal with the material that comes off it: chipping, cross cutting, cartage and tip fees. This is the green waste side of a removal, not the whole removal. For the full job price see our pricing guide.
What each size of tree actually produces.
| Tree | Height and trunk diameter | Loose woodchip | Firewood rounds | Heaped 6 by 4 trailer loads of chip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small wattle or ornamental | 5m tall, 20cm diameter | 1 to 1.5 cubic metres | About 0.2 cubic metres | 1 |
| Standard suburban gum | 10m tall, 35cm diameter | 2.5 to 3.5 cubic metres | About 0.7 cubic metres | 2 to 3 |
| Mature backyard gum The most common Cardinia removal | 16m tall, 60cm diameter | 5 to 7 cubic metres | About 2.4 cubic metres | 4 to 6 |
| Large paddock gum | 25m tall, 90cm diameter | 12 to 18 cubic metres | About 6 cubic metres | 9 to 14 |
| Cypress row, per tree | 5m tall, 25cm diameter each | 1.5 to 2 cubic metres each | Negligible. Cypress is poor firewood and spits. | 1 to 2 each |
Volumes are loose measure straight out of the chipper, before settlement. Every cubic metre of solid wood becomes roughly 2.5 cubic metres of loose chip.
How to get the height and the diameter right with a tape and a phone.
Height, the phone method. Open the level or compass app on your phone. Walk backwards away from the tree, sighting along the phone at the very top, until the reading says 45 degrees. Stop. Pace back to the trunk, counting at about 0.75 metres a pace, then add your eye height of roughly 1.6 metres. That total is the tree height. It is accurate to within a metre or two on flat ground, which is all anyone needs.
Height, the stick method, if you have no phone. Hold a straight stick vertically at arm’s length so the top of the stick lines up with the top of the tree and your thumb marks the base of the trunk. Keeping your thumb where it is, rotate the stick to horizontal. Have someone walk sideways until they are standing at the stick tip. The distance from them to the trunk is the tree height.
Height, the sanity check. Before you tell anyone a number, compare it to something you know. A single storey eave is about 2.7 metres. A double storey eave is 5.5 to 6 metres. A standard suburban power pole crossarm sits somewhere around 7 to 9 metres. If your tree is twice the height of your double storey roof line, it is not 10 metres, it is closer to 20.
Trunk diameter. Take a dressmaker’s tape or a piece of string around the trunk at 1.4 metres above the ground, which is roughly chest height on most adults, and divide the circumference by 3.14. That 1.4 metre mark is not arbitrary: it is the standard measuring point, and it is also where Cardinia Shire measures for the Tree Protection Local Law, where the trigger is 110cm of circumference rather than diameter. If your tape reads over 110cm, assume a permit and read our Cardinia permit page before you book anything.
Not sure what you are looking at? Send a photo.
Photo from three angles plus a tape reading at 1.4 metres and we can give you a real number over the phone.
How much mulch you need, and how much extra to allow.
Mulch quantity is simple arithmetic: bed area in square metres, multiplied by depth in metres. At 75mm, one cubic metre covers about 13 square metres. So a 40 square metre garden bed needs 3 cubic metres. Then add the allowances, because this is where people get it wrong.
- Add 25 percent for settlement. Fresh chip is fluffy. A 6 cubic metre heap is about 4.5 cubic metres three months later. Order or keep a quarter more than the arithmetic says.
- Never spread deeper than 100mm. Thick mulch stops rain reaching the soil and keeps roots shallow, which is the opposite of what you want going into a Cardinia February.
- Keep 100mm clear of trunks, stems and house cladding. Mulch piled against bark causes collar rot. Mulch against weatherboards is a termite bridge straight past the inspection zone.
- Age fresh eucalypt chip 3 to 6 months before it goes on vegetable beds or around seedlings. On paths and around established shrubs it is fine on day one.
- Stump grindings are not mulch. They are sawdust and soil, too fine and too acidic to spread on beds, and they settle 30 to 60mm over the first wet winter. Budget a barrow of topsoil before you re-turf. Detail on our stump grinding page.
- Know your heap footprint. Six cubic metres is roughly 3 metres by 2.5 metres by a metre high. Pick the spot before the crew arrives, and make sure it is not the only flat patch the kids use.
The sizing mistake that costs the most in this shire is not mulch, it is height. Homeowners routinely describe a 16 metre gum as “about 10 metres”, because you are standing underneath it and foreshortening it. That single error is the difference between a $1,100 quote and a $2,400 one, between one day and two, and often between a straightforward climb and a job that needs rigging or an elevated work platform. Measure it once with the phone method and the quote you get over the phone will be the quote you pay.
A 16 metre sugar gum on a 550 square metre Cardinia Lakes block.
The tape reads 195cm of circumference at 1.4 metres, so the diameter is 195 divided by 3.14, which is 62cm. That is well over the 110cm circumference trigger, so this is a permit tree. The phone method puts the height at 16 metres.
The trunk cross section is a circle of radius 0.31 metres, which is 0.30 square metres. Take the merchantable trunk as the first 10 metres and allow for taper with a form factor of about half, and you get roughly 1.5 cubic metres of solid trunk wood, or about 1.5 tonnes green. Cross cut into 400mm rounds and stacked with air gaps, that becomes about 2.4 cubic metres of firewood, which is two heaped 6 by 4 trailer loads.
Branch and canopy wood on an open grown gum is typically 40 to 60 percent of the above ground volume, so call it another 1.2 cubic metres of solid wood. Through the chipper at roughly 2.5 times expansion, plus the leaf and fine material, that is about 5 to 6 cubic metres of loose chip.
The block has 38 square metres of garden bed. At 75mm that needs 2.85 cubic metres, and with the 25 percent settlement allowance you want about 3.6 cubic metres. So keep 3.5 cubic metres on site, we cart the other 2.5. Set the estimator above to 16 metres, 60cm and “keep the firewood, we take the chip” and it lands at about $300 to $900 for the waste handling, which is the number that appears inside a full removal quote of roughly $1,600 to $2,400 for this tree. Compare that with the tiers on our budget removal page.
The honest constraint on all of this: if what you actually want is mulch, do not book a tree removal to get it. Ring around the tree crews working your area in spring and ask to go on the chip drop list. Tipping green waste costs a crew roughly $70 to $110 a tonne, so a free drop at your place saves them money and costs you nothing. We do it too, across Pakenham, Officer, Beaconsfield, Cardinia Lakes and Heritage Springs. The catches are real though: you take the whole load, usually 6 to 10 cubic metres, you get whatever species came down that week, and you get a few hours notice rather than a booked time.
Send your measurements and get a real number back
Give us the height, the tape reading at 1.4 metres and a photo, and we will come out free and email a fixed written quote within 2 to 5 working days.
Mulch and volume questions from Cardinia homeowners.
How much mulch does one tree make?
How do I measure the height of my tree without climbing it?
How deep should I spread woodchip mulch?
Can I use fresh eucalypt woodchip straight away?
How many trailer loads is a cubic metre of mulch?
Can I just get a free load of mulch dropped off in Cardinia?
Related reading: tree services in Cardinia Lakes · what happens on removal day · choosing a replacement tree · warranties on tree work
Measured it? Get a fixed price on the whole job.
Free written quotes across Pakenham, Officer, Beaconsfield, Cardinia Lakes and Heritage Springs.