sqare feet to gallons
by Terry Laing on 09/28/05 at 18:59:48

We have a closed water systems that holds  600 gallons of water.

We want to figure the square footage required for 600 gallons of water?

If we knew this we would know how many square feet of surface area is present in our closed piping system regardless of the size of the pipe.  Correct?

thanks for any help.

Re: sqare feet to gallons
by Robert Fogt on 09/29/05 at 04:12:52

What is the shape of the tank?

volume = area * height
area = volume / height

If you know two of the three things, you can calculate the third.

Re: sqare feet to gallons
by Terry Laing on 09/29/05 at 11:57:53

We actually don't have a tank but a bunch of pipes that hold approx. 600 gallons.

Need to know how to figure how many square feet 600 gallons cover then I will know the surface area of the inside of the pipes.

Like 1 gallon contains say for instance occupies one sqare foot configuration of the square foot is inconsequential as it could be in a 2 inch pipe or a 1 gallon tank the water still occupies  X # of square feet.

So the question is, how many square feet does one gallon occupy?

Re: sqare feet to gallons
by Robert Fogt on 09/30/05 at 01:25:33

About all I can think of to do, is calculate the square footage of the entire water system, then divide by 600 to get the square foot/gallon factor. Or divide 600 by the square foot to get the gallon/square foot factor.

I don't know how you would calculate otherwise.

Re: sqare feet to gallons
by Wilfred on 10/07/05 at 03:20:26

First, you must be clear in your mind what result you want to calculate.
Square feet are used to measure area.
Gallons are used as a measure of volume.
You mentioned a system of pipes which hold about 600 gallons of water.

You cannot just use the surface area of the pipes to calculate volume, because you MUST also allow for the diameter of the pipes.  

You could do a calculation to check what volume of water can be contained in the pipes.

If the pipes are all the same diameter, then first measure the total length of all of the pipes.
If there are different sizes of pipe, then you will need to measure the total length of pipe of one size, and repeat the process for every other size of pipe.

The volume of a pipe can be found by multiplying the length by the cross-sectional area.

Calculate the cross sectional area (in square inches), after you have found the inside diameter of the pipe (in inches) by using the formula:
area = diameter x diameter x 0.25 x 3.142

To calculate the volume of a pipe in cubic feet, you need to multiply the length in feet you measured earlier, by the area in square inches you calculated above, and divide by 144 (because there are 144 square inches in a square foot).

To calculate the volume of the pipe (in gallons) you need to recognize that there are 6.25 gallons per cubic foot (British gallons).  If you are using USA gallons, I believe you need to use 7.5 gallons per cubic foot.
So you need to multiply the volume in cubic feet by 6.25 or by 7.5 as appropriate.

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