Quandaries and Queries
  

 

 

Name: Mike
Who is asking: Parent
Level of the question: All

Question: I need to know how to calculate square feet into yards of material. Example: 1320 sq. ft. surface area by 1 in. depth. What does this equal in cubic feet and yards. Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

 

Mike,

One foot is twelve inches so 1 inch is 1/12 feet. Thus 1320 sq ft by 1 inch is

1320 sq ft  1/12 ft = 110 cubic feet.

If this piece of land was 30 ft by 44 ft by 1 inch then you could change all the dimensions to yards.

30 ft is 30/3 yards
44 ft is 44/3 yards
 1/12 ft is 1/12  1/3 = 1/36 yards

Thus the volume is

 30/3  44/3  1/36 = 1320/9  1/36 = 4.07 cubic yards.

What you should see in the line above is that I divided 1320 by 9, that is 3 3, to convert the square feet to square yards, and then multiplied by the third dimension, in yards, to get the volume in cubic yards.

I did this with the assumption that the 1320 sq ft was a rectangle, 30 ft by 44 ft, but that assumption wasn't necessary. Regardless of the shape of the land that gave 1320 square feet, you need to divide by 9 to convert the units to square yards, and then multiply by the depth in yards.

Penny