Fencing around a 6 sided property

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Question from Annette:

Hi,
I've tried every way to figure this out and looked at your other acreage questions and still don't have an answer.
It's my Birthday today and it would make me so happy to figure this out.
I have this area I want fenced on my property and need to figure out how many acres it is to know if this guy is charging fare price for fencing.
It has 6 sides to it and measured in feet the sizes are:
1400 ft long
807 ft long
1060 ft long
300 ft long
310 ft long
400 ft long

Hope you can help me.
Thanks.
Annette

Hi Annette,

If you have read the acreage questions on our site then you know that if a plot of land has more than 3 sides then you can't calculate its area if all you know is the lengths of the sides. The problem is that different plots of land can have the same side lengths but very different shapes and different areas. If you look at the video in our response to an earlier question you can see that the small plot of land inside the wooden frame always has the same side lengths but the area changes substantially as the shape changes. In fact in one configuration the area is almost zero.

This is not a problem however in your situation. The amount of fencing you need is

\[ 1400 + 807 + 1060 + 300 + 310 + 400 = 4277 \mbox{ feet}\]

regardless of the shape or the area.

Penny

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