9 Examples Of How Big 30 Acres Is
If you’re thinking about moving into a new house, you may have discussed how many acres the yard has.
This term is also commonly used to describe the size of parks, forests, zoos, or other natural or outdoor areas.
However, without a frame of reference, it can be difficult to really get a feel for just how big an acre is. This makes it even harder to visualize 30 acres.
Comparing 30 acres to a few well-known objects can help.
Examples of how big 30 acres is (quick reference)
30 Acres equals:
- 22.7 Football fields
- 161 Baseball diamonds
- 12 City blocks
- 544.5 Average-sized houses
- 97 Olympic swimming pools
- 3,843.5 Buses
- 8,167.5 Parking spaces
- 11 Cruise ships
- 31,114 King beds
How big is 30 acres?
Acres generally don’t have a particular length or width, as they can be any shape, and each acre can be a different shape or have a different number of sides.
Instead, acres are measured in square feet. One acre is equal to 43,560 square feet. This means that 30 acres are 1,306,800 square feet.
How long would it take to walk across 30 acres?
Walking paces vary, and acres can vary in shape, so it’s hard to get a firm idea of just how long it would take to walk across 30 acres.
However, most people can walk across a roughly square acre in about 35 seconds. If we multiply 35 by 30, we get 1,050, telling us it would take the average person about this many seconds to walk across 30 acres.
We can divide 1,050 by 60 to find that it would take about 17.5 minutes to walk across 30 acres.
Football Fields
In the United States, one of the easiest ways to visualize the size of a large space is to compare it to a football field.
An American football field is 360 feet long and 160 feet wide, giving the field a total square footage of 57,600.
This means that about 22.7 football fields could fit into 30 acres.
Baseball Diamonds
Baseball fields are another sports field that most people, at least in the U.S., can easily visualize, so they make an excellent option for imagining a certain number of acres.
A baseball stadium can vary greatly in size depending on how many people it seats, and baseball fields often have outfields of various sizes.
However, a baseball diamond is always a square measuring 90 feet on each side. This gives a baseball diamond the square footage of 8,100 square feet.
If we divide 1,306,800 by 8,100, we find that you could potentially fit just over 161 baseball diamonds on 30 acres.
City Blocks
City blocks are large areas of land, making them a great option for comparing to acres.
However, a city block isn’t an exact measurement, and how large a city block is depends on where you are and how that city was originally laid out.
For example, in Chicago, a city block is 600 feet wide and 330 feet long. Most people agree, however, that a city block is usually about 2.5 acres in size.
This means that 30 acres could hold about 12 city blocks.
Houses
Acre measurements are often used to describe yard sizes, so it makes sense to compare 30 acres to the typical size of a home and yard.
Houses and yards do vary in size, though, so you’ll have to use an average home and yard size to estimate.
In the U.S., the average home is about 2,400 square feet, so you could fit about 544.5 average homes on 30 acres. This square footage doesn’t include the yard, however.
The average yard size in the United States is about 12,632 square feet, including the space the home is on.
In this case, you could fit just over 103 homes and their yards on 30 acres.
If you can picture a large neighborhood, you can probably picture 30 acres.
Swimming Pools
Like homes, swimming pools can be many different sizes and shapes. Lap pools, however, must be a more uniform shape, and Olympic swimming pools must adhere to strict size regulations.
An Olympic-sized swimming pool must be 82 feet wide and 164 feet long, for a total square footage of 13,448 square feet.
You would need about 97 Olympic swimming pools, with no space in between, to cover 30 acres.
Buses
Buses are a common sight, and they’re quite large, so they’re good for visualizing big spaces. Buses do vary in size, but most buses are about 40 feet long and usually around 8.5 feet wide.
This gives a bus an overall footprint size of 340 square feet. If the buses are of this average size, it would take about 3,843.5 buses to fill 30 acres.
Parking Spaces
Parking lots are another familiar sight, and they take up a large amount of land. The average single parking space is about 8 feet wide and 20 feet long, for a total size of 160 square feet.
Dividing 1,306,800 by 160, we find that 8,167.5 parking spaces could fit on 30 acres.
Cruise Ships
Cruise ships vary in size, but most are about 120 feet wide and 1,000 feet long, for a total footprint of about 120,000 square feet.
Although these ships are massive, you would still need almost 11 of them to cover 30 acres.
King Beds
King beds are surprisingly large, measuring 76 inches by 80 inches, which equals 6,080 square inches or about 42 square feet.
You would need just over 31,114 king beds to cover 30 acres.
