Half of an acre is a phrase that’s often used to describe yard sizes, but it can be very difficult to picture just what that means if you’re not familiar with how large an acre is.
Using some examples can help you get a better feel for that amount of space.
How big is half of an acre?
An acre doesn’t have a specific length or width. Instead, it must simply be 43,560 square feet in total. Therefore, half of an acre is 21,780 square feet.
An acre can be any shape, which can sometimes make it even harder to picture that exact size.
How long does it take to walk half of an acre?
How long it takes to walk across half of an acre depends on what the terrain is like, how tall you are and how long your stride is, and what level of fitness you have.
In general, though, most people can walk across an acre in about 35 seconds.
This means that it should only take about 17.5 seconds to walk across half of an acre.
Football Fields
Most people in the United States are familiar with the size of a football field, so it’s often a good point of reference when estimating space.
A football field is 160 feet wide and 360 feet long, including the end zones. This means the field has a total space of 57,600 square feet.
You could fit just over 1 acre in a football field. Half of a football field is 28,800 square feet, so half an acre would take up just less than half of a football field, with about 7,000 square feet to spare.
Other sports fields or courts are also a good way to estimate space.
For example, a basketball court is about 92 feet long and just over 49 feet wide, giving it a total square footage of about 4,508 feet.
You would need about nine and a half basketball courts to make up 1 acre or a little less than four and a half courts to make up half of an acre.
Volleyball courts are even smaller than basketball courts, with a length of about 59 feet and a width of 29.5 feet, for a total square footage of 1,740.5 feet.
It would take about 12 and a half volleyball courts to cover half an acre.
Tennis courts are a bit larger than volleyball courts. All tennis courts are 78 feet long. Singles courts are 27 feet wide, while doubles courts are 36 feet wide.
It would take about 10 singles courts, with a square footage of 2,106, to cover half an acre.
You would need just less than 8 doubles courts, with a footprint of 2,808 square feet, to cover half an acre.
Vehicles
The footprint of a car depends on the type of vehicle and what the make, model, and year are.
In general, however, most cars are around 14.7 feet long and about 6 feet wide. This means that cars usually have a footprint of about 88.2 square feet.
You would need to arrange about 247 cars together to make half of an acre.
Using a bus is an even better way to get a feel for the size of this space since buses are so much bigger. Buses can be found in several lengths, but most buses are about 40 feet long and about 8.5 feet wide.
They have a footprint of about 340 square feet. It would take about 64 buses to fill half of an acre.
Swimming Pools
You can create a swimming pool in nearly any size or shape that you like. Swimming pools used for professional sports, however, must have a regulation size.
For example, an Olympic swimming pool is exactly 50 meters long and 25 meters wide, which can be converted to about 164 feet by 82 feet. This gives a total size of 13,448 square feet.
You would need about two Olympic swimming pools to cover half an acre.
Home and Backyards
Since most people use acre measurements to talk about yard size, comparing half of an acre to an average home or yard size can help you visualize that area better.
Homes, of course, can be different sizes, but in the United States, the average home is about 2,400 square feet. The square footage includes only the house and not the yard.
This means you would need about 9 homes to fill half an acre.
Yard sizes, which include the entire lot of land that makes up your yard and home, can differ greatly, and some states generally have larger yards than others.
For example, Nevada has some of the smallest lot sizes, while Vermont has the largest yard sizes in the U.S. In general, though, the average yard size in the United States is about 12,632 square feet.
You could make up about half an acre of space by visualizing two average yards lined up next to each other.
You can also use a standard garage to visualize half an acre. Most garages are usually about 18 feet wide and 20 feet deep. This means that most garages are right around 360 square feet.
It would take 60 and a half garages to cover half an acre.
