When you hear that a property has an acre of land, it can be easy to immediately gasp in awe and expect a never-ending vast space of land and plan your new life as a country farmer.
However, when faced with one acre versus 2 hectares or 10,000 square feet, one can easily become confused regarding the magnitude of this method of measurement. With the information and visual examples below, you should be able to better judge how large an acre of land actually is.
What is an Acre?
Let’s first get into the technicalities of the topic. An acre is defined by the Oxford dictionary as a unit used to measure land and can be directly measured using a variety of other metric/imperial units as follows.
What is an Acre in Square Miles?
When we hear the word acre compared to the word mile, we easily assume that a mile is much smaller than an acre because the known is always more fathomable than the unknown. However, there are precisely 640 acres in a single square mile.
1 acre = approximately 0.0016 square miles
How Many Square Yards is An Acre?
When it comes to comparing a square yard to an acre, you are correct if you predict that you will need many square yards to make up one acre.
1 acre = 4,840 square yards
One Acre Dimensions in Square Feet
As we go through the smaller unit of measurements, we can start to realize just how big an acre really is.
1 acre = 43,560 square feet
Where a square foot is defined by a squared area with each side measuring one foot exactly, an acre’s approximate dimensions are 66 by 66 feet.
What is An Acre In Square Meters?
For those coming from a metric as opposed to imperial background:
1 acre = 4,046.86 square meters
Is a Hectare Bigger Than an Acre?
A hectare is bigger than an acre, almost triple the size really. More specifically, one hectare is equal to 2.47 acres.
1 acre = 0.4047 hectares
14 Visual Representations of One Acre
Okay, that was a lot of different figures and terms, so if they went right over your head I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest! It is sometimes much easier to grasp the size of something by comparing it to things we are more familiar with, which allows us to visualize it.
1. How Many Acres in an American Football Field?
Hypothetically, let’s say you were to buy a one-acre piece of land. Could you convert it into an American Football field?
While an acre of land sounds like a lot, it is actually smaller than a football field!
In fact, you would need 1.32 acres to make a proper playing field. And that’s only the field. You would need more acreage if you wanted to install some bleachers or a locker room. Some other measurements for a football field include:
- 0.0021 square miles.
- 6,388.8 square yards.
- 57,499.2 square feet.
- 5,351.22 square meters.
- 0.53 hectares.
If you think about this in terms of football players running up, down, and across the field for sixty minutes, no wonder they have to be incredibly fit to play! That’s a lot of area to cover on foot.
2. How Big is an Acre Compared to a Baseball Field?
Let’s compare an acre to another well-known and much loved American sport: baseball.
Whether you are lucky enough to be seated on the bleachers or are watching the game from your TV, a baseball field looks massive, and it is! For your average-sized American Baseball field with a 90′ baseline, you are looking at a field size of 4.5 acres. In other terms, the field spans:
- 0.0072 square miles.
- 21,780 square yards.
- 196,020 square feet.
- 18,210.87 square meters.
- 1.82 hectares.
There’s no wonder that baseball players have calves of steel!
3. Number of Acres in a Little League Baseball Field?
For some, little league baseball can be even more important than professional baseball, as it could be the chosen sport of a family with young children.
Luckily, it is quite a bit easier to keep a close eye on your son or daughter compared to a professional player, as the average little league baseball field is about 2 acres, excluding the bleachers. This is equivalent to:
- 0.0031 square miles.
- 9,680 square yards.
- 87,120 square feet.
- 8,093.72 square meters.
- 0.81 hectares.
Your little ones will definitely be able to get their energy out on this field as they run from base to base.
4. How Big is an Acre Compared to a Soccer Field?
Unlike baseball, where only one or two individuals are running at a time, in soccer most of the players are sprinting past each other in order to attack or defend their positions. A soccer field needs to be big enough to give each player sufficient running room, but also small enough for the players to be close enough to kick the ball precisely where they need it to go.
Your average soccer field is about 1.76 acres, or:
- 0.0028 square miles.
- 8,518.4 square yards.
- 76,665.6 square feet.
- 7,122.47 square meters.
- 0.71 hectares.
It might be smaller than the other two previously mentioned sport’s fields, but we have all seen the sweat dripping off of Cristiano Ronald’s face at the halftime mark, so running around 1.76 acres for 45 minutes will definitely get your cardio workout ticked off the list.
5. How Many Acres is a Typical Golf Course?
Golf is a relaxing pastime, often played by businessmen networking during working hours or husbands and fathers looking to have some time to themselves on a Saturday morning. The reason they call it having a golf day is because of the average of 160 acres of land that they will be covering as they move from hole to hole.
This distance can also be measured as:
- 0.25 square mile.
- 774,400 square yards.
- 6,969,600 square feet.
- 647,497.6 square meters.
- 64.75 hectares.
Thank goodness for golf carts! Can you imagine having to trek this distance on foot?
6. Number of Tennis Courts That Can Fit in an Acre?
Moving onto another high-energy sport, let’s talk about tennis. The players hop between two feet as they attempt to block serves and score points. You can fit 16 of your average-sized tennis courts in one acre of land. So one tennis court is about, 0.0625 acres, or:
- 0.0001 square miles.
- 302.5 square yards.
- 2,722.5 square feet.
- 252.93 square meters.
- 0.025 hectares.
To the spectator, the tennis court appears small, but once you have that racquet in your hand, you are in for the workout of your life.
7. How Many NBA Basketball Courts in an Acre?
An NBA court is quite a bit smaller than your baseball or soccer field, measuring at about 0.11 acres. So, in theory, if you could afford to buy an acre of land on which to build an NBA-quality basketball court, you could technically fit about 9 of these courts on your property. This is the same as:
- 0.00017 square miles.
- 532.4 square yards.
- 4,791.6 square feet.
- 445.15 square meters.
- 0.045 hectares.
I don’t think you would necessarily need 9 basketball courts, but if you wanted to create your own basketball league and have a tournament on your home ground, then an acre would be the ideal amount of space.
8. One Acre Compared to an Olympic Swimming Pool
We all know the anxiety that fills us as we watch our country’s representatives battle for gold in the swimming component of the Olympics.
To the average viewer, the pool is large but it can’t be that big if these swimmers are managing to complete a lap in mere seconds, right? Wrong! The average Olympic-sized swimming pool is 2 acres! This measures the same as:
- 0.0031 square miles.
- 9,680 square yards.
- 87,120 square feet.
- 8,093.72 square meters.
- 0.81 hectares.
What’s even crazier to fathom is that some of these swimmers can even hold their breath for the length of these pools! I am out of breath just thinking about it.
9. How Many Cars Can Be Parked on an Acre?
When it comes to seeing concerts in person, or visiting large stadiums, we know just how easy it is to lose your car in the parking lot among the hoards of others (and how long it takes to even find a spot in the first place!). I know I often think to myself, surely they could have gotten a larger space with more bays?
Well, even though an acre seems like a large area of space, only about 200 cars can be parked in one, if allowing for extra room for maneuvering in and out of the spaces.
I think we should petition for all concert arenas to have at least 100 acres purely allocated for parking so that I don’t have to leave my house an hour earlier to find a spot. Keeping that in mind, they might need to have buses to carry those who have parked 100 acres away from the concert!
10. Is One Acre Big Enough for a House?
Your average-sized, single-family detached house in the USA takes up approximately 0.063 acres, or:
- 0.000098 square miles.
- 302.5 square yards.
- 2,722.5 square feet.
- 252 square meters.
- 0.025 hectares.
You can easily conclude that a single acre is definitely big enough for a house. With a square footage of 2,722.5 for each, you could actually fit 16 houses onto one acre!
14. How Many Grand Pianos Could Fit on an Acre?
Your average grand piano is about 61″ x 57.75″ (155 cm x 147 cm). This is an area of approximately 24.46 square feet (2.27 square meters).
Thus, one grand piano would take up 0.00056 acres and on one whole acre, you could fit 1,785 grand pianos—a musician’s dream.
Why Is Land Measured in Acres?
The reason for measuring land in acres and not more commonly in square miles or any of the other measurement units, comes down to history, long before the industrial revolution occurred, and when farming was the main and most important activity.
In medieval times, an acre referred to the total area that could be plowed in a single day by an individual and the oxen that were carrying a wooden plow.
This, then, became slightly more specific to the Anglo-Saxon’s time, where they measured an acre in terms of the components of a field, more specifically a plowed furrow (or long narrow trench). They equated one acre to 1 furlong by 1/10 of a furlong.
Eventually, the exact dimensions of an acre referred to a piece of land of any shape, which measured 4840 square yards.
Could a Family Live Sustainably on One Acre?
Ah, imagine living on a piece of land where you simply have to walk out the door to get eggs or milk if you run out, and you can make salads or smoothies out of the fruits and vegetables you have grown.
Well, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but logistically speaking, for a family of about 4 to live sustainably (that is, to provide just enough food for themselves and their family without waste) they will need at least 2 acres of land to do so.
That is not to say that it is impossible to live sustainably on only one acre of land. Experts advise that the amount of space necessary depends on how much rainfall the area gets, the type of climate it is in and the quality of the soil. You also need to take in the family’s specific needs and diet.
For instance, a vegan family will require a lot less space as there would be no need to space out the chickens and cows to allow for sufficient grazing because most of their food is plant-based. Experts state that vegan families would need just under 1 acre to live sufficiently.
One acre of land would be able to provide more than enough power to fun a family household if you set up solar panels. Even covering only a portion of the acre with panels would be enough to meet the electrical needs of a fully functioning home.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre
https://www.unitconverters.net/area/acres-to-square-feet.htm
https://www.musicalhow.com/minimum-room-size-for-grand-piano/