Ugh. Where did 660 feet come from? Where did 66 feet come from? A line of potatoes (linear) to measure an acre (area)? A strip of land 43,560 x 1 ft is an acre requiring 87k+ potatoes.
I’m no expert but i believe that’s not how the term is used today. Like if a house is advertised as coming on a quarter acre of land, that says absolutely nothing about the dimensions of that land
660 feet is a furlong, which comes from one furrow length. It’s the distance two oxen can pull a plow (creating a furrow), without stopping to rest. Then the oxen and person standing atop the plow could have a little rest before turning around to plow the next furrow. Not sure how many furrows but if you repeat this process all day, you’ll have plowed an acre. Potatoes did not exist to farmers when this land measurement was in use. But 66 x 660 is the original definition of an acre, and the only reasonable explanation for why we have 43,560
In California we measure water in Acre Feet. I guess if you know how many acres you have, and how many inches of water your crops need, I guess you’ll know how many acre feet you need.
It is a chain (66ft) and 10 chains 660ft. They are historically important units for land surveying (and relevant today because of that). The measurement is nonsense, but the graph makes sense because an acre can be defined as 1 chain by 10 chains or 66ftx660ft=4356sqft
These numbers all come from people who preferred 12 and 60 as their working base numbers, not 10. A lot of it becomes really elegant once you understand that.
You can divide 2400 square feet into an acre 18 times, but yeah… like, in most metros, even the kind of small detached single-family home you’d find in a inner-ring suburb is going to sit on a 5,000-8,000 square foot lot. Typical suburban lot sizes are more like a 1/4 acre.
This isn’t to say that a McMansion on a quarter acre of land is a good thing, but just as a point of reference, if you’re imagining a neighborhood of 15 to 20 homes and somebody tells you “that’s about an acre” you’re going to be off by an order of magnitude.
My 750sf circa-1960 starter home in a turn-of-century streetcar suburb sits on a 7,500sf lot, and that’s relatively small for the area. You’d have to be talking about urban rowhouses as seen in East Coast cities to approach anything like a 2500sf lot size for a single family home.
18*2,400=43,200, so they’d fit, but not nicely. It also doesn’t take external wall width into account, but that’s 20 extra feet per house for the outside walls.
That said, at least in my area, most of the houses in that size range are two story, so who knows what the footprint would be. Agreed, unhelpful metric.
I live in a home that size… any time someone comes over they mention how big the house is. It feels huge, we moved from 985 sqft and a year later it still feels enormous. To think this is the average is a mind fuck LoL.
Homes here tend to be about that size unless they’re older than about 1980. We also have a lot of absolutely massive mansions built out in the middle of absolutely nowhere that’ll drive that number up quite a bit. If you’re willing to drive 30 minutes to the grocery, you can get a 5000+sqft house for well under $500k. I have a buddy who just bought a 5200sqft place on 8 acres for about $450k. If you really want to live somewhere undesirable like the place my parents moved to a few years ago, their whole subdivision has a few dozen houses all over 7000sqft, and they sold for about $400k
I sincerely wouldn’t want that much space to maintain. We’re a family of 4 with multiple pets and we’ve got rooms we don’t go into. If we had twice the space to clean or heat I’d have no use for them at all. I’ve already got a home gym, 2 home offices, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, den that’s a library and a living room we don’t even furnish so the kids can use it as a gymnasium. I don’t even want this much space LoL. Too expensive to furnish. What’s the point.
Meanwhile, Europeans use hectares. Or a hundred ares. An are is 100 square metres, so a hectare is 100*100 or 10000 square metres or 1/100 of a square kilometer.
The more you know! doo doo doo… doo!🌈⭐
Ugh. Where did 660 feet come from? Where did 66 feet come from? A line of potatoes (linear) to measure an acre (area)? A strip of land 43,560 x 1 ft is an acre requiring 87k+ potatoes.
Also, 18 homes wont fit on an acre.
This graphic is fucking awful.
An acre is not just a unit of area measurement but has a traditional shape or aspect ratio per acre, based on the land plots it was used for.
1 acre is traditionally 60 ft x 660 ft, also known as 1 chain by 1 furlong.
It’s similar to if you said you could lay X potatoes across a football field. Yes a football field is an area but it also has a defined length.
I’m no expert but i believe that’s not how the term is used today. Like if a house is advertised as coming on a quarter acre of land, that says absolutely nothing about the dimensions of that land
True, I was just explaining where those numbers came from.
660 feet is a furlong, which comes from one furrow length. It’s the distance two oxen can pull a plow (creating a furrow), without stopping to rest. Then the oxen and person standing atop the plow could have a little rest before turning around to plow the next furrow. Not sure how many furrows but if you repeat this process all day, you’ll have plowed an acre. Potatoes did not exist to farmers when this land measurement was in use. But 66 x 660 is the original definition of an acre, and the only reasonable explanation for why we have 43,560
In California we measure water in Acre Feet. I guess if you know how many acres you have, and how many inches of water your crops need, I guess you’ll know how many acre feet you need.
660 * 8 is also 5280, or one mile.
That’s bull spit. I’ve trained my oxen to go 777 ft.
It is a chain (66ft) and 10 chains 660ft. They are historically important units for land surveying (and relevant today because of that). The measurement is nonsense, but the graph makes sense because an acre can be defined as 1 chain by 10 chains or 66ftx660ft=4356sqft
These numbers all come from people who preferred 12 and 60 as their working base numbers, not 10. A lot of it becomes really elegant once you understand that.
Did they use duodecimal or sexagesimal numeral systems?
66 feet does not match that, also its 1 chain * 10 chains.
and 10 chains = 1 furlong = 1/8 mile
Common denominator stuff.
Ya if you know that, you know what I’m talking about and just want to argue.
I do think a duodecimal system is elegant, I don’t see it being used with these numbers.
edit: ok, 660/12=55
You can divide 2400 square feet into an acre 18 times, but yeah… like, in most metros, even the kind of small detached single-family home you’d find in a inner-ring suburb is going to sit on a 5,000-8,000 square foot lot. Typical suburban lot sizes are more like a 1/4 acre.
This isn’t to say that a McMansion on a quarter acre of land is a good thing, but just as a point of reference, if you’re imagining a neighborhood of 15 to 20 homes and somebody tells you “that’s about an acre” you’re going to be off by an order of magnitude.
Most 2000sf+ homes, even in rural areas, are 2+ stories. That would leave room for yards. Not big yards, but yards.
My 750sf circa-1960 starter home in a turn-of-century streetcar suburb sits on a 7,500sf lot, and that’s relatively small for the area. You’d have to be talking about urban rowhouses as seen in East Coast cities to approach anything like a 2500sf lot size for a single family home.
You struggled with word problems in algebra classes didnt you?
^average SIZED homes
Probably, as long as they have absolutely no yards, and no way to get to the front door.
18*2,400=43,200, so they’d fit, but not nicely. It also doesn’t take external wall width into account, but that’s 20 extra feet per house for the outside walls.
That said, at least in my area, most of the houses in that size range are two story, so who knows what the footprint would be. Agreed, unhelpful metric.
JFC not a single magnitude in metric…
What? You don’t naturally measure things in potatoes per football field?
Jentucky Fried Chicken?
Jesus Fucking Chicken?
Jesus Frying Chicken…
I just stole it from a place, sorry.
Sounds like communiss to me
JFC they were asking about a unit of measurement from the imperial system.
The average American home is 2400 sqft?
I live in a home that size… any time someone comes over they mention how big the house is. It feels huge, we moved from 985 sqft and a year later it still feels enormous. To think this is the average is a mind fuck LoL.
Where’s that stat from? Is that legit?
Homes here tend to be about that size unless they’re older than about 1980. We also have a lot of absolutely massive mansions built out in the middle of absolutely nowhere that’ll drive that number up quite a bit. If you’re willing to drive 30 minutes to the grocery, you can get a 5000+sqft house for well under $500k. I have a buddy who just bought a 5200sqft place on 8 acres for about $450k. If you really want to live somewhere undesirable like the place my parents moved to a few years ago, their whole subdivision has a few dozen houses all over 7000sqft, and they sold for about $400k
Probably being driven up by the huge number of McMansions in the US, plus most of the ‘smaller’ places are apartments/condos, so wouldn’t be counted.
The median is 2,273 sqft (oddly specific lol) as of 2021. In case anyone else is curious lol.
I sincerely wouldn’t want that much space to maintain. We’re a family of 4 with multiple pets and we’ve got rooms we don’t go into. If we had twice the space to clean or heat I’d have no use for them at all. I’ve already got a home gym, 2 home offices, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, den that’s a library and a living room we don’t even furnish so the kids can use it as a gymnasium. I don’t even want this much space LoL. Too expensive to furnish. What’s the point.
I am more amazed they fit 18 of them on one acre.
Really shines a light on to how we could have plenty of housing for everyone if we didn’t expect back yards.
Meanwhile, Europeans use hectares. Or a hundred ares. An are is 100 square metres, so a hectare is 100*100 or 10000 square metres or 1/100 of a square kilometer.
Thanks I hate it