Farm Pond Management

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Volume

Volume can be measured in a variety of units. Cubic feet, liters, gallons, or acre feet may all be used to represent volumetric measurement. Whether your water is in a pond, tank, or raceway, this section will aid you in the calculation of its volume.

Pond Volume

To obtain the volume of a pond, determine the surface acreage and the average depth of the pond. Then multiply the surface area in acres x the average depth in feet to get the volume of the pond. Your resulting volumetric units will be in acre-feet.

Tank Volume

To determine the volume of a tank, raceway, or holding vat, measure the dimensions (width and length and the depth) of water to be present at the time of treatment. Be sure to measure all dimensions using the same unit of measurement (inches, feet, yards, centimeters, or meters) and multiply the three measurements together to calculate the volume. The volumetric measure you calculate will be the cube of the unit you chose to measure with. For example, if you measured your tank dimensions in inches (50 inches long X 20 inches wide X 10 inches deep) the volume of your water would be in cubic inches or in^3 (10,000 in^3 to be precise). Your volumetric measurements can be converted into whatever volumetric units you desire by multiplying your result by the conversion factor identified in the conversion table (Table 1) below. Continuing on with the previous example, if you decided that you would like to express the 10,000 cubic inches (in^3) of water in your tank in gallons, you would multiply this figure by the conversion factor 0.0043 which would mean that your tank holds 43 gallons of water. However, it is usually easier if you convert your volumetric measurements into cubic feet (ft^3).

Now that you have determined the volume of your water, you will next calculate the weight of the material you wish to apply which would be necessary to achieve a concentration of 1 part per million (ppm) in your water. Before you move on to this section be sure to record the volume of your water, you will need this measurement for later calculation.

Table 1. Conversions for units of volume

	cm^3	liter	m^3	in^3	ft^3	fl oz	fl pt	fl qt	gal
cm^3	1	0.001	1 x 10^-6	0.0610	3.53 x 10^-5	0.0338	0.00211	0.00106	2.64 x 10^-4
liter	1000	1	0.001	60.98	0.0353	33.81	2.113	1.057	0.2642
m^3	1 x 10^6	1000	1	6.1 x 10^4	35.31	3.38 x 10^4	2113	1057	264.2
in^3	16.39	0.0164	1.64 x 10^-5	1	5.79 x 10^-4	0.5541	0.0346	0.0173	0.0043
ft^3	2.83 x 10^4	28.32	0.0283	1728	1	957.5	59.84	29.92	7.481
fl oz	29.57	0.0296	2.96 x 10^-5	1.805	0.00104	1	0.0625	0.0313	0.0078
fl pt	473.2	0.4732	4.73 x 10^-4	28.88	0.0167	16	1	0.5000	0.1250
fl qt	946.4	0.9463	9.46 x 10^-4	57.75	0.0334	32	2	1	0.2500
gal	3785	3.785	0.0038	231.0	0.1337	128	8	4	1

• Conversion Factor
• Parts Per Million
• Amount of Material Needed
• Miscellaneous Conversions and Abbreviations
• Volume