Understanding convert gallons to inches of water, or vice versa, is not necessarily a skill that most people find useful on a day-to-day basis. Still, there are certain situations that arise when this knowledge becomes essential. The conversion process becomes necessary when attempting to forecast water usage costs, fuel usage in some parts of the world, the amount of chemicals needed in a swimming pool and other such situations. Fortunately, making these conversions is merely a matter of applying some simple mathematical formulas.
Instructions
Converting Gallons to Inches
1. Recognize that the standard U.S. ratio for measurement of these two units of volume is 1 gallon equals to 231 cubic inches. Remember that you must use cubic inches because both gallons and cubic inches are measures of volume, while standard inches are measures of length.
2. Figure out the number of gallons that you want to convert into inches. For example, an average rectangular pool that is 16-by-32 feet with an average depth of 5 feet will hold approximately 22,080 gallons of water.
3. Multiply the number of gallons by the number 231. The result is the number of cubic inches of volume that your water represents. The example pool containing approximately 19,150 gallons of water will hold about 4,423,650 cubic inches of water.
Converting Inches to Gallons
4. Measure the length, width, and height of the container that holds the liquid. The example pool is 16-by-32-by-5 feet (or 192-by-388-by-60 inches).
5. Multiply the length, width, and height together to determine the total volume of the liquid in cubic inches. For round containers, you must first use the formula for determining the area of a circle, where the area equals pi (3.1416) multiplied by the square of the radius of the circle. Multiply the result of this formula by the container's depth in inches, and you will find the total volume of the object in cubic inches. The example pool can contain about 4,423,680 cubic inches of water.
6. Divide the total cubic inch volume by 231 to determine the number of gallons your fluid represents. One gallon equals 231 cubic inches of volume. One cubic inch therefore equals 1/231 of a gallon. The number of gallons in the example pool is approximately 19,150.
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