Cubic feet is a unit of measuring volume. It can be converted to 4,7873.53 fluid ounces, 37.4026 gallons, or 141.584 liters. But what does five cubic feet look like in the real world?
Below, you’ll find eight examples of everyday objects that take up around five cubic feet of space.
1 Dryer Capacity
A dryer is one-half of the washer-and-dryer duo that works hard to keep our clothes clean, dry, and crisp. After your clothes have gone for a tumble in the washing machine, you need to transfer them to a nearby dryer to get them as dry as a bone.
Inside a dryer, you’ll find that its tub is a lot roomier than its washing machine partner. A dryer typically holds at least 5.3 cubic feet of clothes, so you only need to activate your dryer once for every two wash cycles.
However, if you have a small Whirlpool dryer, you might find that its tub can hold precisely five cubic feet of clothes.
6 Ceramic Tiles Boxes
Ceramic tiles are considered to be versatile, easy to clean, and resistant to both water and fire, making them the ideal flooring option for bathrooms, kitchens, and virtually any floor in your home. They’re also about 60% to 70% cheaper than porcelain, which is a direct result of the less-refined clay composition that goes into each tile.
These tiles come in all sorts of dimensions, with the largest common rectangular tile measuring 16 × 16 inches. The thickness of a ceramic tile typically falls between 1/8 and a half an inch.
So if we took the largest and thickest tiles we could get our hands on (16 × 16 × 0.5 inches), each tile would take up 128 square inches of space, or 13.5 of them would equal one cubic foot. 67.5 ceramic tiles would equal 5 cubic feet, and you would need six tile boxes in total since each box typically contains a dozen tiles.
Half a Wine Barrel
You’ve probably heard that wine tastes better over time, but where does the wine sit? Before it is bottled and placed on shelves at our local retail stores, wine is stored in barrels for up to 30 months, depending on the manufacturer. However, bottled wine should not sit since the contents can spoil over time, even if it’s placed in a cold, dark cellar.
An entire barrel of wine typically measures 27 × 34-5/8 inches and can hold up to 225 liters of the alcoholic drink, which is about the same as 7.9458 cubic feet. If you divided that figure by two, you would get pretty close to five cubic feet.
2.5 Lamb Carcasses
Lamb is one of the leanest meats that is sold commercially. A single 3.5-ounce serving of the delicious meat contains just 258 calories, 16.5 grams of fat, and a whopping 25.6 grams of protein.
The great thing about lamb is that it is cheaper than beef due to the rising costs of soy-based feeds given to cattle.
If you purchase an entire lamb carcass, you should expect it to take up at least 2 cubic feet of freezer space, though the actual figure will depend on the supplier. An entire lamb carcass is divided into six main sections—the leg, the loin, the rack, the shoulder, and the break and foreshank.
7 5-Gallon Paint Buckets
Did you know that a five-gallon bucket of paint holds five gallons of paint? Yeah, it’s a real shocker. According to Lowe’s paint calculator, an entire gallon of paint can cover between 350 and 400 square feet, so a bucket should cover at most 2,000 square feet.
Gallons and cubic feet are volume units, with a single gallon being the same as 0.133681 cubic feet, so five gallons is roughly equal to 0.668 cubic feet. That means you would need just slightly more than seven five-gallon buckets of paint to reach five cubic feet, which can cover close to 15,000 square feet of walls.
5 Milk Crates
Milk crates come in a variety of sizes, with one of the more popular sizes being 13 × 13 × 11 inches or 1,859 cubic inches. However, you can get your hands on a larger crate that measures 19 × 13 × 11 inches (2,717 cubic inches). When you’re done using the crate to transport milk, you can fashion it into a TV stand, planters, and even a chandelier.
If you had five 13 × 13 × 11-inch milk crates, the total volume of the crates would equal 9,259 cubic inches or roughly 5.4 cubic feet. There was a recent trend called the #MilkCrateChallenge where people tried to climb a pyramid of milk crates to see how high they would get before inevitably falling over.
5 40-kilogram Cement Bags
Cement is a binding agent used to make concrete, which is one of the most fundamental building materials. You can pick up a sack of cement in various weight classes, typically starting from 20 kilograms. One common cement bag weight is the 40-kilogram (88.18-pound) variety, which will usually measure 24 × 18 × 5 inches.
A 40-kilogram sack of cement takes just 0.98 cubic feet of space, which would mean that five 40-kilogram bags would almost equal five cubic feet. In the construction industry, you’ll come across several types of cement, such as rapid-hardening cement, low-heat cement, quick-set cement, and so on.
Half a TV Box
A TV box is a specialized cardboard box used to ship large, flat objects, such as TVs and framed paintings or portraits. You’ll find that they come in all sorts of sizes, but one size that U-Haul offers measures 73 × 40 × 6 inches. The box’s total volume takes up 17,520 cubic inches or just about 10.14 cubic feet.
So, to get to five cubic feet, you would have to split the box down the middle. Alternatively, you could take one of U-Haul’s large-sized moving boxes that measures 18 × 18 × 24 inches or just 4.5 cubic feet, which can hold up to 65 pounds of your belongings.
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