12 feet is equal to 144 inches (12 inches per foot), 4 yards (3 feet per yard), and 3.6576 meters.
Knowing how to measure 12 feet by eye is a great skill to have if you plan on renovating your home or even planting trees in your backyard. In this guide, I’ll cover 9 everyday objects that measure close to or precisely 12 feet in height.
1-Story House
A single-story house can be as tall or as short as the homeowner wants. That said, a one-story house will typically measure between 10 and 15 feet in height.
The 5-foot disparity may have different causes. For instance, the slope of the roof, the thickness of the foundation, what building materials went into the home, and how high the ceilings are (typically 8-9 feet tall) can all affect the actual height of a single-story home.
2 Refrigerators
The average refrigerator will measure about 24-40 inches wide and stand 62-72 inches tall. That means to get to the 12-foot mark, it would take roughly 2 large refrigerators to get there. This includes counter-depth, top-freezer, bottom-freezer, side-by-side, and French-door refrigerators.
If all you have is a mini-fridge, you should know that it may stand about 2 feet tall at most, so you would need 6 of them to reach 12 feet in height.
2-1/2 Brooms
Even if you have made the switch from traditional vacuums to robot vacuums, you may still have a standard broom in your home somewhere. If that’s the case, you should probably get a good idea of how long its handle is.
On average, broom handles will measure about 5 feet in length, including the heights of the brush cap, brush bristles, and handle. So, measuring 12 feet using 5-foot-long brooms would require around 3-/1/2 of them. However, this will ultimately depend on the precise lengths of your broom handle.
2 Average-Sized People
The average height of a male will vary from country to country. In the United States, the average adult man measures 69.1 inches, which is the same as 5 feet 9 inches. If we were to have one American man stand on the head of another American man, they would get us to about the 138-inch mark, which is the same as 11.5 feet in height.
Just for fun, the average height of a sumo wrestler is about 6 feet 4 inches. That means two of them would measure 8 inches beyond the 12-foot mark we’re trying to gauge.
Pole Vault Pole
An Olympic pole vaulter’s pole is one of the least regulated pieces of sports equipment. However, it’s generally believed that pole vaulters are allowed to use poles that measure 10 to 17.5 feet in length, giving us a rough average of about 13-3/4 feet in length. That’s pretty close to the 12-foot-tall mark.
Pole vault poles can be made of a wide range of materials. Athletes are even allowed to wrap grip around the handles or bottom of the pole for better grip while they attempt to cross over a clear beam set to at least 10 feet in height.
Armand Duplantis from Sweden and Yelena Isinbayeva from Russia have set pole vaulting records at 20 feet 3-1/4 inches and 16 feet 7 inches, respectively.
Middle of Basketball Backboard
NBA-regulation basketball rims must stand 10 feet tall. The height standard goes back to the days when the sport’s founder, James Naismith, placed peach baskets 10 feet off the ground to shoot balls into.
While the rim may be 10 feet off the ground, it is completely separate from the backboard. The backboard measures 72 inches wide and 42 inches tall. So, to get to 12 feet, you have to look at the position of the rim (10 feet) and add about half the backboard’s height (2 feet).
1/3 a Football Goal Post
An American football goal post is comprised of 3 metal bars. The first is the base vertical bar that stands 10 feet tall. Then there’s a horizontal crossbar, which measures 18.5 feet long, where the vertical bar intersects directly at the center. Finally, there are the 2 goal posts positioned on either end of the horizontal crossbar that stand 25 feet tall.
In total, an American football goal post will measure 35 feet tall, give or take a few inches. That means you would need slightly over 1/3 of the goal post to get the full 12 feet.
2 Yoga Mats
Yoga mats come in various sizes for users of different heights. On average, a 5-foot-8-inch person would rely on a standard yoga mat size, which measures 24 inches wide and between 68 and 72 inches or up to 6 feet in length.
So, measuring 12 feet using yoga mats isn’t that difficult. If you can imagine connecting 2 yoga mats together, you should get pretty close to the 12-foot mark.
Some yoga mats can measure over 6.5 feet in length, which is ideal for yogis who stand over 6 feet tall.
3 Dressers
A typical dresser will have anywhere from 6 to 9 drawers and be waist-tall. Since most people are in the 5-foot-8 to 5-foot-9-inch range, at least in the United States, that means a dresser will measure roughly 3.5 to 4 feet tall.
Measuring 12 feet using dressers as a reference is pretty simple—just envision stacking 3 of them together. If you use short dressers as a reference, you’ll need to find a way to make up for the missing 1.5 feet.
Conclusion
And that’s how it’s done, folks. In this guide, I’ve provided you with 9 everyday objects that you can use as references to guesstimate 12 feet in height. While a ruler or laser measure might be ideal, using these common objects can get you pretty close to 12 feet.
If you like this article, please make sure your friends like it, too, by sharing it on social media. Also, if you have other ideas about 12-foot-tall objects, I’d love to read about them down below.
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