How to Calculate Volume of a Room

Knowing the volume of a room or building is important when designing the heating and air conditioning needs of the building or room. Expressing the volume of a room or building allows a comparison of furnaces and air conditioners to the needs of the building. You can't afford to under-cool or over-heat a room or building that people will be occupying.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Make a drawing of the room where you need to find the volume. Include closets, bookcases, and cubby holes or irregular shaped areas. Examine this drawing so that you know exactly which measurements you will need to take to document the areas of this room fully.

2. Take all the measurements indicated by your drawing. Be sure to take the measurements in inches. We will convert them to feet in a following step.

3. Divide the drawing into cubic shaped areas, that when summed will yield the total volume of the room.

4. Calculate the volume of each of the sections of the room as shown on the drawing. Calculate the volume by multiplying the measurement of the length and width of the space together and then multiplying this product by the height of the space. The value obtained will be the volume of the room measured in cubic inches.

5. Convert the number of cubic inches to the number of cubic feet by dividing the product found in step 4 by 1,728. This gives you the number of cubic feet in the section of room that you were working on.

6. Perform the volume calculation on all the remaining sections of the room. Sum all these sections together and you have the volume of the entire room in cubic feet.