Calculating square feet?

Question

My boyfriend and I are looking at an apartment today and are trying to calculate the square footage of our apartment compared to the one we are moving into.

I know that area is calculated length times width, however the rooms in our current apartment are NOT square. Two of the walls are different legnths. (One end of the room is narrower than the other by six feet or so.) What is the calculation for this?

Answer 1

Take the shortest length (presuming that both the side walls are parallel) starting from a square corner of the room times the shortest width Say 10 x 6 = 60sq ft

do the same with the Length by the longest width Say 10 x 8 = 80sq ft

Then take the smaller area from the larger, i.e. 80 - 60 = 20sq ft, half this  (10sq ft) and add it to the smaller are and you have the area of the room 60 + 10 = 70sq Ft. and this will be the area of your room  

Answer 2

Dear not Too silly,

A practical way to compare the two apartments is to buy a few sheets of quadrille graph paper with appropriate size squares. Then you can draw the floor plans of the two apartments (say, with the side of one square on the paper representing one foot) as accurately as you like according to the meaurements you have taken. Then to know how many square feet, you can count the squares within the wall lines on the paper. You can also draw furniture to scale on such paper, cut out the furniture pieces, and play with furniture arrangements that way (but on your furniture drawings you should also indicate drawers sliding out so far, doors swinging open, and so on).

Answer 3

The easiest way is divide the areas into sections.  Then add all of the calcuations together.

Answer 4

just measure the different areas & add the sq. footage.  for instance, one end is 12'x10' = 120 sq. ft.  the other end is 6'x8' = 48sq.ft..  total = 168sq. ft.

Answer 5

This is extremely tricky because we're missing a value.

You would have x*(x-6) as your length in square feet which would be x^2-6x as your total footage.

However x can be anything. If the one side was 36, your other side would be 30 (just because you said it was narrower by only 6 feet). If one side was 106, the other side would be 100. See what I mean?

Say your room was 42 by 36 feet. All you need to do is multiply 42*36 to get the exact square feet of the room. Then you subtract the difference between your old apartment and your newer one to see which room is actually bigger.

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Example: (I'm using very very simple numbers that make absolutely no sense realistically, but for the sake of making this easy, please bear with me)

Old Apartment = 9 ft by 12 ft

New apartment = 4 ft by 9 ft

Old Apartment = 9*12=108ft squared

New Apartment = 4*9=36ft squared

108-36= 72 ft squared.  Your old apartment was 72 ft squared larger than your newer one.