Square Chains to Square Feet (sq ch to ft²)

1 square chain equals 4,356 square feet exactly.

1 square chain = 4,356 square feet

How to convert square chains to square feet

To convert square chains to square feet, multiply the number of square chains by 4,356. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply square feet by 0.0002295684114 (rounded).

square feet = square chains × 4,356

Example: 10 square chains = 43,560 square feet.

About these units

Square Chain (sq ch)

US & ImperialTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

484 square yards (404.69 m²), one tenth of an acre. A surveying unit.

Surveyors rather than farmers gave this unit its shape. In 1620 the English clergyman and mathematician Edmund Gunter devised a measuring chain of 100 links that was 66 feet long, and by 1675 it was in wide use. A square chain, 66 feet by 66 feet, covers 4,356 square feet, or 484 square yards. The convenient result is that ten of them make exactly one acre, so a plot measured in chains could be turned into acres by moving a decimal point.

That arithmetic was the reason the US adopted the chain. A report by Thomas Jefferson in 1784 led to the Land Ordinance of 1785, which required the chain for surveying the public lands, and many American property lines still trace back to chain measurements. In metric terms a square chain is about 404.69 square meters. The linear chain remains in niche use, for example in railway milepost distances in Britain, in wildfire spread rates in the United States, and as the length of a cricket pitch.

1 square chain = 404.6856422 square meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Chain (unit); Wikipedia: Acre; Wikipedia: Rod (unit)

Square Foot (ft²)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

Exactly 0.09290304 m². The standard unit for floor areas and real estate in the US, UK and India.

Feet came first, and they were not all the same length. As a body-based unit, the foot ranged historically between about 250 and 335 millimeters, with ancient Greek and Roman feet near 300 mm. In medieval England a statute foot was set at 10/11 of an older Belgic foot, and Charlemagne's attempt around 790 to standardize units largely failed. The square foot is simply that length squared, so its size changed along with the foot.

The 1959 international agreement fixed the foot at exactly 0.3048 meter, so one square foot is exactly 0.09290304 m², or 144 square inches. The United Kingdom adopted the new foot in 1964. Today the square foot is the usual way of listing property in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Hong Kong, although the measuring convention varies: agents may measure corner to corner, subtract unheated space, or add heated space that extends beyond the end-to-end measurement. The world's smallest park has been reported at 2.6 sq ft.

1 square foot = 0.09290304 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square foot; Wikipedia: Foot (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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