Square Footage of a House

March 10, 2016 4:34 AM

Looking to find our the square footage of a house.

I want to find out the exact square footage of my new house. My previous house was rectangle shaped and it was easy to find out the square footage (used the length x width formula).

However, the new house that I purchased is odd shaped. It is an attached house with a long angled roof. I technically have three small floors/levels. The basement level is in the back of the house and above that is the bedrooms. There is a small room (floor) in between the basement level and the bedroom level that is connected by a set of stairs (there are no hallways in my house) and due to the shape, there is a small attic and crawl space.

The outside of my house is rectangle, and I know the length of both sides (length and width).

Is there an easy way to measure the square footage out of house (can I just use the exterior length and width measurements and multiple them?). Will this be accurate and take into consideration the three small levels?

Of course, I Googled this first and saw some videos where people measure every square/rectangle portion of their house and add them up etc, but this seems odd.

Just curious (and if it helps, I am in Canada)

posted by dbirchum to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

Draw a rough floor plan of your house and then try to separate it into rectangular sections. Find the square footage of each section and then add them up. There's really not a lot to it. If there is, say, a 10sq foot living space above another 10sq foot living space, then that's 20sq feet.

What counts for square footage also depends on what you're using it for. Realtors might want just the heated space, the town might care about everything but the basement and the garage, etc. If you just want to know because you want to know, then add it all up.
posted by bondcliff at 5:50 AM on March 10, 2016

Square footage should be part of the information about your house when you purchased it (it's information that we have in town on every building in the town which becomes part of people's tax assessment). Are you trying to corroborate? But really, yeah it's just adding up the rooms and figuring out whether you need all the usable space, all the floor space, all the heated space or whatever. You can get these pretty great laser measurement devices that are not cheap but can help you get this sort of thing done quickly.
posted by jessamyn at 6:20 AM on March 10, 2016

Best answer: Here's a Canadian resource on measuring square footage.
posted by amanda at 6:35 AM on March 10, 2016

Not sure how things work in Canada, but in the US you are often required to get an appraisal report for a new property (for instance if you are getting a mortgage, the mortgage company wants to know if they can seize and sell the property for an appropriate value in event of default). If you commissioned an appraisal, then there should be detailed square footage numbers in there somewhere.
posted by carter at 6:57 AM on March 10, 2016

How clear is its picture on Google Maps?

If you zoom in and use the "Measure Distance" tool to draw a line around the house, Google will tell you the area of the space inside the line.
posted by Hatashran at 3:53 PM on March 10, 2016

RoomScan Pro is a $5 app that apparently lets you generate fairly accurate plans by tapping your phone on walls, and you can enter precise lengths if you want. I can't vouch for it personally, but reviews seem positive.
posted by lucidium at 5:16 PM on March 10, 2016

Best answer: I want to find out the exact square footage of my new house.

The word "exact" will be problematic, but there are a bunch of different types of square footage, so first you need to know what you're trying to achieve by getting an "exact" figure. For a really simple house, the types of square footages are all basically the same, but yours doesn't sound like it's totally simple. I'm guessing that your house is on a sloping lot where the basement daylights at the back, the front part is half a level up from the basement, and the bedrooms are stacked directly over the basement a half level up from the front part. So, different types of square footage:
- Assessed value for taxes: basically any building floor area, dependent on rules for calculation. This might include the full basement or garage (possibly at different rates) and be listed on any official paperwork from buying the house, but that could be wrong. Not sure how things work in Canada, but if you pay property taxes, the entity that levies those taxes will have a square footage to base their taxes on.
- Conditioned floor area: Any interior area served by an HVAC system. Basically "liveable" floor area, and probably wouldn't include an unfinished basement or garage.
- Code square footage: Probably nothing you'd care about, but mainly used to calculate building occupancy for fire safety. Typically doesn't include rooms like halls and bathrooms.
- Zoning square footage: varies widely by jurisdiction - places I've been count rooms with really high ceilings as double; include certain configurations of exterior balconies, and will include a basement if it's exposed enough. Generally used as a measurement of bulk and scale so that the jurisdiction can keep houses from getting too big for their lots or out of character with their neighborhoods, and can get really complex. San Diego's code section for determining square footage is 12 pages long. PDF link if you're interested; section starts on page 10 (of 50), "Calculating Gross Floor Area"

Usually, a square footage calculation includes the walls. Measuring the insides of rooms won't give you those, and depending on the type of construction used for your house, that could add up to quite a bit, but if you're on a sloping lot it may be the only way to do it.
posted by LionIndex at 6:21 PM on March 10, 2016 [1 favorite]