cubic feet to liters

American engineering still sizes things in cubic feet — HVAC duct flow, aquarium volumes, gas cylinder contents — while the rest of the metric world reads the same numbers in liters. The bridge is 28.316846592, a constant with ten digits because it inherits them from the 1959 foot: one foot is 0.3048 meters exactly, so one cubic foot is exactly 28.316846592 liters, and nothing about that number is approximate.

By EnginStack Engineering Team | Verified by engineers, built on NIST metrology standards About →
cubic feet
10 liters
10 cubic feet = 283.16846592 liters 10 liters = 0.35314667 cubic feet

Verified against NIST Special Publication 811 and BIPM SI definitions. The conversion factor is exact and traceable to the 1959 treaty constants.

cubic feet to liters

The 28.316846592 liters in a cubic foot is one of the cleanest constants on this site — it is not measured, it is derived from a treaty definition. The practical range is wide: a 10 ft³ aquarium is 283 L; a 100 ft³ workshop air volume is 2,832 L; a standard 20 lb propane cylinder holds about 7.5 ft³ of liquid, roughly 212 L. Every one of these numbers travels through the same factor, which is why a converter beats mental arithmetic — nobody has 28.316846592 memorized.

liters = cubic feet × 28.316846592
1 cubic foot = 28.316846592 liters — the 1959 foot cubed
The factor is exact by definition: (0.3048 m)³ = 0.028316846592 m³.

Common cubic feet to liters Conversions

cubic feetlitersContext
1 ft³28.3 LA cubic foot of water weighs about 62.4 lb.
10 ft³283 LA large aquarium (roughly 75 US gallons).
100 ft³2,832 LA small workshop's air volume.
1,000 ft³28,317 LA residential gas meter's monthly reading.
10,000 ft³283,168 LA small warehouse's interior volume.

Engineering Context

The liters to cubic feet page inverts this factor. The volume hub carries the full family; gallons to cubic feet handles the US-liquid branch, and cubic feet to cubic meters connects to the SI side. The 62.4 lb/ft³ density of water links this page to the density family.

More: L to ft³ · ft³ to m³ · gal to ft³ · Volume Hub

Related Unit Converters

Liters To Cubic Feet Cubic Feet To Cubic Meters Gallons To Cubic Feet Volume Converters

Frequently Asked Questions

How many liters are in a cubic foot?

Exactly 28.316846592. This comes from the 1959 agreement defining 1 ft = 0.3048 m exactly: a cubic foot is (0.3048)³ = 0.028316846592 m³, which is 28.316846592 liters since 1 m³ = 1,000 L.

Why is the liter-to-cubic-foot factor so ugly?

Because the two units come from different worlds: the liter is a decimal fraction of the meter, while the cubic foot is the cube of a treaty-defined foot. The cube of 0.3048 has ten significant digits, and the conversion inherits all of them.

What does a cubic foot of water weigh?

About 62.428 lb (28.316846592 kg). The famous 62.4 lb/ft³ figure that appears in every American hydraulics textbook is this number rounded — the density of fresh water at room temperature.