How Many Gallons in a 24 Ft Round Pool?
Water in the pool
14,654 gallons
Round, 24 ft across, filled to a 52 in wall, which is 4.33 ft. Flat bottom, so the average depth is the wall height.
Filling this pool on a garden hose takes 1.3 days of continuous water. Most water utilities sell a bulk fill, and some will not meter a pool fill through the sewer charge if you call first, which is worth more than the hose.
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How that number is worked out
These are the figures this page was built with and every line the calculator produces from them. Change anything above and all of it moves.
- Pool shapeRound
- Length or diameter24 ft
- Width24 ft
- Shallow end depth4.33 ft
- Deep end depth4.33 ft
- Fill rate8 gal/min
- Turnover target8 hours
Water in the pool14,654 gallons
Filling this pool on a garden hose takes 1.3 days of continuous water. Most water utilities sell a bulk fill, and some will not meter a pool fill through the sewer charge if you call first, which is worth more than the hose.
| Surface area | 452.4 sq ftpi r squared on the diameter |
|---|---|
| Average depth | 4.33 ftmidpoint of shallow and deep |
| Volume | 1,958.8 cu ft7.48 gallons in each |
| Water weight | 61.1 tons122,208 lb |
| Fill time | 30.5 hoursat 8 gallons a minute |
| Pump for turnover | 30.5 gal/minwhole volume once in 8 hours |
| Heater to raise 10 degrees | 1,222,000 BTU8.34 BTU per gallon per degree |
| Liquid chlorine for a 10 ppm shock | 1.17 gal12.5 percent, sold in gallon jugs, so buy 2 |
| Salt to reach 3,200 ppm | 392 lb10 bags at 40 lb, from zero |
The material list this produces
| Water, gallons | 14,654 |
|---|---|
| Liquid chlorine 12.5 percent, gal | 2 |
| Salt, 40 lb bags | 10 |
| Pump, gal/min | 31 |
Diameter compared
Same wall height as this page, at every diameter the round pool shelf comes in. Water goes up with the square of the diameter, so the jump from 24 to 27 feet costs more water than the jump from 8 to 15.
| Diameter | Water in the pool | Surface area | Fill time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 ft | 1,629 gallons | 50.3 sq ft | 3.4 hours |
| 12 ft | 3,664 gallons | 113.1 sq ft | 7.6 hours |
| 15 ft | 5,724 gallons | 176.7 sq ft | 11.9 hours |
| 18 ft | 8,243 gallons | 254.5 sq ft | 17.2 hours |
| 21 ft | 11,219 gallons | 346.4 sq ft | 23.4 hours |
| 24 ft | 14,654 gallons | 452.4 sq ft | 30.5 hours |
| 27 ft | 18,546 gallons | 572.6 sq ft | 38.6 hours |
| 30 ft | 22,896 gallons | 706.9 sq ft | 47.7 hours |
| 33 ft | 27,704 gallons | 855.3 sq ft | 57.7 hours |
What else matters here
14,654 gallons is the round pool most people picture when they say above ground pool. Twenty four feet across with a 52 inch wall is the volume sweet spot: 452 square feet of surface, more water than a small inground rectangle, and liners, covers and ladders for it sit on the shelf everywhere.
An eight hour turnover here wants 30 gallons a minute, which is 1,800 gallons an hour. That is a real pump and a real filter, not a cartridge unit, and it is the number to check a sand filter against before buying one. A filter rated below the turnover does not fail, it just never quite catches up in August.
61 tons of water sitting on 452 square feet. The load per square foot is no worse than a smaller pool, because both the weight and the footprint scale together, but the consequence of a bad pad is much larger. At this size the ground under it has to be cut level, not built level, and compacted before the track goes down.
What this calculator assumes
- A cubic foot of water is 7.48 gallons and a gallon weighs 8.34 pounds. Those two numbers do all the work on this page.
- Average depth is taken as the midpoint of the shallow and deep ends. That is exact for a pool with one straight slope between them and slightly generous for a pool with a flat shallow shelf and a hopper, which is the safer way for it to be wrong when you are buying chemicals.
- A round pool uses the diameter and ignores the width. An oval is figured as an ellipse, which is length times width times pi over four, not as a rectangle.
- Turnover is the time the pump takes to move the whole volume once. Eight hours is the common residential target and some health codes for public water are stricter, so check yours before you size a commercial pump off this.
- Liquid chlorine trade percent is defined so that one gallon of it raises ten thousand gallons of water by that many parts per million. One gallon of 12.5 percent raises 10,000 gallons by 12.5 ppm, which is where the dose row comes from rather than a chart.
- Salt is figured from zero to 3,200 ppm, which is the middle of the range most chlorine generators want. A pool that already has salt in it needs a test first, because salt only leaves with the water.
Questions people ask
Is that the number printed on the box?
It is the same basis. A manufacturer quotes the pool filled to the top of the wall, which is what this page computes. In the yard you fill to the middle of the skimmer mouth, roughly six inches down, so the water actually in it lands about ten percent under the printed figure. Both numbers are useful: buy the cover and the liner off the printed one, and dose chemicals off the real one.
What size pump does a 24 foot round need?
Work it from turnover, not horsepower. 14,654 gallons moved once in eight hours is 30 gallons a minute, about 1,800 gallons an hour, and that is the flow the pump and the filter both have to make together at the head your plumbing actually has. Change the turnover target on the calculator to six hours and the requirement climbs to 41 gallons a minute, which is the honest way to see what a shorter run time costs.
Where does the chlorine dose come from?
Liquid chlorine trade percent is defined so that one gallon of it raises ten thousand gallons of water by that many parts per million. One gallon of 12.5 percent raises 10,000 gallons by 12.5 ppm. The row on this page is the gallons for a 10 ppm shock at that strength, worked from the volume rather than read off a chart, which is why it moves when you change the size.
The pool volume calculator takes any dimensions you like and hands back the same list.