# Pipe Weight Calculator

Created by Kenneth Alambra
Reviewed by Steven Wooding
Last updated: Jan 04, 2023

Finding the weight of pipes is very easy and fast using this pipe weight calculator. By reading through this text, you'll learn about the mathematics of how to find the weight of pipes and use that knowledge for any application you need. To get you started, here are the things you will learn in this text:

• The reason why we need to find pipe weights;
• How to use this pipe weight calculator;
• How to perform PVC pipe weight or steel pipe weight calculations; and
• Why do we use the weight of pipe per foot (or per meter)?

Keep reading to start learning! 🙂

## The importance of finding the weight of pipes

Pipes have a lot of uses:

• For hanging curtains;
• Electrical conduits;
• Water or fluid pipes;
• Spindles for fences or handrails (check out our spindle spacing calculator for an amazing tool that can help you beautifully space your spindles); or
• Beams or structural members such as in trusses, to name a few.

Knowing how to find a pipe's weight can help us with a lot of things, from as simple as knowing how much support we'll need to hang a pipe or knowing the right size of truck to hire when transporting vast numbers of pipes. Even as complicated as knowing the weight it contributes while designing structural plans.

Whether it's only a math problem for you or you have other reasons why you need to calculate the pipe weight, the important thing is you know the concept of how to do it. Before we dive into how to calculate pipe weights, let us first discuss how to use this pipe weight calculator.

## How to use this pipe weight calculator

To use this pipe weight calculator, you can follow along with these steps:

1. Select your pipe material. Doing this will display the corresponding density of that material.

2. If your pipe material is not in the selection, you can choose Custom material and manually enter the density of your material. You can check out our metal weight calculator for the different densities of the common metals used in construction or our steel weight calculator if your pipe is any of the other common steel alloys.

3. Enter the dimensions of your pipe. You enter any two of the cross-sectional measurements of your pipe (outer diameter, inner diameter, or pipe wall thickness) and the length of your pipe.

At this moment, our pipe weight calculator will already display the volume of your pipe, its linear density (which makes this tool a pipe weight per foot calculator, too!), and weight.

If you have multiple quantities of this pipe size, you can click on the Advanced mode button below our tool to enter your pipe quantity to find their total weight.

🙋 If you're interested in finding out the internal volume of your pipe – the volume of the fluid passing through your pipe – our pipe volume calculator can help you with that.

## How to perform PVC or steel pipe weight calculations

Calculating pipe weights is simple and only takes the concept of subtracting a cylinder volume inside another cylinder and multiplying the volume by the density of the pipe material. First, here is the volume of hollow cylinder formula for pipes:

$\footnotesize V = \pi \times \left[ \left(\frac{D_o}{2}\right)^2 - \left(\frac{D_i}{2}\right)^2\right] \times L,$

where:

• $V$Volume of the material forming the pipe;
• $D_o$Outer diameter of the pipe;
• $D_i$Inner Diameter of the pipe; and
• $L$Length of the pipe.

If you cannot measure the inner diameter, but you know the wall thickness, $\small t$, of your pipe, you can use this formula to find $\small D_i$:

$\footnotesize D_i = D_o - 2t.$

You can also substitute $\small D_i$ with that equation to get the volume of the pipe directly using this equation:

$\footnotesize V =\! \pi \!\times\!\left[ \left(\frac{D_o}{2}\right)^2 \!-\! \left(\frac{D_o\! -\! 2t}{2}\right)^2\right]\! \times\! L.$

After that, you can now multiply your pipe's volume by the material's density to find its weight. In equation form, express that as:

$\footnotesize W = V\times \rho,$

where:

• $W$Weight of the pipe; and
• $\rho$Density of the pipe material.

We can see pipes made out of metals and plastics, and they vary in density. Here are the different average densities of the most common materials used in making pipes:

Material

Density (g/cm³)

PVC

1.45

Pure iron

7.86

Wrought iron

7.75

Carbon steel

7.84

Mild steel

7.88

Stainless steel

8.03

Aluminum

2.70

Brass

8.50

Copper

8.96

These are also the materials we included in the selection of pipe materials in our pipe weight calculator, making our tool a PVC pipe weight calculator or even a steel pipe weight calculator.

## Why we also use the weight of pipe per foot

We can also often see the weight of pipes expressed in terms of weight per length or linear density. To find the linear density of a pipe, let's say in pounds per foot (or lb/ft), we simply divide the pipe's weight in pounds by the total length of the pipe. In the metric system, we usually use kilograms per meter (or kg/m) for that. We consider this weighing method because we, most of the time, deal with a lot of pipe lengths rather than pipe weights.

We use this formula to get the linear density, $\mu$, of a pipe:

$\footnotesize \mu = \pi \times \left[ \left(\frac{D_o}{2}\right)^2 - \left(\frac{D_i}{2}\right)^2\right] \times \rho.$

We can then take the weight of the pipe by multiplying the linear density by the length of the pipe, as shown in this formula:

$\footnotesize W = \mu \times L.$

For example, we are working on a project where we'll need the same diameter and wall thickness pipes, but we need a few pieces of 10 meters, several pieces of 5 meters, and a couple of pieces of 3 meters. We can then quickly get the weight of each pipe length by multiplying each length by the pipe's linear density.

## FAQ

### How do I calculate the weight of pipe?

To calculate the weight of a pipe, say a 10-ft (or 120-inch) long 2-inch diameter mild steel pipe that has a wall thickness of 1/8 inches:

1. First, we find the volume of the pipe material using this equation:

volume = π × [(diameter/2)² - (diameter/2 - thickness)²] × length

= π × [(2 in/2)² - (2 in/2 - 1/8 in)²] × 120 in

= 88.36 in³

2. Multiply the pipe material's volume by the density of the material. In this case, the density of mild steel is 0.2847 lb/in³. We then will get the following:

weight = volume × density

= 88.36 in³ × 0.28468 lb/in³

≈ 25.154 lb

### What is the weight of a 4-inch PVC pipe?

A 4-inch PVC pipe weighs around 1.8514 pounds per foot. The wall thickness of a 4-inch PVC pipe is about 0.25 inches. So calculating the linear weight of a 4-inch PVC pipe with a material density of 0.05238 lb/in³ gives us:

linear weight = π × [(diameter/2)² - (diameter/2 - thickness)²] × density

= π × [(4 in/2)² - (7 in/2 - 0.24 in)²] × 0.05238 lb/in³

= 1.8514 lb/ft

That also means a standard 30 feet 4-inch PVC weighs around 55.54 pounds.

### What is the formula for weight of steel pipe?

The formula for the weight of steel pipe is:

weight = π × [(diameter/2)² - (diameter/2 - thickness)²] × length × density of steel,

where the density of steel can have a value of 7.88 g/cm³ for mild steel, 7.84 g/cm³ for carbon steel, or 8.03 g/cm³ for stainless steel.

### How do I calculate the pipe weight in kg?

To calculate the pipe weight in kilograms, make sure to use kilograms per cubic meter for the density of your pipe material and multiply that by the volume of your pipe material in cubic meters. So, when using this formula:

weight = π × [(diameter/2)² - (diameter/2 - thickness)²] × length × density of pipe material,

make sure your diameter (outer diameter), thickness (pipe wall thickness), and length are in meters.

Kenneth Alambra
Pipe details
Pipe material
Mild steel
Material density
lb/cu in
Outer diameter (Dₒ)
in
Inner diameter (Dᵢ)
in
Pipe wall thickness (t)
in
Length (L)
ft
Output
Volume
cu in
Pipe's linear density
lb/ft
Weight
lb
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