# Gallons to Pounds Calculator

Created by Carolyn Kovacs
Reviewed by Steven Wooding
Last updated: Feb 02, 2023
Table of contents:

Use our gallons to pounds calculator to figure out how much the volume of water, oil, gasoline, or even ice cream weighs!  How many pounds is one gallon of milk?  How much does all the water in my pool weigh?  Am I strong enough to carry a 5-gallon bucket of water?  Well, we might not be able to answer that final question for you, but we can at least help you figure out how much it will weigh!  Convert gallons to pounds for any of these liquids and several more using our calculator.

## What is the difference between measuring in gallons and pounds?

The gallon to pound calculator uses two imperial measurements: gallons and pounds.  However, they measure liquids in different ways.  A gallon is a unit of volume — how much space does something take up.  The US gallon is the unit you are most likely to come across when discussing gallons is equal to 4 quarts, 8 pints, and 16 cups (imperial system) and equal to 3.8 liters (metric system). If you need to make measurements using a UK gallon, US dry gallon, 1k US gallon, or make conversions between gallons and other units, check out our gallon calculator

A pound (lb) is a unit of mass — how much does something weigh?  The abbreviation for pounds is lb, so to convert lbs to gallons is the same thing as to convert pounds to gallons.  The abbreviation lb comes from the Roman unit libra, which is Latin for scales or balance and was an earlier measurement from which pounds descended.  A pound is also equal to 16 ounces (imperial system), or 0.45 kilograms (metric system).

## How do I convert gallons to pounds?

If you need to convert gallons to pounds, it is best to use a gallons to pounds calculator like the one here, as you need to consider the density of the liquid. To convert between a unit of volume and a unit of mass, we need to use the equation:

$\small \text{density = mass / volume}$

You can learn more about this equation with the density calculator!

The density of water at 39.2 °F (4.0 °C) is 1 g/ml. We use this density to convert gallons to pounds or convert pounds to gallons (lbs to gallons). However, since this density is in the metric system, and gallons and pounds are in the imperial system, we need to make some additional conversions.

Thankfully, this calculator does that for you, so you don’t need to worry about it!  We also have included the densities of several other liquids, including oil, gasoline, and milk.

🙋 Do you have a recipe and need to convert between several different volume or weight units, such as cups, grams, liters, or tablespoons? In that case, we recommend checking out the cooking measurement converter.

## What is the conversion for 1 gallon to pounds?

If you are dealing with water and need to convert 1 gallon to pounds, a gallon of pure water at 39.2 °F (4.0 °C) weighs 8.35 lb.  Conversely, if you want to convert 1 pound to gallons, a pound of water is equivalent to that of 0.12 gallons.

Need to convert more than 1 gallon to pounds?  You can use the following equations:

\small \begin{aligned} \text{Gallons of water} &= 0.12 \times \text{pounds} \\ \text{Pounds of water} &= 8.35 \times \text{gallons} \end{aligned}

Even easier — you can put in your value of gallons or pounds into our gallons to pounds / pounds to gallons conversion system, and it will calculate the value for you!

Because most of the time you will be working with water at room temperature as opposed to 4.0 °C, we have included room temperature water and several other temperatures as options in the calculator.

If you are measuring another liquid, for example, beer, gasoline, or my favorite — ice cream (okay, technically not a liquid, but you can buy it in gallons!), then you can also choose these in the liquid option in our converter.

## Which is heavier, a gallon of beer or ice cream?

We can use our gallons to pounds calculator and the densities saved in the calculator to find out that… beer is heavier!

• Beer has a density of 1.01 g/ml, just a tad denser than water.
• When we convert gallons to pounds, we find that one gallon of beer weighs 8.43 lb.
• Ice cream has an average density of 0.56 g/ml, almost half the density of water.
• So, to convert 1 gallon of ice cream to pounds, it would weigh about 4.67 lb.

However, it is essential to keep in mind that for ice cream, as well as other substances such as paint, crude oil, milk, and gasoline as well, there can be a range in the density of the substance depending on the exact contents and manufacturing process.  If you know your liquid's density specifically, you can enter it in using the advanced mode on the calculator.

## How much does the water in my pool weigh?

Before we can convert gallons to pounds, we first need to know how many gallons the pool holds.

To start, us our pool calculator to determine how many gallons of water are in your pool. We figured out that a pool 12 feet wide and 22 feet long, with a depth at one end of 4 feet, reaching 6 feet at the other end, would have a pool volume of 9,874 gallons.

If we wanted to know how many pounds that much water would weigh, we could then use our gallons to pounds calculator — plug in the numbers, and we quickly find out that these 9,874 gallons of water would weigh 82,402 pounds!  You better make sure you have some excellent pool construction to hold that much weight!

Remember that 5-gallon bucket of water we asked you about at the start? Well, it would weigh 41.6 lbs — We think you have got it!

💡 If you like, you can convert any quantity from gallons to kilograms using our kg to gallons converter. It also has a list of routine items that can be converted.

Carolyn Kovacs
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Volume
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Weight
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