Floors strong enought????

litlepig11

Member
Hello...we are moving to a new-to-us, house in a couple weeks and hope to move our tank with us...we have an 100 gallon reef tank w/a 30 gallon under cabinet sump...do we need to do anything to make sure the floors of the new house will hold the tank? the house is a bi-level and the room under the tank is finished and access to the floor above is would be very difficult to get to...do we need to do anything? would we need to hire someone to check out the intergity of the floors and who would that be? thanks.....
 

socal57che

Active Member
You could probably hire a building inspector to verify the integrity of your floors and recommend reiforcement if needed.
 

jubbin2001

Member
Ok so here is a little math for ya. Each gallon of water is about 8.34lbs. So just in water weight you have around 834lbs on your main tank. I will assume that the 30 gal is not completely filled, maybe about half? so that would be about another 125lbs. So here we have 959lbs in just water weight. That doesn't include sand, LR, hardware, tank, or stand. Once you add that all up, it starts getting pretty heavy for standard floors (depending on beam spacing, direction, age, and a lot of other factors).
I have my 125g with a 30g fuge placed upstairs but it also is sitting directly over the foundation, so I don't need to brace the floors.
I would suggest maybe giving it a look and see where you want to place it, and see what it looks like underneath in the basement. If it's not going to be directly over foundation or any other bracing, they sell support beams at Menards fairly cheap (around $80 last I checked....cheaper than having your floor cave in anyway
). It might not be a bad idea to pick one up and brace the area you want to put the tank just to make sure there are no issues. Always better to be safe than sorry I think.
As far as asking, I would probably talk to a home construction company. They should be able to tell you what typical floors can handle. General rule of thumb is anything over 90g, it is in your best interest to either have the tank directly on concrete, or brace the flooring underneath...like I said before, it would be a real shame to wreck your flooring, and in a worse case, have it fall through loosing everything.
 

litlepig11

Member
hmmm....the beams are a great idea...but with the basement being finshed rooms i dont know how i would do that...the one is a bed room the other a family room...the few companties i have tried to set up to come and look at it have no clue what i need...sigh...
 

small triggers

Active Member
if the house was built after 1950 ish it should have a floor joist every 16-20 inches on center. aslong as you have the tank backed against a common wall and as long as it is spaced out away from the outside wall atleeast a foot you should be fine. Also i should say as long as the tank is more than 3 feet long too. I have a 150g with a 40ish sump with about 200lbs of LR in my townhouse.
 

salt210

Active Member
dont trust this but we just moved from a 3rd floor apartment where we kept our 210g. it was placed on one of the load bearing walls though
 

culp

Active Member
the guy at my LFS has a custom 1,000 gallon tank. and all he did was put iron rods under the floor boards to give the floor more strength.
 

salt210

Active Member
its kind of scary when you jump or walk next to over 2500lbs and it starts sloshing the water
 
E

eric b 125

Guest
why dont you just put the tank in the finished basement and turn the bed room into the equipment room?
 

litlepig11

Member
i thought about that but my husband insest on keeping the kids in the house...we are setting i up as a pancille (sorry bad spelling) between the kitchen and dinning room...
 
I hired a structural engineer to inspect my 75g w/ 20g sump tank placement as my living room is on the second floor. He was able to take some best "guesses" off of the nail placement (in garage underneath living room) and come up with formulas of weight displacement. He estimated around 50% deflection in weight, which he said is plenty good. He estimated that I couldn't have more than 150g where my tank is placed. My tank is 5' and placed over about 4 joists.
An inspector will not be able to figure this out, you will need a structural engineer if you want it inspected. I had to call 2 different engineers to get one to come out and inspect. It did cost $250 though for him to say, yep, looks good. But I did get an inspection letter from him.
 

nordy

Active Member
Originally Posted by litlepig11
http:///forum/post/3001741
hmmm....the beams are a great idea...but with the basement being finshed rooms i dont know how i would do that...the one is a bed room the other a family room...the few companties i have tried to set up to come and look at it have no clue what i need...sigh...
One thing you could do is put a 4 x 4 (suggest 4' long) under where you want to place the tank (90 degrees to the existing floor joists), outline in the drywall ceiling the position of the beam, then cut out the drywall in the outline. Next step, get two steel support beams, as mention by jubbin above, and use them to support the 4 x 4. HD sells adjustable steel support columns fairly cheap. Then, trim out the 4 x 4 and steel supports, or maybe box them out in some 1 by, paint it and make it look nice. Use a level and it will give the extra reinforcement you should have.
P.S. Love your avatar!
 

jubbin2001

Member
Originally Posted by socal57che
http:///forum/post/3001683
Jubbin, your math is a little off.
This is due to the fact that saltwater is heavier than freshwater.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/...LaValley.shtml
"Seawater is usually some 3.5 percent heavier than fresh water because it contains about 35 pounds of salts in each 1,000 pounds of water"
Sorry, on average a gallon of water at this point would weigh about 8.63lbs. Thus making it 863lbs, and 129.45lbs respecfully. So we go from 959 to 992.45. So I was kind of off by about 33.45lbs....give or take...I suppose we could calculate out how saturated your water is with salt to get the most accurate measure...but I was speaking "generally". We could really get crazy and get into how temperature can affect the weight of the water, much like how different temperatures affect your salinity.... maybe you live below sea level, or maybe you live in the mountains...that has a effect to. Barometric pressure? Maybe we need to get into dispersal of the weight? How much weight per sqaure inch can the floor support? How much weight per square inch is the aquarium, stand, and everything else? What is our ratio of weight placed and weight dispersed through the various beams and/or joices? We can get as accurate as you want
.
I am not trying to spilt hairs, or be disrespectful, I was merely offering a suggestion. If you are balancing between 30lbs causing your floor to break or for it to hold up....you are in some real danger. Given the location, I doubt you would want to rope off the area so people don't walk through causing your floor to come crashing down. 30lbs doesn't give you a large margin for error...
 

socal57che

Active Member
Originally Posted by jubbin2001
http:///forum/post/3002061
Sorry, on average a gallon of water at this point would weigh about 8.63lbs. Thus making it 863lbs, and 129.45lbs respecfully. So we go from 959 to 992.45. So I was kind of off by about 33.45lbs....give or take...I suppose we could calculate out how saturated your water is with salt to get the most accurate measure...but I was speaking "generally". We could really get crazy and get into how temperature can affect the weight of the water, much like how different temperatures affect your salinity.... maybe you live below sea level, or maybe you live in the mountains...that has a effect to. Barometric pressure? Maybe we need to get into dispersal of the weight? How much weight per sqaure inch can the floor support? How much weight per square inch is the aquarium, stand, and everything else? What is our ratio of weight placed and weight dispersed through the various beams and/or joices? We can get as accurate as you want
.
I am not trying to spilt hairs, or be disrespectful, I was merely offering a suggestion. If you are balancing between 30lbs causing your floor to break or for it to hold up....you are in some real danger. Given the location, I doubt you would want to rope off the area so people don't walk through causing your floor to come crashing down. 30lbs doesn't give you a large margin for error...
Don't forget to figure in density change due to temperature...
 

veni vidi vici

Active Member
Originally Posted by jpa0741
http:///forum/post/3002010
I don't think you will have any problems with a tank that size.
+1 just try and do a few thing and you will be fine.
Put tank perpendicular to floor joist and not parallel.
Put it up against a exterior wall or have a load bearing wall/beam underneath.
I build homes for a living and ive put a lot more weight on floor joist then a aquarium of that size.
 
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