tank and flooring

[dfreeman64]

130 MT sitting on carpet right now. am moving tank to another wall so as to have sump and all in extra room. Wife wants to pull carpet up and lay down PERGO laminate. Question is, do I need to worry about the weight of tank causing a portion of the floor to compress and have an edge. And if anyone has a tank on laminate, is there any trouble.
Thanks Dewayne

 

[ryanhayes9]

i have laminate and my 55 reef has not made it sink.it just SUCKS having to have towels all around it when doing something!

 

[acrylic51]

To be politically correct, when properly installing a tank it isn't suppose to be on carpet or any flooring such as Pergo....It should sit on a solid substrate.....I would sit the tank in place and install the Pergo around the unit itself....That way if you have a leak your Pergo is done.......it will swell....If you run the Pergo up to the tank you could use trim they sell for Pergo and make a nice transition and use their sealant to help possibly ward off some water damage if it were to happen.....JMHO

 

[chilwil84]

woodlamanent will not recover the way carpet does so plan on haing it there for a long time or dealing with having some damage or replacing some of the floor in future just remember if you are not on a slab you want the tank to run perpendicular to the joices other wise home depot sells a floor jack that can support the joices (cant spell) that is less than $50 for most hights

 

[dfreeman64]

Thanks for the responses. Might just put it on the concrete slab and put flooring around it. Thanks
Dewayne

 

[f14peter]

Originally Posted by dfreeman64
130 MT sitting on carpet right now. am moving tank to another wall so as to have sump and all in extra room. Wife wants to pull carpet up and lay down PERGO laminate. Question is, do I need to worry about the weight of tank causing a portion of the floor to compress and have an edge. And if anyone has a tank on laminate, is there any trouble.
Thanks Dewayne

Geez man, have you been telepathically living in my house? We did the laminate flooring route just about three weeks ago, originally planning to remove the carpet and replace with Pergo only where the tank was, but eventually decided to do the whole room (Wife got tired of the hard-to-keep-clean carpet, ya know, labrador and all that!). While we've yet to set up the tank, I too am concerned a little about weight (We live in an older tract-house, not the epitome of quality home construction!), and have given it a lot of thought. We asked before we bought and the flooring company said the tank would be okay. One could argue that "of course they'd say that, they're trying to sell you flooring!" but this is a very reputable, long-lived local company. This was also backed-up by the independent contractor we hired to install the flooring.
That all said, I'm still going to place a plank between the tank-stand and floor to help distribute the weight out a bit, instead of having the entire 900-or-so pounds just along the bottom rim of the stand. I did some rough calculations and there's only 66 square inches of contact between the stand and floor. Rounding up to 1000lbs for a 90g tank, that's around 15psi. Not a heck of a lot, but I'd still like to mitigate that to some degree. We have a few other things working in our favor . . . the joists do run perdendicular to the long-axis of the tank, and the laminate flooring was installed over the top of the oringal wood flooring, further distributing the weight.
We went with the "medium" thickness laminate, there is a thicker, more expensive size which undoubtedly would offer an even greater "safety" margin. Of course, leakage is another concern, and we're considering how to mitigate against that . . . rubber/foam sitting under the stand, maybe finding a Tuperware-ish tub to server as an "overflow" resevoir for the sump filter to sit in, etc.

 

[sleasia]

I would choose carpet over laminate if there is a choice. you steam vac up a flood and the carpet dries. wood and laminate will probably suffer water damage for sure. but the other advantage of installing laminate around the tank instead of sitting the tank on the laminate is that if you do get damage at any point, replacing the laminate will be much easier if the tank is not sitting on the laminate.

 

[acrylic51]

Hey Sleasia honestly in the event of a flood steam cleaning the carpet won't do much, but compound the problem......What happens is you have the carpet cleaned, but the salt and water work their wall all the way through to the subfloor, literally destroying the underlayment, because you'll never get it totally dry, and the salt will continue to work it's way up through the carpet and is very hard to get it all out without removing padding and carpet.......Straight up concrete would be the best.....

 

[sleasia]

Hmm...hadn't thought of that. well, I can't have any floods then, because I have carpet..... :thinking:

 

[acrylic51]

I spent $400.00 last year just before Christmas, because I let the skimmer waste container overflow.....imagine that in the carpet.....light carpet at that.......

 

[sleasia]

Ok...well I guess this is why we do this things as we are growing older...eye sight is now going downhill, so unless i wear my reading glasses, I doubt I'd ever notice....or i can always blame the dogs I guess...

 

[acrylic51]

I tried blaming the kids, but it didn't work....my wife new better!!!!!! :hilarious

 

[sleasia]

ok well, there is no other parent here to keep me in line...I am the supreme being....what I say becomes the law....It was the dogs...they did it.
Well maybe the carpet will last a couple of months at least and then I can tile it?
I've learned alot of stuff on this site...drilling glass, bending plastic, routing "teeth" doing plumbing through the kitchen floor. I know what a single union ball valve is for pete's sake...I've built furniture, and doors....but really now...I don't think I can handle laying concrete, for sure.

 

[hatessushi]

The other way might be to use an acrylic tank. That way if the tank falls of the stand it probably won't break...jk.
No really, although we have a concrete floor (no basement) the weight is not an issue if it was then the pool table which outweighs my 90 gal. by near 1.5 tons would have probably broken the floor. I know that sounds like a lot but the pool table has a slate that is 1.25 inches thick and 8ftX4ft yes weighs alot. It's sitting on carpet and the cabinet for the tank is. I drip water here and there so we have a water proof rug around the tank that is made for soaking up small spills. If the tank were to burst (never heard of that in acrylic) or leak badly then I am basically screwed and have to live with it. So much for the 10K worth of berber carpet throughout the house. At least I kept enough extra carpet for that side of the house just in case.
I have to agree with acrylic51 though concrete is a good idea. At least when my skimmer over flows it does it in the filter are of the refugium.

 

[reefrank]

Okay, here is what I did, for whatever it is worth.
Over top of the wood floor, I placed a large piece of cardboard and than my stand and made a template of where I wanted the stand to sit.
I took this template and traced it over a piece of 1/2 inch thick plexiglas, cut the plexiglas a little larger than the template and placed the plexiglas over top of the wood floor, than placed my stand on the plexiglas. I even extended the front of the plexiglas and sealed it with silicone (plumbers goop).
A friend of mine did this, when he moved, he removed the plexiglas, cleaned up the silicone and the floor looked great, the only problem was the floor where the tank was looked better than the rest of the floor.

 

[acrylic51]

Good idea.....

 

[apolyom]

can anyone tell me whast the best was to stabilize a tank on a carpeted (floorboard) floor? as i found the tank would slightly ripple if you went near it. any thoughts would be much appreciated

 

[cgrant]

IMO...I would not put that tank on the second floor without supporting the floor, I bet before your done that tank will be ~1200lbs stocked, lr, etc.
My 210 is in the basement on carpet but we have a cement slab basement, i think thats normal now days? I remember our old house having a dirt floor basement when i was a kid but that was like 25 years ago.
Anyway if it was me I would support the floor then put the tank up, basement would be best if you have one?
Thats my 2 pennies!

 

[waterworld]

Previous to the the installation of my 125 gallon I made a beam to support the floor joist in the basement. I ripped a 4x8 sheet of OSB into 7" wide strips then laminated them together using construction adhesive and nails. This gave me a beam 7" wide x 8' long and about 4" thick. I then placed the beam under the floor joist in a position that was to be under the tank and supported it with dual adjustable jack posts that ran to the cement basement floor. I thightened the jack posts slightly to snug the beam to the floor joist. At that time I noticed one joist was not touching the beam and was bowed up about 1/4" from touching the beam. I then proceeeded to set up the aquarium. After two days I checked on the support and found that the one joist that was not touching was now pushed down and touching the support beam. No problems after 3 years and the set-up is solid with no rocking, vibrations, bowed floor etc.
I also have set my UV Unit, Skimmer overflow etc inside a large tupperware container under the tank so if there is an overflow or a drip developes there is some containment of this water.