melev

Day 1 and counting....
Just 13 days to finish.





Just kidding. Sounds like you're going to take a bit more time and plan things out in more detail this time.

I can't wait to actually follow your progress real time with this one.... instead of digging through your archives reading about the past

Marc, considering the issues you had with your foundation shifting in the past, are you going to have some kind of leveling jack screws built into the new stand?

Looks cool, you'll have to update melevs reef. how long are you planning for this take? How long will you, can you leave corals etc in tubs?

Awesome! I believe you madE a great choice. I like what you are thinking about the rockwork too, that will really give a wow factor to the display. Just a thought Marc. If you are getting someone to build the stand, maybe run the idea with an engineer. See about having the bottom of the feet wider to displace the weight. You know instead of the small footprints of most steel stands you see. I'm glad too I can follow this time around! :-)

You're gonna love it!

The shifting foundation under my slab home does concern me, but with the old tank and stand out of the way I'll be able to look at things more closely. I'd like to get a concrete guy out here to discuss what to do about the lowered area in my fish room. I'm thinking it would be best to build it up so it is all level and once piece instead of the step down situation I've been working around since Day 1.

I tend to think that leveling feet (usually large screws in a nut welded to the underside of each foot) aren't nearly as strong as we'd like them to be. All the weight is on the actual threads of the screw and the nut - and the pressure point of all the weight of the system is on that bold head. If the tank weighs 6000 lbs full, that's 1500 lbs of pressure to each of the four feet. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about:

Image from Serk:


They may be good during the initial set up, but will they budge once there's a full reef on top?

Very cool to see what you are thinking. The returns are much like my current tank except I have four inputs into the tank, the two I have on the return side are actually plugged with a hole drilled to force more flow to the other end.

What are your thoughts on doubling up your eurobracing? Is there a particular reason to use starfire on the back panel as well, if that is going to be in your fish room it is very likely that you will not see much with the rock stacked in that area and you may not want to see through so regular glass should be fine there.

Also if you are going to move your water heater might I suggest that instead of just moving look at picking up a tankless one, http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/waterheaters.html they do help save some money in the long run and would take up a much smaller space. If your water heater is between 7 to 10 years old it probably would not be a bad idea to think about.

If you are going to pour concrete that will bear weight you may not be able to just pour a thin layer over top of what is there. A 1inch thick layer over top of existing will very likely break once weight is applied especially if you are going to have 6000 pounds plus placed on it. So if the area to be poured over isn't going to end up being at least 4 inches thick you will want to tear out the old and repour the slab. You can mix your own bag concrete and get buy a bit cheaper but you will want to mix with minimal water and I would reinforce with steel rebar or get some heavy steel grating to embed into the concrete. If you plan to pour more than 3 yards, say a sidewalk 3 feet wide 6 inches thick and 30 feet long is about what 3 yards can cover, then you may want to look at getting a truck delivery anything under that and they will likely impose a high delivery charge. If you don't know how much concrete you will need you can remove what needs to be removed, setup your forms, take a few measurements and call a local concrete company, they will do the calculations for free. Then take that info and go pick up your bags from home depot or some other building supply store, they can convert from yards to bags or may even be able to do the calculations for the whole thing. But get a couple extra bags just in case something happens. You can also get a latex additive that will help make it stronger.

Can't wait to see this going together. But you will need to get started right away on the concrete really needs to cure for about 3 weeks to reach a good usable strength. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concret...ete_production

Hope the information helps.

Marc, i was thinking more along the lines of this. Note that this one is rated for 2 tons. I've seen even larger ones that are used for leveling houses on permafrost and rated 20 tons or more. Something like that could be built into each leg.

Good thoughts on the concrete, Nightshade. The area would be 4" at one end, and 2.5" right where you currently enter the fishroom. Those two feet need to be strengthened. My sump is on a platform. I'm thinking about getting the wall out of the way, and sliding that badboy forward into my fishroom, then fill in concrete where my current walkway is in the fishroom. A french drain could be easily added then, with plumbing going under/out of the wall - along the garage wall, and to the garage door for those inevitable spills. The front legs would be on the home's solid foundation. With the new solid slab, the room would be much nicer.

The water heater is maybe two years old now, and is in the garage. However, the plumbing to the water heater is in the slab. It comes up in the wall under my 280g's front right corner. That has to be dealt with once the new stand is in place, replacing the plumbing with new that will probably run inside the stand and then over to the garage. I thought about a tankless one, but the plumbing would still have to be done the exact same way.

Phil, I just don't know. I like the flexibility of being able to turn any of the four legs if there was a need, but the racking strength would be the biggest challenge. If I get the concrete done right, this may not be anything to worry about.

Ok, then if it's 2.5 inches on one end I would pull out the old stuff where the platform currently is raised at least and repour the whole area. 2.5inches of concrete just would not have enough strength. And when you redo the plumbing lines you could just move them down into the new slab and totally reroute the tank drain line and make sure it is put into the house sewer system and reuse it for the tank as well. I am looking at some old pictures and notice there is a closet to the left of the 280, I would start thinking about using that as an access point to your fish room.

I know it's not going to be much different than what you have already but wanted to play with sketchup so here is the room with the door removed. I placed the tank about 36" off the floor.

Getting a stable foundation would definitly be the best solution. I can't help but wonder if the foundation movement didn't contribute the 280's failure by putting twisting stress on the tank.

I think an experienced concrete company will definately need to come out and check the situation for you but it will be nice if it can work. Looking forward to seeing more!

I agree with you Phill, and what may be able to be done is to fully remove the section where the tank will sit and allow it to "float" separate from the existing foundation. You just have to seal the edges, but it is a much bigger job because you would have to cut through and remove a section of the existing slabs, pour some sort of footer underneath and then pour the slab on top with something to insulate the new slab from the old's movement. This is usually done with a tar paper like board about 1/2 inch thick which is then sealed so water does not flow through. You can see something like this if you go into walmart or sams club and look at the support columns if the floor is concrete and bare you will see a square area that is separated from the rest of the floor. But you are looking at probably a month worth of work and cure time before you can even think of tank.

I was just thinking about something. If you were to cut 4 square holes in the concrete about 1 foot square each and dig down in the opening about 2 feet and do almost the same thing that walmart or sams club does with their building support structure for your tank you could just pour them full let them cure and then add the rest of the concrete in with no worries.

Here ya go Marc, this is how I moved that 125 up 12 flights of stairs.

I was toying with the thought of changing out the closet to have access to the fishroom that way instead. That would be pretty nice. I like what you did with the sketchup. Just remember that every great idea adds more time and cost to this plan.

Creating a stand-alone concrete footer is genius, but the cost, time and mess would be a disaster to my home and my livestock that is currently in the kitchen/dining area. Adding new concrete to the current concrete in the fishroom (the area that is lower than the shelf) seems the best plan. I have no way of knowing where the house sewer line is, and the house was built in 1970. I guess the city has those kinds of records on file? Maybe those would state the thickness of the slab. Here's the picture of where the tank went in 2004:


And where the water heater sits. You can see some of the plumbing there.



Jonathan, his is more of what I pictured when you described it over the phone:

Wow Marc! Not cool going 6" bigger in front to back depth than mine! LOL. I saw that you are trying to get out of having no center bracing, this may be an issue when the tank manufacturer sees it. I originally only wanted euro bracing around the outside as well but Lee Mar wouldn't do it without 2 8" braces and still retain the 3/4" thick glass that I wanted for the Vortechs.

If it helps, I opted not to go with feet on my stand because I just felt like that was a lot of stress to be putting on a few points rather then evenly distributed across the length and width of the tank. As you are already looking at poring new concrete it is fairly easy to make your new surface level so assuming your stand comes out flat you should be sitting pretty good.

Any ideas on the potential tank manufacturer yet? If I recall AGE is fairly close to you, if it were me I would go with them so you can get that cool PVC bottom. I've heard that it makes the tank MUCH lighter and its much stronger then a glass bottom.

I really think you will like being able to look down the side. I find myself looking down my tank more often then from the front!

Ryan

Actually Marc, I think Nightshade may have come up with a pretty darn good solution. You could core drill a 6 or 8" hole, at 6 locations, use a post hole digger to bore down 3 feet and drop in a sonotube. Cast bolts into it, then have the stand built to bolt to the footings. If you do need to adust thing before filling the tank, it's a simple matter of adding shims. As NS pointed out, that's exactly how large steel buildings are made. The trick would be to track down a structural engineer that finds the problem facinating and will sketch something up for you. Want me to ask the ones that I work with?

Phil and Nightshade, the corner pillars thing sounds plausible. Hmm.

AGE is local, but they are very expensive and the wait time is noteworthy. Once this is finalized, I'll be sure to state the tank manufacturer.