Will it be to heavy?

[bunjiweb]

I am looking into purchasing a 100G tank and I am wondering if the floor in my bedroom will support it?

I live in an old Barn conversion and i'd say its very solidly built, but my mum is having visions of 100Gs of water coming through the ceiling..?!

I have said to her that If the room can support 8 people (around 90 stone total) moving around a lot then it should be able to support the tank..

Do any of you guys keep tanks up to 100G upstairs in your house? or in a flat?

Ben

 

[karrihug]

when i bought my 210 gal, i had my father(an engineer) check it out, and he said it was ok for me to put it upstairs. of course my husband found out it weighed almost 400 lb empty and decided he didn't want to try to get it up there

 

[kev]

If you are confident that 8 people can go in the room with no problem then that means the whole floor isn't going to give way - it going to be the floor boards that might split and give way

The important point is the stand that it is being held on - 100G (US) weighs 834 Lbs (380Kg) which is about 53 stone - if your table / stand has feet that were say 1 SQInch then the pressure would be 208PSI - Which is quite high and could possible cause a floor board to give way


I remember from school being told that a woman standing on your chest in stilleto heels who do more damage than a baby elephant doing the same - It all to do with pressure

if you place a small peice of wood under each foot say 6"x 6" this would reduce the pressure to

6x6=36

36x4=144

834/144=5.79

But if your stand has large feet any way then the rist is minimized

//My weights were calculated on the water only - obviously you'll have the weight of the stand and tank, substrate and (fish???)

 

[rvm]

It's more to do with the Newtons of pressure on the floor area than the Psi. I have my 140g in a first floor flat, and spoke to a structral engineer who explained it all to me. I did A-level Physics and didn't understand half of what he was on about!!
Basically Ben, check to see which way the supporting beams in the floor go and try and place the tank so the length of it runs perpendicular to the beams. That way you will have 3 or 4 beams crossing the tank and supporting it better.
The other thing is to try and get the tank against a supporting wall. that way it is putting more pressure on the wall as opposed to the beams themselves.
Placing weight spreaders under the feet of the stand won't hurt, but 100g plus the weight of the tank and stand is going to be close to half a ton!! Good luck and I hope it holds!! I was worried I was going to come home to a big hole in my floor for about 3 weeks after I set my tank up!!!!

 

[Shiro337]

I have just set up a 6x2x2 tank in my kitchen on a stand i made myself, plus 25k of rocks and 60k of sand. Im still waiting for the bang and splash.

 

[Def]

I'd probably point out that people who live in flats are infinitely better off than people who want to put tanks on floorboards on the first floor of their house. Apartment properties built by private developers (no idea about council flats etc) all have strengthened/reinforced floors, because if the top flat floor collapsed when 20 or 30 people were in it, the developers would be sued to hell. They also generally use concrete (breeze blocs etc) instead of wood for load bearing walls and floors.

Still, the sensible thing would be to get a sheet of wood/hdf fibreboard slightly larger than the footprint of your tank, cover it in felt and place it under the tank cabinet to spread the weight across a wider surface. I'd still be getting scared about putting a 100gallon on any floor that hadn't been professionally assessed.

Disclaimer: I'm not a structural engineer, so if your flat suddenly becomes double height and 1 floor down, don't blame me...

 

[rvm]

Disclaimer: I'm not a structural engineer, so if your flat suddenly becomes double height and 1 floor down, don't blame me...

Yes. I have what is called a "block and beam" floor in my flat apparently!!! This means that there are reinforced concrete beams running along the floor as structural support and these are then bridged with concrete blocks. so hopefully my floor is pretty strong as my tank weighs about as much as a small car parked in my living room!!!!

 

[clutterydrawer]

saying that because a floor can hold x number of peple it can hold a tnak is nonsense. do these people all stand in a few square feet of the floor? do they stay there for several years? i think not. use some sense. Read this before you do anything:

http/www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/aquarium_weight.php

 

[Def]

clutterydrawer, if your comment was because I said "20 or 30 people", I should have also said something like "use wood sheeting to spread the pressure over a wider area".

Still, the sensible thing would be to get a sheet of wood/hdf fibreboard slightly larger than the footprint of your tank, cover it in felt and place it under the tank cabinet to spread the weight across a wider surface

Oh, I did. Handy.

 

[clutterydrawer]

it wasn't, it was because bunjiweb said "my floor can hold 8 people so it can hold a 100g tank".

 

[Galaxy]

The position of your tank is important. First of all it should be against a wall rather than the middle of the room. If you know the direction of span of your floor joists then I suggest that you place the tank in such a position that the tank is supported at the ends of several joists rather just along the length of one joist. To put it simply, assuming your tank is rectangular, the long side of your tank should be at right angles(perpendicular) to the floor joists. This means that the load is shared over several joists and also joists are much stronger in shear close to a support than in bending at midspan. Positioning the tank in this direction also places less emphasis on the floor boards between the joists.

If you are in doubt post your tank dimensions and floor joists size and span and I will check it out.

PS. I am a Structural Engineer in my spare time when I'm not tending to my fish or surfing the web.