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The Beginner's Guide To Fish Keeping.
How to Find if Your Floor Can Hold Your Aquarium
By: Maverick
Sorry guys! This article is taking awhile to write. There's alot of math involved and alot of work making this easy to understand and apply. Bare with me, and soon you'll have an excellent guide to use for your convenience. In the mean time, ingore the junk below. Some of it's right, some of it's not, and it's certainly not finished.
-Maverick
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If you are putting a large tank on a flooring your unsure about, it’s best to know how its weight is distributed on your floor. First, find the total area and weight of the tank. Lets say your tank is 12” deep and 36” wide. Multiply the length times the width (12” X 36”= 432” squared). Now, divide the total weight of the tank by your above answer (Ex. 300lbs/432in.²= ~. 69lbs per square inch). This means, your tank is exerting just over half a pound on every square inch of the surface it’s sitting on.
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Not bad right? Well, this is where your stand comes into to play. If your stand has a nice flat surface on the bottom, then the weight of the tank, plus the weight of the stand, is distributed evenly over the floor. Lets add the weight of the stand to our tank and see just how much weight is being exerted on the floor.
To do this, add the weight of the tank (ex. 300lbs) to the weight of the stand (ex. 50lbs), and divide by the total area of the stand. The total area of the stand may differ from that of the tank, which is why I add that. For this example, we’ll say the area is the same. So, 350lbs/432in.² = ~. 81lbs/in.². Almost one pound per square inch is being exerted on your floor if you have a flat-bottomed stand. This is doesn’t sound very safe for most sub-floors (not the joists but the plywood), as they only support around 10 lbs/ft² or .07 lbs/in.² dead load. What gives your floor its support, are the joists. Therefore every 12, 16, or 24 inches (whatever your centers are) your floor has the added support of the joist. Look at it this way; if you have a flat-bottomed stand, your joists are what support it. If you have a peg footed stand, your sub-floor is what supports it.
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Now I’ll show you the difference a peg footed stand makes. A stand with four peg feet, one on each corner, will concentrate the total weight of the tank AND stand on four points on the floor. So, figure the total weight of the tank and the stand (350 lbs). Now divide that number by four (four points, remember?), you get 87.5 lbs being concentrated on each of those pegs. Unless you have each peg resting directly over a joist (or have it on a concrete floor), the chances of your tank falling through the floor are pretty high. Obviously, the larger the tank you have, the more of a risk you take. When given the choice, always go with a flat-bottomed stand. That said, also note that a stand with long legs, like a table, makes for a very poor stand. The longer the legs, the less stable your stand will be. Tall stands give you the risk of your tank being top heavy, as do narrow ones. Shorter, wider stands give you the safest conditions.
LARGER TANKS
· Now imagine you want a 200 gallon tank on the second floor of your house. Will your floor hold that much weight? There IS a way to find out! First, determine as close as possible, how much weight the completed tank will weigh. Don’t forget you have the stand, possibly a canopy, the tank itself, ALL of your equipment, the water, your substrate, and any decorations your adding to the tank. If you don’t know the exact weight, over estimate. Next, find the area of the bottom of the stand and determine how many pounds per square inch your floor needs to sustain.
Here are the typical dimensions for a 200-gallon tank:
W=84.5”, D=24.5”, H=24.75”
Notice this “200” gallon tank is really 221 gallons (84.5 X 24.5 X 24.75/231=221.8 gallons). We’ll multiply that by 12 to get the approximant weight of the completed tank and add 100 lbs for the stand.
We get 2,761.6 lbs over an area of 14.4ft. ². That means you have ~192 lbs/ft². Now you have the hard part, will your floor hold this weight? If the tank is in your concrete basement, sure, concrete usually can hold AT LEAST several hundred pounds per square foot. This however, is going on one of your upper floors right?
First, do you have floor trusses, or joists? Trusses are stronger than joists but are more expensive. Chances are, you have joists. If this is the case, you have one large beam running lengthwise through the center of your house. Beneath this, you have columns or poles supporting its weight. Your joists run crossways to either side of this beam. This beam supports one end of every joist. While the other end is supported by an exterior wall (depending on the design of your house). This design presents the same problem as the peg feet stand design above. It concentrates the weight of your house on the columns underneath the center beam, and your columns would bow if their design specifications were exceeded. So how do you know how much weight your floor can support? This ultimately differs for every floor and house design, however you can take this into consideration. The shorter your joists are, the stronger they are. The closer the joists or trusses are side by side, the stronger they will be. Determining exactly how much your floor can hold is next to impossible unless you’re an engineer. But you can look at what you have and estimate. You can’t be expected to know what kind of wood your joists are made of but you can look at their sizes, how long they run (their span), and how far apart they are placed from each other (their centers). Joists come in several different standard sizes and are spaced on different standard centers. Joists are usually placed at 12”, 16” or 24” apart. 12” offers the highest strength while 24” offers the least. Joists are usually made of 2 x 6’s,
· What can you do to make sure your extra large tank isn’t going to be an extra large disaster? Make sure you have a flat-bottomed stand for your tank, first. Then, make sure you set the tank cross ways over the floor joists or trusses. Make sure you have as many joists or trusses as possible underneath the tank. This will distribute the weight more and help reduce the amount of weight each joist or truss has to support. To help reduce the risk of an undesired first floor addition, always place the tank against an exterior wall. The exterior walls are much stronger than the center beam in your house; thus, they will easily support your tank. The closer to these walls your tank is, the more weight you remove from the weaker center area of your house.
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