landlords are a problem, like someone else said that was one of my motivations for getting a house, i may have a small house but it is full of fish tanks and no jerk to tell me not too!
Apartments
- Thread starter Charney
- Start date
Hello; (OLDRECYCLEDPOST) Here are some webaddresses about floor capacity. The first address is a new one from a post byanother Monster Fish forum member a while back. Here are the addresses againwith the first being new to the list. Floor capacity depends on a lot of criteria,there is not a simple answer to the question.
This web address is added to the list http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/aquarium_weight.php It is perhaps the easiest to follow. Note After reading the new address at the top of the post, I will be using 40pounds per square foot for my wood floor joists.
http://www.ehow.com/how_7485788_calculate-floor-load-capacity.html
The web address above is a site about calculating loadcapacities of floor joists. They use a formula for the strength of a beam: maximum load in pounds = FBd^2 / 9L.
The width of the woodjoist in inches is B (1.5 inches forstandard 2 by dimensional lumber.)
The depth in inches is d (7.25 in for a standard 2x8.)(9.25 in for a2x10)
The distance (span) in feet is L (Unsupported distance)
F is somethingcalled the fiber stress when wood bends. It varies with the type of wood butgraded lumber will be at least a 1,000 number, some are higher.
They use an example of 2x10 floor joists with a span of 14feet on 16 inch centers and come up with 1,019 pd for each joist. They figure the area supported by each joistas 18.7 sq ft. They get 54.5 pd per square foot of floor area. I think this includes the weight of theflooring and anything else that is supported by the joists. I looked at someother sites (Addresses listed below) and found a discussion of static loads andlive loads. Two sites describe how to measure the deflection of flooring due toweight loads.
http://www.johnbridge.com/vbulletin/deflecto.pl
http://www.awc.org/calculators/span/calc/timbercalcstyle.asp?species=Douglas+Fir-South&size=2x8&grade=Select+Structural&member=Floor+Joists&deflectionlimit=L%2F480&spacing=16&wet=No&incised=No&liveload=80&snowload=-1&deadload=10&submit=Calculate+Maximum+Horizontal+Span
I found these sites interesting but hard to pin down for ageneral rule of thumb. Too many variables involved; Type of wood, condition ofwood, dimensional lumber or engineered truss, age of wood and on and on.
http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=62845&page=10
Here's my 2 cents. I live in a 100+ yr old house, 2nd floor of 3 fam, with uneven hardwood floors and 8 tanks. (3) 30's and a 5 gal in a walk in closet room, (1) 55 in another room and (3) 30's in livingroom. Landlord helped bring in my largest tank, knows how many I have. Made him feel better by buying renters insurance and rugs that retain water (to protect floors).
Only 5 of them are against outside walls (all 30's). But I have them spread out pretty good and I have 2 double stands holding 4 of the 30's to save space. All tanks are resting on 3/4 inch plywood and leveled as good as I could get. No issues for the last few years. Hope to move within the next 2 years so I can buy a 125 so I can get rid of 3-4 of the 30's.
Hope it works out for you. Reassure the landlord with a plan to protect the property and level the best way to spread out the weight. Rethink the stocking if you can. I had to move fish around alot and found that sometimes it worked out, even with the incompatible ones.
Only 5 of them are against outside walls (all 30's). But I have them spread out pretty good and I have 2 double stands holding 4 of the 30's to save space. All tanks are resting on 3/4 inch plywood and leveled as good as I could get. No issues for the last few years. Hope to move within the next 2 years so I can buy a 125 so I can get rid of 3-4 of the 30's.
Hope it works out for you. Reassure the landlord with a plan to protect the property and level the best way to spread out the weight. Rethink the stocking if you can. I had to move fish around alot and found that sometimes it worked out, even with the incompatible ones.
Thanks for all the input guys. As far as moving my fish around I am not willing to risk the fish and the expense of moving them together. Plus a good portion of my stock are piranhas.
Katatonic -I don't mean to pick on you, but some of what you wrote is flat out wrong.
To the OP, I'm not saying you can't set these up, but you should make sure your landlord is aware of your intentions on setting up all those tanks. They will find out about them sooner or later and if it turns out they do not allow aquariums (I have known many complexes that do not allow anything above a 10 gallon tank), you could find yourself in quite the predicament. The last thing you want to do is have to find a new place to live in a short period of time, or have a firesale of all your stock and equipment if you are violation of the terms of your lease.
He's just asking about the weight of the tanks. I really doubt OP wants to hear people telling him to talk to his landlord... Anyhow, I've never had any issues with tanks that size in my second floor apartment. I currently have my 125g 6ft long tank in my living room no problems, and my girl friend has her two 40g breeders on a double stand in the bedroom not on any outdoor wall, no problem. At one point I had a caddy cornered 125g 4.5' long tank in the living room (which was really heavy, pressured on 6 legs instead of all around the stand, and super tall, and also kind of out in the room since it was caddy cornered) with a 95g 5ft long tank right across from it against another wall with no issues. I doubt you'll have any issues with those tanks being nothing you have is really too big. A sofa with 3-4 grown 180-200lb men on it will be getting as heavy as 55g-75g tank and we don't worry about things like that when placing furniture in an upper apartment. I doubt you'll have any issues.
I live in an apartment with 2 150s and a 30gal tank but aim on the first floor. I don't trust my tanks on any other floor the risk for me is not worth it because of the expense if something did happen. I just don't trust it i guess. I am allowed aquariums on first floor only where I live. I did have a 55gal on the 2nd floor of a town house I lived in and it was fine. The building had a solid structure though. If you do iti would definitely get renters insurance
There's a reason several people have mentioned that he should clear having 300+ gallons of aquariums with the landlord...it can be a real issue. One of the things I like best about this site is people sharing ideas that I may not have considered. If he doesn't want to hear it, he can ignore it. But why not ask the landlord about it and find out now if it will be an issue as opposed to having the landlord freak out when they come to service his A/C unit, fix a leaky toilet or any other issue?
It would be foolish to rely on what some random person on the internet says about a floors ability to hold a load when the specs of the floor have not even been laid out. There is a difference between a couch holding a few guys for a few hours a day (transient load) versus tanks that have the flooring under a longer term (24/7) live load.
The last place I lived had concrete floors and I would have been comfortable setting up a 240G on it (I was on the 7th floor). My brother owns an apartment building with wood floor joists that was built around the same time as my old apartment with concrete floors and a 50G would cause his floors to sag. Both buildings were built to code for the type of construction used at the time, but there are drastic differences in how much weight each can hold.
To the OP, if you are going to keep the tanks a secret, and you aren't able to find a unit on the 1st floor on concrete slab foundation, the least you should do is find out which way your floor joists run and set your tanks up perpindicular to them. The more floor joists your tank sits over, the better. Placing the tanks near a load bearing wall would also be a good idea. And lastly, I wouldn't multi-task when doing water changes. Losing track of time when you are filling up a tank could spell disaster/financial ruin for you. I know you didn't specifically ask for that advice (sorry Jon M), but I'll still offer it up.
Best of luck.
