Aquariums and old houses.

[Eupterus]

Does anyone know how older houses hold up to 55 gal+ aquariums?

I might move to a new place, thing is it's a older house from the 1800s. Not sure what I can expect in terms of tank sizes I can have. I know later building codes can hold tanks up to a certain size...Not so sure about older houses.

If I moved there, would prefer shutting down my smaller aquariums and going back to keeping larger 55+ aquariums.

 

[Behemoth]

I will let you know in a couple of months. We have an older home that we bought and have been working on. I am about to put a 135 gallon tank in it.

 

[ziggy2]

A 55 should be fine almost anywhere.

 

[Ianab]

Who knows...

But any house that wont support a 55gal tank.. Umm.. are you sure you want to move in ?

I dont think there were any building codes in the 1800s. That means the house might have 12" oak beams under there.. or 1/2 the house could be hanging in mid air The fact that it's still standing after 100+ years probably means it was well built though.

Get under there and have a look, maybe even get a builder or engineer to have a look and advise you.

There are allways ways to reinforce floors if you are keen enough to go into the crawl space with some extra concrete, timbers or maybe a steel beam

Cheers

Ian

 

[tknjk]

I don't know how they built houses in VT back in the day, but my house was built in 1939, and I bet I could put a 300 gal. tank in mine, and I wouldn't have any problems. My house is built like it was meant to withstand a nuclear blast. 2x8 runners set on top of massive cement footers (in very good shape) with 2x6 solid flooring, with 1" harwood flooring on top of that. It's the newer houses built on pier and beam that I would worry about.