Building a 1500 Gallon plywood & glass tank

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
basslover34;2760229; said:
Although your observation is justified... in terms of Construction, your failing to realize that the concrete board is being treated and sealed with the Pond Armour so there is no concern for having the treated wood under it, Since there will be no moisture in the concrete board to begin with (or shouldn't be anyway if all done properly) So the extra cost of pressure treated wood just doesn't make sense to most people
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I was referring to the wood against the Concrete floor
 
i kind of think that these tanks should be built with pressure treated wood too(even though i didn't, too cheap), just because it is inevetably going to be subject to alot more moisture than intended. greengiant has a good idea about the wood cantacting the cement, becuase the warm moist air coming off the tank and filter will condense on the cold cement, theres nothing anyone can do about that. with this tank, moisture will have to be addressed more so than with most, later on, thats all. i think that as long as ample attention is paid to venting the stand and area in which the tank is in, there won't be any problems for a long long time.
 
Moisture is a concern with the wood for sure. My plywood tank has grubby little itty bitty insects living in the top bracing where it's above water, but subject to moisture, and that wood is gelcoated. I plan to tear the tank down and do some rework on the top of it in the next year or so, so I'm not overly worried about it, but if the tank was built into my house I migh tbe more concerned. I don't know if the moisture around the base of the tank is likely to be a problem or not, and pressure treated wood is certainly a big cost adder when building stuff like this. I think if I was sure I wanted to get 20 years out of my tank though, you can bet I'd be using marine grade decking plywood for everything.
 
greengiant;2764318; said:
I was referring to the wood against the Concrete floor
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Didn't even notice that... Good eye :thumbsup

I don't think it's going to be much of an issue though as it long as the base is allowed to "breathe" it should be fine... it has a relitivly small actually foot print (amount of wood touching the floor) and should be somewhat controlable with ventilation... I'm not sure how well you would be able to jack this thing up to either give the bottom of the base a rubber coating or adding a level of pressure treated (rasing the whole thing an extra inch and a half or so)
 
cvermeulen;2766493; said:
Moisture is a concern with the wood for sure. My plywood tank has grubby little itty bitty insects living in the top bracing where it's above water, but subject to moisture, and that wood is gelcoated. I plan to tear the tank down and do some rework on the top of it in the next year or so, so I'm not overly worried about it, but if the tank was built into my house I migh tbe more concerned. I don't know if the moisture around the base of the tank is likely to be a problem or not, and pressure treated wood is certainly a big cost adder when building stuff like this. I think if I was sure I wanted to get 20 years out of my tank though, you can bet I'd be using marine grade decking plywood for everything.
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take you 20 years to pay it off :grinno:

Do tell, how old is your tank and any pics of the damage?
 
A bunch of LSNs would be cool in that tank.
 
Just something I thought I should point out here but you do not want treated lumber inside your home and afaik its totally against code to do so. The reason being is that the wood is treated with either chromated copper arsenate (CCA), copper quat (ACQ) and copper azone (CA). CCA IS known to be toxic but the jury is still out on the other two. Here is a little info on the subject.
http://www.advantagelumber.com/pressure_treated.htm
 
wow, thats very good to know gator, thank you!
you potentially just saved alot of people alot of trouble, that information needs to be in a sticky somewhere. you should type up a short article about it intended to be stickied.
as far as mold and rot problems go, there are afterm-market sprays and other products that would be safer to use indoors.
 
I agree that pressure treated may not be the safest product around and there are other option but I know here it is minimum code to have Treated wood against concrete thats the only reason I brought it up sorry if this derailed the thread at all
 
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