DIY-Fish Room Floor Support

Ryan029

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Dec 20, 2016
100
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51
Colorado
Hey all,
We're in the process of adding a new 125 gallon tank to our existing fish room that will also hold 3 other tanks. It's the first time we've even been remotely concerned about the weight on the floor and so before getting the new tank up, we spent some money reinforcing the floors since we're likely to upgrade to bigger tanks in the future. We would love to know what y'all think of the plans we've put together, the good and the bad. Obviously the main question here is are we adequately supported the floor beneath our tanks? We know it's impossible to say for certain without seeing the setup first hand, but I'm hoping to put together a good enough post here so that anyone with experience can at least say if we're on the right track or not. And hopefully also tell us if we're underestimating things and need to consult a professional before proceeding further. We've done a good amount of research preparing for this, but we'd love to learn anything we can from the expertise on this forum as well.

The room is on the bottom floor of our house and is roughly 125 sq ft. in overall size. It will have the following tanks: 125 gallon, 65 Gallon, 80 gallon, 54 gallon, +100 gallons of water storage. Our floor has about a 4ft crawl space under it, I've attached pictures to hopefully give a better idea of what it's constructed of...

We're planning to place the tanks so the most weight is in the most ideal location, but not all the tanks can be there. Here's some info on the layout we have. The 125 gallon and the 65 gallon will be along the same wall. The wall is an exterior, load-bearing wall so the tanks will be running perpendicular to the floor joists. They'll also be positioned as close to where the joists meet the foundation our house as possible. The other 80 gallon tank and 100 gallons of water storage do run parallel to a floor joist, which concerns us, but that's where we've placed added supports in the crawl space. Here's a picture of the room's layout to help:
0227212012.jpg

Our main concerns are under the 125/65 gallon tanks and under the 80/100 gallon tanks. We bought 4 jack posts (rated to 18,000 lbs) and ran a 10 ft 4x4 under the 125/65 tanks, and an 8 ft 4x4 under the 80/100 gallon tanks.. Here are some pictures of what we ended up with:
0227211856a.jpg
0227211857a.jpg
0227211857.jpg
 
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skjl47

Goliath Tigerfish
MFK Member
May 16, 2011
4,408
3,801
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Tennessee
Hello; First comment is you are on the right track. I like what you have done. Let me state I do not know if it is enough. May be plenty but I cannot say from a distance. I will give the standard advice which is to consult a structural engineer or experienced builder. I will also assume you own the house and are not renting.

There are a couple of things you could add to the structure. One would not be too hard. That is to BOX the floor joists. Where the wood runs as an X is a sort of boxing, but not what I am thinking of. I am thinking of placing solid sections in between the joists in the same way the X pieces are placed. If the floor joists are 2x10's then cut some 2x10 sections and fasten them in between joists. This will help transfer the loads across more joists. May not be necessary.

The other idea is to sister in new floor joists next to the existing joists. This is likely a stronger way to reinforce the floor, but is hard to do. Especially hard in a crawl space and you may not have the room to manuver them into place.

Good luck if you go ahead. Maybe others will have better ideas.
 
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