Interesting. That's a lot more than I would ever have guessed that 24" OC would hold.
Scott, that's a great idea. He is always building new places. He took us through one of his new buildings the other night, which we ruled out because the living space in the one that's a few years old is a bit nicer and we prefer the kitchen design. The one of his that we like is a 4th floor unit and we can't do any reinforcing or anything because it has another apartment below it.
The house we like even more isn't built by him, but was built by another Irish builder he says is trustworthy (they all seem to stick together, it seems), but he went back to Ireland and is out of touch. This is the place that is the bottom two floors of the building and has the laundry/utility room on the basement level that could be useful.
Most Chicago bottom units have a living area on the main floor and the basement floor, which is what I wanted when we first started looking. The place I currently rent but never am at (due to being at her place all the time) has this, and I went to great effort to get a 300g glass tank down there only to end up never setting it up. That place has been a money pit for me and the whole reason I got it was basically so I could put up a monster tank. So much for that idea. Anyway, this place ended up being our favorite by a long shot, but it has both living areas upstairs and three bedrooms downstairs. So in the worst case, we could just make a bedroom a fish room. Clearly that's preferable to risking a floor disaster. But if possible, we'd want to put it upstairs since that's where we spend most of the time.
Of course, now very little of this will matter, as it's looking like we won't be getting the mortgage we wanted after all, which prices it out of our budget. So that sticks us back in the single-story place from our landlord/builder, or possibly waiting a year. If we're going to wait a year, though, we may get to do some customization on one of the places he has yet to start building. In that case, you'd better believe we'll get it set up to hold a mega tank wherever I feel it'd look best.
I can also tell you that your question about loading in the "V" or at the apex of the "triangles" is not really relevant. The truss design makes it act as one solid beam, spreading the load from the top chord down through the diagonals, where they transfer it to the bottom chords, which try to deform, in-turn transferring that load back to the diagonals, then back to the top chords. Its like a loop that stiffens itself. Pure genius really...
I understand this and agree about the genius, but I still have a hard time picturing it not sagging a bit if you had something extremely heavy sitting entirely in the space between the points. The open webs are often a 2x3 or something sitting flat, or on its weaker side. I guess it's unlikely that a monster tank would sit entirely between these points, and I couldn't see the design letting it fail, but wouldn't it sag just a bit? Like if I put something really heavy right in between these points?
Then again, many also have a vertical support there. That would really help a lot.
A lot of these places have 1x1 on the side walls just for nailing the drywall. I can't imagine that'd be a load bearing wall. I'll have to ask the landlord what they use to bear the loads. If it's the cinder block, I would think it'd be fine unless the trimmable section on the end of the truss is super weak. But I doubt it's on block. That's another consideration I hadn't thought of.
