Support for a 220 on a crawls pace?

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bbradtmiller

bbradtmiller

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Mar 8, 2011
313
48
61
Fort Wayne, IN
Hey guys, thanks in advance for all the help. So we just moved into
Our new house, but we are now on a crawl space not a slab. My issue is that my floor joist will not support my 220 gal full of water with stand and all. Stand alone weighs around 300lbs and it is an all glass tank that may weigh close to 300 as well. It will be sitting against an exterior wall with the floor joist running parallel to the tank and wall.

The stand is 31inches deep from wall to front. I currently places two floor jacks under the first floor joist which sits 16 inches from the wall. Only problem is that this is only the mid part of the stand. The tank also over lays the second floor joist.

My second issue is what happens if I support the 2 floor joist with 2 jacks each and then the main pressure from the tank is resting all the weight on just the sub floor in between the floor joists? I also thought about running 2 4x4's perpendicular to the wall, tank and floor joists spanning across 3 joists and using 2 jacks for each 4x4.

Any and all suggestions/ideas are welcome.

Thanks!!


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How is this idea??

What If I add additional floor joists splitting the current joists 1-2 and 2-3....with spacers in between....then lay the 2 4x4's across the now 5 floor joists and use 2 floor jacks for each?

Sorry for the crappy drawing...


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bbradtmiller said:
How is this idea??

What If I add additional floor joists splitting the current joists 1-2 and 2-3....with spacers in between....then lay the 2 4x4's across the now 5 floor joists and use 2 floor jacks for each?

Sorry for the crappy drawing...


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Click to expand...

Sounds good. Be sure to use screw jacks. hydraulic jacks can bleed off and weep past the seal.


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You'll need to make sure you have a good footing underneath the jacks as well. Concrete pavers is all you really need, they use them to support trailers all the time, but if you don't have them then the jacks will just sink into the ground.
 
Inglorious said:
You'll need to make sure you have a good footing underneath the jacks as well. Concrete pavers is all you really need, they use them to support trailers all the time, but if you don't have them then the jacks will just sink into the ground.
Click to expand...

Ok, I do have the concrete blocks that are like 4" think by 16" long and 8" wide...will those be sufficient?


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So I finally finish the support. We added 2 extra floor joists in the middle of the current spacings. You can kind of see the newer colored wood in the picture. Before that we had dug out dirt to place the cement blocks down which the jacks are sitting on. Lastly we set two 4x4's perpendicular to the floor joists and jacked them up.


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Did you look into just sistering the existing floor joists or did you think that would still not be strong enough? My handy-man skills are about zero, but sistering doesn't look too difficult. What you've made does look very sturdy, but just seems like alot of extra work.
 
decoy50 said:
Did you look into just sistering the existing floor joists or did you think that would still not be strong enough? My handy-man skills are about zero, but sistering doesn't look too difficult. What you've made does look very sturdy, but just seems like alot of extra work.
Click to expand...

Yeah it was a ton of work, but I would rather do a little extra in the long run rather than my floor caving in. The biggest pain was having to lay on your stomach while doing everything. I had thought about sistering the current joists, but the problem is that where most of the weight and pressure from the comes down it was right in the middle of the floor joists. This meant the subfloor would carry the majority of that weight. So we installed 2 extra joist to share the load, which then gets spread out onto the 4x4's


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