too heavy for 4th floor? need help

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leg89

Gambusia
MFK Member
Dec 18, 2006
306
0
16
quebec, quebec, canada
hi! here's my situation.

i live on a 4th floor in an old appartment with wooden floors. i have a 77gal next to a (mur porteur) supporting wall? sorry im french...dunno if it's the way to say it. also, it is perpendicular to the floor beams.

i wanna move into another appartment, still 4th floor and wooden floors, but there wouldn't be any supporting wall available.

my question is: is 77 gal too heavy to be placed in the middle of an old appartment on a 4th floor?????

if you ever think there's no problems...haha... what about a 130 gal? i know i try to push my luck, but i'd like to buy one but im scared for the floor, so....


i need your advices, thanx

nick
 
It should be no problem for a 77gal tank.

And even for a 130gal it should not be a problem...

If there is a problem then there is something wrong with the way they did the flooring in that apt building.
The only way it might be a problem is if the building is REAL old, like 75 to 100 years old, or if there is some other known problem that changes how the building supports the floor.

But most modern building codes are such that for normal aqauriums it should not be a big problem.
If you can learn the direction the flooring support members run, then you might want to spread the legs of the bigger tank to cover more than one beam.

I guess another trick would be to set the legs of a bigger tank down on top of some plywood or something to help spread the weight a bit more. Like how a water bed spreads the weight of itself and the two people who are laying on it who each may dress out to be about 300lbs each.

One thing to remember, this site is one that a lot of guys who own the real bigger tanks like to post topics on, yet even if there must be a lot of people with a lot of big tanks sitting in a lot of apt buildings all over the world here, yet we dont see many topics about the floor underneath an aquarium busting....

If it were something that happend a lot chances are we would see a lot more conversations about it happening to more and more people areound this forum....

The real lack of many topics about the floor busting underneath a forum member's aquarium leads me to believe that its just not something that tends to happen very much, if at all....
 
ya like in mine of it is bigger than 55 gal i gotta show that its insured
 
Has there ever been anyone that has had,or knows of someone that has had a floor give out because of a 130gal aquarium?

I have never seen a photo or actually heard of any story where a floor of a modern building has busted due to the weight of a normal aquarium.

I could see this happening to a building that was old, or was not made to code, but has it even happend to a modern building where the floor support beams were to code?

I have never seen a topic on it on this forum...
 
hey thanx a lot for your replies!

yes, i have insurances, and we checked with them. everything ok

i didn't know that "old" meant 75-100 years old... mine maybe 20-40 years old max, so i should be ok.

i dunno the size of the beams nor the distance between each. i thought about putting it but not against a supporting wall but perpendicular to the beams... i guess it should be strong enough...

i'd like few more opinions on that if you mind...

thanx again

i was a bit affraid cause the floor is a bit curvy so i thought maybe it was because it's not solid enough or whatever... my aquarium stand is DIY and it stands on a full foot, not only 4 little feet (sorry if the foot-feet thing is not the right way to call that..)
 
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