can my floors support my 180g?

cmacld

New member
curious on the weight limitations of my floor... i am in a newer house (built nov 2001) with a unfinished basement.... and would like to put my 180 gallon in my dining room... does anyone have any experience with weight limitations on flooring? any info would help....
cheers.
 
Yes, it should be fine. The floor joist should be on 16" centers if they are #2 lumber or on 18" centers if the are engineered lumber. If the floors don't fall within these parameters then you may have a problem. You say it is a newer house so I wouldn't worry. The building codes in Colorado should be well enforced, I would imagine. I say this because of snow loads.

My new build is about 500g on a raised 2x4 floor. I put them on 12" centers and covered them with 1 7/8" OSB decking.
 
It will hold but I would expect to see the floor deform a weee bit over time.

Since you have an unfinished basement I would put in an underfloor brace and never worry again.
 
Be sure to place the tank on a bearing wall if at all possible.
If you have doubts you can always buy jacks and screw them up for extra support and piece of mind under the trusses in the basement.
 
How unfinished is the basement? If it's completely raw (no finished ceiling most importantly) and you are worried, just go and double up the floor joists under the tank.
 
The tank should be against a bearing wall with the floor joints perpendicular, not parallel to the tank. I put a beam and floor jacks under mine just for piece of mind.
 
I forgot I had this. This is pretty much the way I set it up.
tankfloor2.jpg
 
That's good sjm817. That's also what I did. But he has a stand-up basement so jacks would be uggg lee. He just needs to put two discreet square tube steel posts or maybe a few 4x4s that are cross connected to have a sturdy result.
 
By "stand up basement", I assume you mean a full non crawlspace basement? So do I. Its the unfinished part of my basement and is also my basement sump/fuge/fishroom area. The posts straddle the bench that the sumps and such are sitting on. The look of them was not a concern.
 
You should be fine if you span several joists, but if really want to be extra safe, you could do similar to sjm's design, but run a beam wall to wall under sitting on a post at each end, and that would give peace of mind and less invasive IMO
 
Read <a href=http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/aquarium_weight.php>THIS</a>. It has some good info regarding this subject.
 
thanks Meuserreef..... quite informative..... im sure that i will be just fine... ill keep you posted with my final decisions... Cheers
 
Move your beam and jacks closer to the basement wall so that the beam is under the front edge of the stand. There is no reason to have the beam where you have it unless you need access in the basement.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12897528#post12897528 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by lflint
Move your beam and jacks closer to the basement wall so that the beam is under the front edge of the stand. There is no reason to have the beam where you have it unless you need access in the basement.
Actually, due to wood deformation under constant and heavy weights, you want the load to be centered between both weight bearing points, otherwise you'll eventually have a load that leans slights to one side.

Minor, but if you want to do things perfect you should keep the load centered. Assuming your fish tank has to be 6" to a foot away from the wall, your support beam you place should be 6" to a foot away from the edge of the fish tank as well.
 
Actually you both are looking at SJM's diagram, not OP, and SJM's is just fine, and he's probably only about 3' from wall.
The joists should be plenty to carry load, beam is more of a brace to keep from sagging over time, and just added assurance.
I'm a GC, I remove or open load bearing walls often.
Common code here is typically 4"x6" for a 6' opening, 4"x8" on an 8' and so on.
Since this is just a brace added to joists, you could probably go w/ something like a 4"x8" or 4"x10" sitting on top of 4"x4" posts at each end against the walls as long as you have access to squeek in beam and span isn't super huge.
Not even a full day to do including PU of material.
 
My tank is ~ 4" from the wall. I filled the tank before I put the beam and posts in the basement. I hung a plumb line 1/2 way out (7'), and even with the center of the tank from a floor joist to just touching the basement floor. The floor did not sag even a tiny bit. I put the beam and posts in just to make the Mrs happy, and we all know how crucial that is!
 
ok so here is a little drawing of my floor joists... for the most part they are on 16" centers... but there are a couple of places that they are closer.... looking left to right... the first set of closer beams are at 6" centers and the second are at 8" centers..... the 8" centered beams are followed by a 20" centered section.... sorry if that was confusing.... the yellow lines designate the foundation... and the red is a 7"x5.5" I beam..... i was thinking that i would still put a brace maybe a foot from the front of the tank.... your thoughts... once again would be greatly appriciated.... Cheers.

<a href="http://s27.photobucket.com/albums/c171/cmacld/?action=view&current=floorjoistplanview.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c171/cmacld/floorjoistplanview.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
<a href="http://s27.photobucket.com/albums/c171/cmacld/?action=view&current=floorjoistfrontview.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c171/cmacld/floorjoistfrontview.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>
 
Just looking at where the joists are doubled, and that looks like where your tank is, I'd say totally cool, and if by I beam you mean a steel beam, bulletproof.
 
Devocean.... yes the tank would be sitting on both sections of doubled joists... one on an 8" center and the other on a 6"center.... the Steel beam in roughly 3.5' behind the tank. Do you think that i need to bother with anymore support bracing.. or should i be ok without?.... i have a good friend who installs alot of tanks around denver... and he has told me that they have set up lots of 180 gallon systems without any extra support bracing... thanks for your input.. cheers
 
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