Custom In-Wall 150 Project

[conda]

I've been documenting the progress of my Custom In-Wall 150 Project for several months now and have been urged to start a post here on RC.

The story is a long one and can be depressing at times, but I believe things will end up much better in the end. I have learned a lot over the past year and would like to share this with everyone.

I will be discussing the main reason for my new project--a major flood in my family room located in the basement--I will introduce you to Chris Knox of Ocean Image Aquariums, a local custom tank builder I am using, who not only helped me move my tank after the flood, but is also building my new in-wall stand and custom RR tank. Also, I will show you what Marc Levenson (melev) has built me and how awesome his work is.

I have documented a lot so far from rebuilding my family room to building a new reef tank from scratch. There are a lot of interesting things I have learned along the way that I will share.

I hope this is interesting to some.

The Chosen One

The tank I have chosen is a custom 60" x 24" x 24" Ocean Image Aquarium with Starphire front pane, External Side Overflow, Closed Loop System using Oceans Motions 4 way wave maker, and a metal perimeter frame.

The stand is a custom In-wall 64" x 27" x 27" stand also built by Ocean Image Aquariums.

I chose to go with Marc Levenson (melev) to build my sump because I felt his Model F would be perfect for my application and after seeing his work on RC I knew he would be best for the job--as you will see in future posts.

All this and much more will be detailed in future posts.

My Current Tanks

I currently have one Saltwater and two Freshwater tanks. The SW tank is a standard 55g I started a little over a year ago and kept well maintained up until the flood.

The inhabitants are:

Fish:
1 Small Yellow Tang
1 Coral Beauty
2 Small Clowns
1 Algae Blenny

Inverts:
1 BTA
1 Caribbean Anemone
2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Coral Banded Shrimp
1 Peppermint Shrimp
1 Serpent Star
1 Sand Star
8 corals

Also:
Some Snails and Hermits
~60 lbs live rock--maybe more
~3-4" substrate

All the fish and inverts will be moved into the new Reef Tank when it is completed. I will keep the old 55 running for a quarantine or separation tank--since it is already mature.

To be continued . . .

 

[conda]

Background

Now for some depressing details on how this project got started. Actually, it may not be so depressing for some since I ended up with a nice upgrade due to all this.

In this post, I will tell you about the flood and what it took to clean it up. Oh, how depressing this was.

The Flood

How many of us have forgotten about a running RO unit? We've gone to bed, left the house, attended to other duties, just to have a panic attack remembering we left the RO unit running and rushed back to shut it off!

Well, on May 1st 2005, I had the worst thing happen to me--my Coralife RO Unit tube burst off while it was running and I was not home. Stupid me left the unit running on the floor filling a five gallon bucket. Two hours and 6 inches of water later, my basement was totaled! I spent all day cleaning it up.

The following pictures don't even come close to properly depicting the "devistation" that occured that day:

If you look from left to right, top to bottom, I just stood in the center of what was once my basement family room and rotated taking pics of the destruction!

When I first noticed what was happening, I rushed downstairs to try and determine the cause. Almost without hesitation or thought, I immediatelly headed to the deepest part of the flood and turned off the water. There I stood, water half way up my calf, looking like a total idiot, assesing the damage.

I was stricken with mixed emotions!

The Cleanup

Knowing I had to start cleaning this water up as soon as possible, I sent my wife to Lowes to purchase a shop vac and some fans for drying the floor. While she was gone, my brother-in-law and I started sucking up as much water as we could with an old shop vac I had in the garage.

After my wife returned, we used the new shop vac to remove the remaining water and tried to suck what we could out of the rug--too no avail. We later determined that the rug was beyond repair and started tearing it out before it started to smell (see above pics). Piece by piece of wet, smelly, soggy Berber carpet formed a huge mound of debris outside my basement door. Oh what a mess!

We ripped out about 65 percent of the carpet before finally reaching dry areas. I placed the fans my wife bought throughout the wet cement in an attempt to dry the floor as quickly as possible.

Tank Moving

After the water clean up, I had to move my tanks so I could dry out and start rebuilding. I have two 30 gal Freshwater tanks and a 55g marine. I wanted to move all the tanks into the laundry room until the floor dried and my basement was rebuilt.

As others suggested, I contacted a local aquarium provider, Chris Knox of Ocean Image Aquariums, for help.

Chris came out and we both moved the 55g tank to the other room--it was so hot too. I'm glad I used him, because I did not have enough buckets or equipment to do the job.

Here is a picture of where the tank was originally:

Here is a picture of it after it was moved:

Chris showed up with a heavy moving dolly, suction cups, tons of buckets and tubes which made the job relatively easy. The water cleared up within an hour and all the fish, inverts and corals were back to normal within an hour of him leaving.

The only thing I could not get right was the rock setup. He took pictures of it before hand, but I still could not get it back to the way it was. It didn't suprise me because it took me over a week to get it that way in the first place. No need to worry thought, I'm moving all the inhabitents to the new tank when it is done.

This guy did a great job and I was pleased. He answered all of my questions the best he could and helped me plan out the new in-wall tank I am doing. Money well spent. By the way, my homeowners insurance paid the bill for the tank move!

Later, I moved the two 30 gallon tanks myself--piece of cake!

To Be Continued . . .

 

[conda]

Rebuilding

Now comes the hard part! After the insurace adjuster left and supplied me with the money to rebuild the basement, I got right to work. My brother-in-law and I spend two weeks tearing out the rest of the rug, all the old paneling, and any rotten wood. We removed any wet and smelly items I had in storage such as: old built-in storage shelves, books, boxes, papers, etc. I ended up purchasing a dumpster to hault away all the damaged items.

The next step was to clean and sanitize the cement floor that got soaked and started to smell. I purchased a commecial grade floor cleaner and mopped the entire basement. Then with a spray bottle full of bleach in hand and a paper mask, I went around spraying any area that had mold or started to grow mold--yes, it started that quickly!

Here are some pictures of the rebuilding of the room:

Note the little guy in the lower right--that is my 3 year old son who all he wanted to do was help, so I put him to work!

Finally, we replaced all of damaged 2x4s, hung all new paneling, and painted all the cement floors and walls with Killz--yuk!

Here is a pic of the finished room and where the tank is going--but without the rug:

Wow, now that I think back, that was alot of work for two people!

Starting Over

The final step was to get someone in to lay down the carpet. We called a local Color Tile and purchased a beutiful new Berber carpet that is twice as nice as before.

What have I learned from all this?

• * Always, and I mean always, set some sort of reminder for yourself when the RO unit is on. I set the stove timer, place a bucket on the steps, tell my wife, tie a string around my finger--whatever it takes to remind me to turn off the RO unit! I never leave the RO unit on now without leaving some sort of reminder for myself.
  
  * Always leave the RO unit and the bucket I am filling in the utility sink. Since I don't fill anything greater than a five gallon bucket, I leave everything in the utility sink while it is filling. This way, if I do forget to turn it off, it overflows into the sink drain, and all I lose is a few gallons of water. Much better than losing a whole finished basement.
  
  * Install a sump-pump! Where my new tank is located, as you will see in later pictures, the cement floor slants into a sump hole. If I had a working sump pump in there, this flood would have never happened. I'm sealing the tank/laundry room and installing a sump pump so that any future water spills or floods will work its way into the sump hole and be pumped into the utility sink.</li>
  
  * Always plan ahead. Since my new tank will be 150 gallons with a 30 gallon sump, I cannot afford to have another flood. I'm thiking ahead as to how I am going to avoid spills in the future. Not only that, I am also planning around avoid a fire! I know I'm paranoid.

Anyway, here we go, the basement is repaired and my life is back to normal. Now it's time to build my in-wall tank!

 

[jarhed]

Looking good!! Sux about that flood though. How long ago did that happen?

Honestly though, your lucky your wife didnt "make you assume room temperature" because of that flood. :lol:

That wall looks great where the tank is going to go. Never seen one done in paneling, so this should look interesting.

I'm a former Pennsyltuckian too so believe me, I understand about the mold issue because of all the humidity. I've lived in the Harrisburg area and in State College. State College is nowhere near as bad as the Harrisburg area when it comes to humidity. Now I know why my mom's basement was getting attacked by mold when I was a kid, and still is to this day.

 

[conda]

It happened in May of this year, my wife and kid still, to this day, get on me about flooding the basement. Now she is worried about me burning the house down after I added the 2 20A circuits to the fish room--so I am extra carefull now.

I hope it looks ok with paneling, too late now if it doesn't. I was going to drywall the whole thing, but that just takes too darn long. Peneling is so easy to install and no need to paint, we did it all in one day.

About the mold, I spent days spraying bleach and cleaning to make sure it was all gone. Then we used Kilz to cover any damp areas. That stuff works great, but my wife had to leave the house for two days because the smell was so bad. No mold anymore!

 

[jarhed]

It Now she is worried about me burning the house down after I added the 2 20A circuits to the fish room--so I am extra carefull now.

:lol: I hear ya! I'm still worried about MY electrical work!

 

[conda]

:lol: I hear ya! I'm still worried about MY electrical work!

Don't mess with electric, especially since you have a kid around. If you need help, just PM me and let me know. Or just wait until I get to my electrical post, I have alot of details I'm going to put in there so others can learn from my mistakes. I could be an electrician now. :smokin:

 

[melev]

Thank you for the painful recap. You've been quite busy, that is for sure. The new room looks great!

A number of years ago, I was hired to clean a home that had been flooded due to the water in the lake rising too high. I'd say about 12" of the entire house was flooded, so all the floors had to be cleaned. The walls all had mold on them, and I sprayed them with bleach water. It came out clean and nice, but my brand new tennis shoes and blue jeans had purple spots everywhere. Oops. And then there was that thing with my lungs being fried for about a week. Oops(2).

Yes, I wore a face mask. *cough* *cough* - didn't work so great.

 

[Sonia Taro]

Tagging along as I love to see the work that Chris does.

 

[143gadgets]

OH YEAH. This is ging to be a good one. I am giving up my 500th post on this baby. Keep the pics coming. Good luck!

 

[alannathanson]

Best Wishes "conda",
Its great that you have Marc Levenson and Chris on your team!
If you need a frag donation I'd be glad to help.
Alan

 

[BlueTBird]

Looks like this is going to be a fun ride, how about some shots of the tank. I would love to see the external overflow , is that custom built on the tank? (I should have done that)

 

[conda]

Looks like this is going to be a fun ride, how about some shots of the tank. I would love to see the external overflow , is that custom built on the tank? (I should have done that)

The tank is still being built, so I do not have any pics of that yet. Twice the starphire front glass was damaged, so my tank is about 3 weeks behind now. I'll post some as soon as I have them.

 

[conda]

Selecting the Tank

During the process of rebuilding my basement family room, I had to select the tank that I was going to place into the wall. I didn't have much time to decide since I had to have the stand built before installing the new paneling.

Here is the space I had to work with in the laundry room:

I must have changed my mind five times before deciding on the Custom 150 gallon 60" x 24" x 24". My first descision was to go with a standard 75 gallon 48" x 18" x 20", but that did not look right in the place where I wanted it to go. Then I changed my mind and decided on a 90 gallon 48" x 18" x 24", but Chris (Ocean Image) kept suggesting that I go deeper. He kept telling me deeper is better and that I would be much happier in the long run with a minimum depth of 24".

So, I changed my mind again and asked for a quote for a 120 gallon 40" x 24" x 24". Well, after taking a few measuements, I decided that that size would no look right either in the wall where I wanted to place it.

Finally, I asked myself what the absolute largest tank I was willing to take on, both financially and maintenance wise, and came up with 150 gallons. After deciding on the 24" depth, I arrived at a custom size of 60" x 24" x 24". I measured the wall and room the tank was going to be placed and it was a perfect match.

Stand Construction

Now that I made up my mind on the tank size, I contracted Chris Knox of Ocean Image to build the tank stand. Since I did not have much time, or the experience, I figured it would be best just to shell out the cash and let someone else do it. It was money well spent.

Here is the result:

A custom 64" x 27" x 27" in-wall stand ready for the 60" x 24" x 24" tank. This size provides the room I need underneith to house my sump and other equipment needed to run the tank.

It turned out rather nice after the paneling was put up:

I think this is going to be the perfect size for the area I have to work with.

To Be Continued . . .

 

[melev]

It looks great.

 

[cyclgrl]

Looking good!

I have a couple questions. First, what insurance do you have and what was the damage covered under? Also, were you worried about the bleach, Kilz fumes affecting the tank?

Cindy

 

[drunktank]

i'm so jealous. My 150 arrived today and i wanna go home to set it up and spend all my money on it, but i'm at school

 

[conda]

Looking good!

I have a couple questions. First, what insurance do you have and what was the damage covered under? Also, were you worried about the bleach, Kilz fumes affecting the tank?

Cindy

State Farm Homeowners covered it.

This was actually the forth time the basement flooded and ruined my family room. The first two times were small floods that I could clean up, the third time a pipe froze and flooded about 30% of the basement. The last time was the mother of all floods that ruined not only the rug; but the walls, paneling, shelving, and a load of other items.

State Farm paid for the rug the third time, but I never got it replaced before I flooded it the forth time. So I still had the money for that, then they paid the difference.

Around the same time, my house also got hit by a small tornado and damaged about half of the outside. They paid to get the whole house resided.

State Farm is awesome. Insurace rates have not gone up yet either.

About the bleach and kilz, I was worried about it affecting me and my family, I could have cared less about the fish at that point. I was actually blaming them for my stupidity at that time.

 

[jarhed]

You got any water in that thing yet?

 

[conda]

Drywall and Painting

With the stand built and the area clean, I headed out to lowes and grabed some paint and primer.

After dealing with the oil based Kilz, I opted to go with the Bulls Eye Water Based Primer so I did not stink my family out of the house. I also grabed a nice gallon of American Tradition Semi-Gloss Enamel. I've used this paint throughout my house and just love it.

Once again, I put the little guy to work:

He did a rather good job if I can say so myself:

Now that I had the tank stand primed, I remembered I needed to put up the drywall. Oooops. How could I forget the most fun part of carprentry?!?!

I spent the next few days installing new electric (which I will detail later) and then slapped up a few pieces of green board before continuing on with my paint job:

Finally, after a few hours this was the result:

When the paint was dry, I took some silicon caulk and filled in all the cracks along the wall and stand that faces the family room.

This way, if there are any water spills, the water will flow onto the cement and slope into the sump pit I have under the washing machine stand. I am extremely paranoid about flooding now, so no water should ever exit the room and ruin my carpet again. Unless the tank explodes out into the room, this method should work.

I still need to pick up a sump pump and hook it up, but since the tank is not yet installed, I will worry about that later.

To Be Continued