Engineer help needed...plz help prevent my buiding collapsing

[chrispc66]

Sandaud

Prestressed concrete is installed in prefabricated slabs. Concrete poured on site for domestic dwellings will not be prestressed.

Your average water bed weighs about 1200 kg, based on 2m x 2m x 300mm deep, plus the base etc. That equates to 300kg of weight per m2.

That planned tank with 0.75m height will weigh 2600 kg, ( about 690 gallons ), NOT including the tank, live rock, substrate and stand. I would recommend you base the weight on 3000 kg. This would load the floor slab approximately 870 kg per m2 based on the tank dimensions.

At 0.5m deep - 520 kg / m2 not including tank, stand, rock, and substrate - allow 720 kg/m2

At 0.3m deep - 300 kg/m2 - allow 390 kg/m2. Based on the water bed theory, I guess you could assume this is safe....at the end of the day, a waterbed would cope with floor sag.....

These large loads over a long period of time could lead to , slab cracks and creep, (sag), with catastophic results, ( tank breakage ). Your problem is this, a high load and applied stress over a period of time..... very difficult to accurately predict an outcome with the many unknown variables.

Also remember that your advice on 600 kg/m2 does not mean 1200 kg / 2m/2 and so on. The weight distribution based on floor slab stiffness and ability to transfer load to supporting walls / columns needs to be considered.

This is what you need to research with your neighbours, looking for items with very high weight present in their apartment for a long period of time....

Good luck Snadaud.

 

[BFG]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9997403#post9997403 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by snadaud
bfg - The way I intend to set up the tank is as you say, along the load bearing wall. However the wall is in the middle of the room and I can't go all the way to the corners. By the way why do you think 3' is the max width ? Don't worry, I don't forget that this is a hobby and I don't plan on endangering anybody's health or life to satisfy it...I would even less enjoy meeting my neighbour in a hospital than in his living room discussing his ceiling cave-in...

It's just a guess since I am not an engineer to begin with Sandaud. Where I come from, the largest marine tank that reefer here had in their flat is a 6ftx2ftx2ft, a 180g tank and usually the sump is not as long as the main tank itself, probably a 4ft sump max. There is a way of thinking when you live in the orient. You can do anything you want to but if something bad happen, you'll gonna get everything from the authorities! I assume you might be a foreigner in that country, it is practical for you to get some local fellow hobbyist you can trust to exchange information. They'll might have an idea how large a tank can be safely setup. Whether you want to bring them to your humble abode is another matter but it is good to have local support you may want to depend on sometimes.

 

[hatfielj]

I don't know if anyone else suggested this yet, but I would not base your decision on what a bunch of people on an online forum tell you about what they think would be best. The safest and most reliable way to find out if your plans are okay in your building is to contact a licensed structural engineer and have them come out and look at your building, the location where you want the tank and the size of your tank. This way you have an expert there telling you yes this is okay or no definitely not. Of course I don't know how things are done in China as far as hiring structural engineers go, but if I were you I wouldn't want to chance damaging a building in a country with a communist government. Who knows how ****ed off they might get if you did something to harm someone else or damage a large building. Play it safe, this is a big deal IMO.