Hal's basement fish equipment room build - 3rd time's a charm

[Hal]

So after moving in to my new house I'm ready now to build my basement fish equipment room. This is my third house since I started keeping saltwater fish, and I've had a basement fish equipment room in each of my two previous houses. * I cannot emphasize how much easier it is to do things in the basement vs under the stand, but that's probably obvious.

I'm going to take the existing space under the basement stairs, a la Harry Potter, and enlarge it to about 10 x 12. Of course, this space will still have the back of the descending stairs in it, so headroom will be a little tight in one corner.

I've had a few floods in my day so I'm stealing Nineball's idea to put a 3 inch of dam around the perimeter of the room. Based on the square footage it on should hold around 200 gallons. I'm also planning to put in a utility pump that will sit on the floor and pump into a bathroom drain. The utility pump will drain all but 1/4 inch, which I can get with a wet/dry vac.

Here's the space before we start. "We" is myself and my retired dad, who's the most handy person I know. God bless him, as he knows how to build just about anything. I'd be Youtubing for hours without him. :reading:

You can see a line of masking tape on the floor that bisects the door. That line of tape represents the back of my fish tank on the first floor. As you can see, my tank runs out into the room. I'm very lucky in that just behind the door is a steel I-beam that runs underneath the left third of my tank.

You can also see a 3/4 inch piece of plywood that is screwed and glued across the bottom of 3 joists. This stiffens the joists considerable (we did the math) to prevent floor sag.

Lastly, because of where I live, we have "heaving soil". Essentially it's a special type of clay that expands when it gets wet. This can be a real problem for basement floors, causing heaves. For this reason, all of the walls in the basement hang from the joists, with a gap between the baseboard of the wall and the actual floor. The 2x4 blocks that you see should have been removed by the builder to create an air gap. Then a 60d spike or equivalent is shot through the baseboard of the wall and into the baseboard on the floor. If the floor heaves, the baseboard on the floor will push on the point of the spike, and force the head of the spike up so that it emerges from the baseboard at the bottom of the wall. This way there the floor can lift without it buckling the wall.

 

[Hal]

Hhmmm, pictures aren't loading from photobucket. Can anyone tell me, in photobucket, which of the links I use from my photo?

1. Email and IM
2. Direct
3. HTML
4. IMG

It seems like it should be the "Direct" link.

I could see the photo in "preview" mode for my post, but then it wasn't there when I hit submit.

 

[sphilli40]

Hhmmm, pictures aren't loading from photobucket. Can anyone tell me, in photobucket, which of the links I use from my photo?

1. Email and IM
2. Direct
3. HTML
4. IMG

It seems like it should be the "Direct" link.

I could see the photo in "preview" mode for my post, but then it wasn't there when I hit submit.

Photo bucket stopped hosting images on third party websites ...... you will have to use another hosting website


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[Ryan Darilek]

I recommend downloading tapatalk on your smartphone. You can then access all the forums and upload pictures directly from your phone
Looking forward to seeing this pictures, this sounds awesome!

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[Hal]

Photo bucket stopped hosting images on third party websites ...... you will have to use another hosting website


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Aha! Thanks! Can I use Flickr? If not, can someone PM me a recommendation for what most people are using now? Or post it here if that's not against forum rules.

 

[Hal]

Allright, figured it out. Here's the first pic.

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[Hal]

So here's a close-up of the adaptation needed for the heaving soil. Again, the block needs to be removed in order for it to work.

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[Hal]

Day 1: Demo and more

We took out the old walls with a reciprocating saw and a wrecking bar. Laid down our new baseboard/dam, and began construction on the new walls. We're enlarging the width of the room by about 45 inches. Adding about 35 inches to the length.

We added a 1x4 on the outside of the stair. It is tied into the hanging 2x4's that support the stair so that it reduces any lateral movement of the stairs. It's not as strong as having the hanging 2x4's go into a baseboard which is connected to the floor but I needed to remove the wall to have space to move. It's a similar configuration to the baseboard, except turned sideways, so that if the stairs get lifted they will bend the spike before they exert any pressure on the hanging 2x4's. Well, that's the theory anyway.

 

[Hal]

Day 2: Electrical

In a happy coincidence, we are having our backyard landscaped. The landscapers needed to run electrical to our rear property line for a water feature that they are installing. So they dug a trench. I used their trench to add three circuits to my basement. One for the new fish room, and 2 spares for if/when we finish off the basement. I had to add the plastic box and vertical conduit.

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[Hal]

I hired an electrician to add the circuit breakers and hook up the wiring to them. The circuit breakers themselves are gfi, so I don't need to add gfi outlets. I don't like messing with 200 amp service. Too dangerous for my tastes.

This is a sub-console, which is why it has so few breakers in it. The primary console is the grey box to the left that you can barely see.


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[Hal]

Here's the trench. Dug in clay. Ugh. I'm super glad that I didn't have to dig it.


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[Hal]

Day 4. Walls are up.

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[Hal]

Day 5. Rough electrical and vent fan piping

So we put a modest number of new electrical receptacles in. But then we ran to Harbor Freight and bought two power strips, each with 12 receptacles, and mounted the powerstrips on two walls. That's the long black thing. For reasons I don't understand, my Dad was opposed to putting in more outlets. He believes that the powerstrips are more than enough. I think it also simplifies the rough electrical a bit. I tried to argue that with this hobby that more outlets were better and you can never have too many outlets, but he wasn't buying it. And while more is better, I think I can make do with what I have. Therefore in the interest of how much work he's done on this project (I'm more the helper than the doer it seems most times.), and in the interest of family harmony I gave in on this.

We bought some solid 4 inch drain pipe and installed it into one of the empty bays in the joists. It was cheaper and more importantly, much lighter than normal schedule 40 PVC in 4 inch. I cut a hole in the exterior wall of my house and will vent it outside. Cutting the hole in the wall of the house was psychologically damaging to me, but needed to be done. The pipe will be hooked up to a 110 cfm bathroom fan with a built in humidity sensor that will turn the fan on whenever the humidity in the room goes about 60%. Based on previous experience I expect it will rust out in a few years and I'll need to replace it. I don't know of a longer term solution.

You can see some flexible dryer vent bent back out the way. We'll use it to connect the rigid drain pipe to the fan enclosure.

The loose wire hanging down is the switched power to the vent fan.

The coiled wire will eventually run down the wall under the stairs, in conduit. We're going to drywall (actually greenboard) the three 2x4 walls on the exterior, but leave the interior walls unfinished, including the one under the stairs. That's why we will run the electrical in conduit.

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[Hal]

Day 6: The wall under the stairs.

So my explanation above was a little general. We nailed and glued pressure treated 2x4's onto the unfinished wall under the stairs. You can see that they start 3 inches above the floor to account for the heaving soil. We filled the gap with foam insulation which is crushable and won't exert a meaningful force on the two by fours if the floor heaves. We used a ramset for the nails. Thank God. I never would have been able to hammer or drill the nails in otherwise. Man, that ramset saved me about 8 hours of time and a really sore arm. It was without a doubt the best $25 I spent on this project. We also used the ramset on the baseboards that are directly on the concrete floor. For this wall we used pressure treated lumber because it was directly against the concrete foundation. Then we cut and glued some foamboard insulation between the 2x4's. The foam board is R13, which is better than the insulation that we have everywhere else in the basement, which is only R11. We put the 2x4's flat against that wall to save space. This also meant that I will HAVE to use conduit to run electrical on that wall. It's no biggie as I'm planning on having my water mixing station here, and possibly a frag tank. The sloping ceiling doesn't give me a lot of options. I'll store buckets in the really low section under the stairs.

I'm going to put greenboard on the underside of the stairs. My goal is for the room to be humidity proof. I had issues with my previous fish rooms where the highly humid and salty air got into the rest of the basement and caused rust issues on things that my wife did not want to rust. Oops. Anyway, the stairs were too wide to run the greenboard completely across it without additional support, so we added those little blocks as nailers for the greenboard. The wood shims that you see stuck in the insulation are because the insulation wanted to move away from the wall. The shims created enough friction to keep the insulation in place while the glue on them sets.

Tomorrow we start the drywall/greenboard. You can see the first piece laying against the far wall, outside the fish room.

I had normal drywall in my last fish room and it held up fine for 10 years or so. The only damage it took was due to floods or water splash. Nevertheless, greenboard isn't that much more expensive than normal drywall so I thought I'd give it a try now.

As a side note, my builder was not a custom builder. He/it built one of 6 or so plans in my neighborhood. It was like buying a car. He/it had certain packages that he offered. Other than that, there was no customization. Having said that, I was able to sweet talk my foreman into installing greenboard in the living room for the wall behind where my fish tank was going. In my last house a few of my tangs and triggerfish would splash water out of the tank, and this caused a little wrinkling in the normal drywall that was behind my tank. Hopefully this modification will prevent that. I'm also considering adding a vinyl or hard plastic shield to the wall with a water absorbing sponge at the bottom so any water will hit the shield and run down into the sponge, to later evaporate.

We also tweaked the electrical a little, swapping out 15 and 20 amp receptacles and switches as needed for our new circuits. We moved an existing receptacle from the furnace room wall to the new wall. I think my wife is having the water feature electrical circuit inspected tomorrow by the city, so I'll see if I can have the inspector come downstairs and sign off on my fish room at the same time.

I'll tell you, it's been very easy to sleep this last week.


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[Ryan Darilek]

Looking great Hal! I know your dad is extremely handy, and that's apparent, but if you guys come across any grey areas or need any advice, just send me a PM. I'm a general contractor and would be happy to assist if it's needed. Keep up the great work ... Can't wait to see it all come together man!

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[Hal]

Day 7: drywall

Drywall is done. So is about half of the finish electrical. I hung a shop light in the room. I need one more.

A view from inside the room.

We've got one receptacle to wire, run some conduit into another box, final hookup of the bathroom fan, and hang the door.

Then it's little things like sealing the dam, foaming some holes where we ran wires, add baseboard on the exterior, plus a few other tiny jobs.

 

[neilp2006]

I know this is an older thread- but any updates on the finished room? Looks amazing so far, interested in the final build

Thanks


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[Hal]

Yes, I've made decent progress since the pics. I have 3 fish in my QT, done with the treatment part ( formalin, meth blue, tank transfer, and prazipro) and now in the observation stage.

I'll post some more pics in the next few days.