How to insulate, ventilate, heat my basement fish room? PICS INCLUDED

[holdyourlight]

Hey guys-

I really wish i would have thought of this stuff before i set the tanks up!

I am pretty much a newb when it comes to anything related to heating/cooling/insulation so please bear with me.

Ok here goes:

The room is in my basement. Approx dimensions are 11' x 16' with 9' ceilings and another foot between the floor of the first level. No windows.
The basement was roughed in, unfinished, but framed in for the most part.
The house is brand new, built in 2010.

There is ~300G of total water

As you can see there are 2 concrete walls and 2 walls that are framed in.
(one framed in wall on the stairs and another that opens to the main part of the basement)

Here is a picture of the flexible ducts that run in the basement and ceiling

What i want to accomplish is to have a room that has low humidity and does not have large temp swings.
Right now the basement is staying in the low 60's. i am having to have 800 watts of heaters and it struggles to keep the temp @ 77

My water heater is tankless, so i will not be heating the tanks with PEX tubing ran off of my water heater as people have been doing, unfortunately.

I have only been here (TN) since September, so i do not know what the temps in the basement are like in the summer, but i would guess it would still stay pretty cool down there.

There are no vents in this room. There are 2 vents for the entire basement but they are far away. My guess is that it would be fairly easy to run more vents off of the flexible ducts.


Please let me know if you can come up with anything in terms of heating, ventilation, dehumidifying, ect.


I've been reading all kinds of things on dehumidifiers, exaust fans, HVAC, insulation and to be honest i'm just completely confused on what would work best (cheapest but effective) for my situation.

Thanks for your time and help guys

 

[bbart12]

The biggest problem that you are going to have is that you set up your system before you really had a room to put it in. From looking at the pictures you are going to have to undo some of your work in order to get where you need to be. To be honest the best thing for your house as I see it is to take the basement system down and set up something temporary up stairs so that you can finnish the room that you currently have you sump/etc. in. I know this sucks but let me explain.
What you are basically dealing with putting more water through evaporation into the air than is already in a typical basement. The problem with that is that everything in your basement is designed be indoors. So everything from you HVAC to the joists holding up the first floor is now in a higher humidity environment than they are designed for. It seams to me that the best method of dealing with this is inclosing the water volume so that you have a smaller space to deal with. My method would be concrete board on the walls and celling then painted with some kind of epoxy paint(Supper toxic and why my recommendation would be to set up the system temporarily upstairs).
I would then use an exterior grade door to close in the room.
If anything this will turn your lack of heat into to much. The easiest way to deal with this is to have a couple of holes drilled in your foundation witch can be used as a air exchanger. This can be done a bunch of ways. It could be on a timer to exchange the rooms air a certain amount of times a day or they sell humidity controllers that will do it for you at a set humidity. Either of these will be attached to a booster fan for a dryer. This will allow you to use evaporative cooling when necessary thus eliminating the build up of heat in summer.
You can also setup a dehumidifier in the room but we are talking about a lot of water and that could be cost prohibitive.
I have noticed that it is unadvisable to attach you central air to a tank room because the salt air will do a number on the unit.

 

[Blown76mav]

I would use insulation on the studded walls, then a layer of plastic, then green board (mold resistant dry wall). On the concrete walls a good coat of dry lock, then paint. You will also need an air exchanger to keep the humidity down.

I just went through this in my build. I also agree it will be easier to work without all the fish stuff in there.

 

[dtrm]

Make sure that you recycle that beer bottle on the wall and make more room for the fridge.:beer:

 

[sarmo]

i would insulate with fibergalss batting and use plastic as a vapor barrior on all the wood area. Then if you want to finish it more, i would then use green board sheetrock on the ceiling and interior walls. i would leave the concrete walls as is, this will help with cooling in the summer.
i would also set up a humidity controlled ventilation by putting in some vents. you should be able to do this by going through the wall just above the concrete foundation between the floor joists (where the pink insulation is now) if you could do two vents then you could pull in fresh air and use a humidistat to control a fan to force air out the second vent when the humidity level rises. if possible have the vents on different walls and put the inflow vent on a shaded or cool side wall so that you don't suck hot air in in the summer.
as stated above you should move out all the fish stuff while doing this project, sorry.

 

[sayn3ver]

no experience with a big tank but some thoughts:

dry wall and green board are not advisable near water/humidity. Green board has it's surface treated to be mold resistant....key words are MOLD and RESISTANT. Not mold or water proof. It will get soft and dissolve like normal drywall does if it gets wet.

If you check a relatively up to date TCNA (tile counsel of North America) handbook you will see that dry wall and green board are both not spec'd for use in shower/steam room installations. Shower stalls are now commonly cement board of choice with your favorite vapor barrier.
The now common kurdi membrane material is rated for steam room applications which are above the needs of the common household shower. Just something to think about.

Other considerations are electrical outlets and switches, not only are you in high humidity but also the salty environmental cannot be good for exposed copper connections.

I would imagine it easier to have the room as sealed off and insulated as possible. Containing the humidity like others have said is important in retaining the structural integrity of your home. I don't know what glue they used in those engineered joists but regardless, wood products and moisture never end favorably for those relying on the wood product to survive. Salty air and wood/metal is even a more serious issue in the long term.

Additionally, containing the heat/humidity will make it easier to deal with like mentioned above. Being able to control the room temp, humidity and circulation is much easier when only dealing with that 1 room vs the whole house. You can concentrate all the equipment (de humidifier, ducting, fans, air conditioner, heating) in one area. The equipment needed is then easier to determine also due as already mentioned....1 room vs the entire home. A tight room like this will definitely require fresh air to be piped in to keep up O2 levels and reduce CO2 build up.

I assume the electrical situation is sorted out and is in order. Might be worth doing that as well while the room is open.

Again, I am not expert, I am not a professional tradesmen (not yet but hopefully one day). I only have a 1 year or so working under a GC but enjoy reading about doing things right. Some of what I have said may be over kill or wrong. I would, in all seriousness, call around and see if any local large aquarium installers can answer some of your questions. You may also want to chat up a few of the local HVAC guys who deal with indoor pools and the like. I would imagine anyone with a indoor hot tub would deal with similar issues.

Drywall of anykind and water/high humidity scares me.

 

[mhummel]

I am currently working on a 120 inwall with a room. I have used greenboard for the walls and a layer of plastic over the studs/insulation in the tank room. I believe the room is insulated better than the house to keep moisture and heat/cool where it's supposed to be. This room will have it's own ventilation and cooling circuit. I am not worried about heat because every tank of this size in a small room I have never had an issue with the need to heat. There will be a circuit that will pull fresh outside air and force the hot/high humid air outside. The duct fan will be on a attic fan temp switch which I'm expecting to only shut off in the winter and run constantly in the summer. I put epoxy on the floor and used paintable silicone bead at the bottom of the walls to keep spills in the room. there is an 8 inch section on the wall that has the same epoxy on the floor to keep the moisture from soaking up in the drywall. The stand will be painted with drylock and also the back of the cabinet work will be also. Use of stainless hinges and a constant soaking of wd will keep the corrosion away.
You really don't want the tank in the area while you are under constuction. I would suggest getting the tank as far away from the area as possible. I got rid of all but a few fish and kept them in a small tank during construction. I put an exterior door knob with a lock to keep small fingers out of the area. A laundry tub will come in handy. I have the room preplumbed.
A few things I would have done a little diffrient are: Tile the floor as my epoxy dosn't seem to be staying in places. Use cement board on the tank wall/walls and tile around the tank, and use an exterior insulated door but that can be easly changed if needed.

 

[sayn3ver]

One thing I dream about when I move out and get my own place is an equipment room. All white with proper lighting.

Double wide wash basins and the cats meow for me is a sloped cement floor,tile or epoxied, with in floor drainage.

Something can be said for not having to worry about your equipment room flooding. Spills are a worry of the past. Wet mop clean up. Dry mop clean up. Shop vac clean up. Powerwasher clean up. :uzi:

 

[Big Dog]

I'm really surprised that the heaters aren't keeping up. I have 3 tanks in my garage with standard sized heaters holding 75F and I keep the garage at 60-62F.

 

[mhummel]

Here are a few pics of the room in progress. It's not completed yet but there is rock and a few fish just go to my pics in my album to see more if you'd like.