SPotter
Active member
Just the man I want to talk to....do a lot if guys in Fl put their sumps in the garage and what kids of issues are they faced with besides heat?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
My 280g Custom upgrade.....
- Thread starter SPotter
- Start date
Just the man I want to talk to....do a lot if guys in Fl put their sumps in the garage and what kids of issues are they faced with besides heat?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
Newbie Aquarist
Reefing is my middle name
Everyone's equipment is under their tank. I have seen two situations where their sump isn't under their tanks. They basically make a fish room in the garage and it has AC/humidifier to control the room. If I didn't live in a HOA my equipment would be outside in the fish room.
SPotter
Active member
I would love to make a fish room in the garage it would make me feel better about putting it out there. I read a thread this morning about a guy who put his equipment in his garage and a year later everything in the garage was rusting. Building a fish room is going to take more than a pimped out golf cart especially since the community we bought in the HOA doesn't allow golf carts in the residential areas so Im already getting hit up for a serious substitution to the cart. Man I got so spoiled having the fish room!!!
Dustin1300
Reefaholic
Could you do a small addition to the back of the house or is the HOA going to be too strict (I know mine would...). You could easily have something sided/bricked and just have it isolated from the house and store your sump, storage tanks, etc in this add on and really only connection to your house would be a couple pipes drilled through exterior of house. If you sell house in future, seal the holes and just stage it to hold lawn equipment! Not sure if that's an option...Also would make it nice to isolate it if you wanted to control an AC/Heater as it'd not take a lot of energy to cool/heat the room to a good ambient temperature. (Your energy bills will be so much cheaper anyways getting away from NJ!)
Newbie Aquarist
Reefing is my middle name
No way. They wants plans, pictures, swatches, purpose, favorite baseball player only to tell me no after waiting 2-3 months of their decision.
dave.m
Active member
Do it under cover of darkness on a moonless night. Have a team of expert sappers ready at your command... well, maybe some plumbers, too. Fog the neighbourhood with sleeping gas before you start, just in case someone might inadvertently look towards your property after midnight.
Make sure the yard looks exactly the same by morning. Make a healthy breakfast for everybody who participates.
Dave.M
Make sure the yard looks exactly the same by morning. Make a healthy breakfast for everybody who participates.
Dave.M
Dustin1300
Reefaholic
I like Dave's idea...HOA is a love/hate relationship. I don't want somebodies old car on blocks in driveway but also don't like the flipside. If it's aesthetically pleasing, what's the big deal!?!
How big is your garage? Your heading south of Mason Dixon line so you have to hone your redneck engineering skills. 
How about one of those small rubber maid storage sheds setup in your garage with some ventilation to the outside. It will keep everything nice a hidden and the salt splashes off of that new car that your going to be buying.
How about one of those small rubber maid storage sheds setup in your garage with some ventilation to the outside. It will keep everything nice a hidden and the salt splashes off of that new car that your going to be buying.
SPotter
Active member
How big is your garage? Your heading south of Mason Dixon line so you have to hone your redneck engineering skills.
That could work. It's a 2.5 car garage so I have the room. I know I'm foolish for saying that I'm really trying to stick to a budget this time but I need to control the expenses better this time around. Since its considered the "Low-country" down there all houses are built on crawl spaces or elevated higher. Our house is on a crawl space so the garage has a very high ceiling and there ventilation openings all around the base of the garage so that could work. The real issue is the skimmer....my wife can't stand the smell of it. Maybe I could just run a feed line into the garage for an external skimmer and then pump it back to the sump under the stand.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
Get a skimmate waste collector. The octopus one I have has carbon on top and you can not smell anything at all. When I clean it, well that's a separate story lol. Plumb a slab sink outside and clean the skimmer outdoors.
Dustin1300
Reefaholic
Check out the oregon reef tank and how he had his closet/room in garage.
http://www.oregonreef.com/sub_maintenance.htm
http://www.oregonreef.com/sub_maintenance.htm
SPotter
Active member
Thanks for posting that Dustin. Something like that might just work. Something like that shouldnt cost too much to build using the exterior wall of the garage. I will have to check the HOA to see if I can install a mini split ac/heating unit.
david00061
New member
Getting good pics is hard for me.
SPotter
Active member
Made it to SC...now its time to start planning again.
Made it to SC...now its time to start planning again.
The family arrived in SC last week and we are getting settled in. Met with our builder yesterday to go over the plans for the house and decide on which wall to put the tank. Tank will go on a 12' wall and the joists will run perpendicular to the tank. I am still going to have the engineers add additional bracing to floor area where the tank will be just for some added safety.
I wont have the luxury of a fish room this time and I have decided against putting the equipment in the garage due to the local heat and humidity during the summer and cooler temps in the winter creating an incredible amount of evaporation. I just know it would cause a lot of problems with rust and I dont want to spend the money on building a fish room in the garage and adding AC to it. Plus, where my house is being built is in a flood zone so nothing can be built at ground level and this would just make the cost of doing this even higher.
So everything will go in the stand under the tank and I am going to lean on the members for suggestions on stand height and tank dimensions. The max footprint I could get my wife to sign off on is 96x36 so conventional wisdom says go for that and then just decide on the height. I really dont want to go any higher than 28" for the height.
Since there are concerns about odors from the cabinet I am thinking about having this installed on the wall in the area where the stand will be located...
http://residential.fantech.net/residential-products/kitchen/exterior-exhaust-fans/
Here's where I need your input to start....
Tank dimension....
Stand height......
Wood or steel stand.....
Thoughts on the exhaust fan.....
Thank you for everyone's input and once I get a little closer to ordering the tank, I will create a new build thread for that.
Made it to SC...now its time to start planning again.
The family arrived in SC last week and we are getting settled in. Met with our builder yesterday to go over the plans for the house and decide on which wall to put the tank. Tank will go on a 12' wall and the joists will run perpendicular to the tank. I am still going to have the engineers add additional bracing to floor area where the tank will be just for some added safety.
I wont have the luxury of a fish room this time and I have decided against putting the equipment in the garage due to the local heat and humidity during the summer and cooler temps in the winter creating an incredible amount of evaporation. I just know it would cause a lot of problems with rust and I dont want to spend the money on building a fish room in the garage and adding AC to it. Plus, where my house is being built is in a flood zone so nothing can be built at ground level and this would just make the cost of doing this even higher.
So everything will go in the stand under the tank and I am going to lean on the members for suggestions on stand height and tank dimensions. The max footprint I could get my wife to sign off on is 96x36 so conventional wisdom says go for that and then just decide on the height. I really dont want to go any higher than 28" for the height.
Since there are concerns about odors from the cabinet I am thinking about having this installed on the wall in the area where the stand will be located...
http://residential.fantech.net/residential-products/kitchen/exterior-exhaust-fans/
Here's where I need your input to start....
Tank dimension....
Stand height......
Wood or steel stand.....
Thoughts on the exhaust fan.....
Thank you for everyone's input and once I get a little closer to ordering the tank, I will create a new build thread for that.
Steve,
I would think 96x36x24 would be idea with a 36 to 40" tall steel stand to give you plenty of room to work. I won't go over 24" deep since it will be hard to reach the bottom 36" back from the front.
A sump of around 40" to 48" Long would work well to give you plenty of room for QT tanks or other tanks under the stand with equipment. You could have 2 20L tanks running on the right side with the sump on the left.
My .02
I would think 96x36x24 would be idea with a 36 to 40" tall steel stand to give you plenty of room to work. I won't go over 24" deep since it will be hard to reach the bottom 36" back from the front.
A sump of around 40" to 48" Long would work well to give you plenty of room for QT tanks or other tanks under the stand with equipment. You could have 2 20L tanks running on the right side with the sump on the left.
My .02
Floyd R Turbo
Either busy or sleeping
So 96 x 36 x 28 =~ 400 gallons, nice!
So I'm guessing another custom glass tank?
Since you will have a sump under it and noise will be a concern, I would do this with a BeanAnimal 3-pipe overflow system. I have one running on a 144g tank @ 3000 GPH and it is dead silent, even with every cabinet door open the only thing you hear is the pump (reeflo dart). My fan on my desk makes more noise.
I would recommend an internal overflow box that passes through to an external box on the back of the tank for all the plumbing. Bean told me in one conversation that this is actually the better way to do it vs. his original design (which was done because that was the conditions under which his tank had to be done, I believe). But there are certain considerations to make to ensure it is silent and most tank manufacturers/designers don't have the first clue what works correctly for dead silence.
The what is really nice is that you will have 100% of the tank floor to work with.
I can do calcs and design for you if you like (on the tank as a whole) I love planning out systems.
I like designing sumps and stands also so let me know!
Are you going to start a new thread?
So I'm guessing another custom glass tank?
Since you will have a sump under it and noise will be a concern, I would do this with a BeanAnimal 3-pipe overflow system. I have one running on a 144g tank @ 3000 GPH and it is dead silent, even with every cabinet door open the only thing you hear is the pump (reeflo dart). My fan on my desk makes more noise.
I would recommend an internal overflow box that passes through to an external box on the back of the tank for all the plumbing. Bean told me in one conversation that this is actually the better way to do it vs. his original design (which was done because that was the conditions under which his tank had to be done, I believe). But there are certain considerations to make to ensure it is silent and most tank manufacturers/designers don't have the first clue what works correctly for dead silence.
The what is really nice is that you will have 100% of the tank floor to work with.
I can do calcs and design for you if you like (on the tank as a whole) I love planning out systems.
I like designing sumps and stands also so let me know!
Are you going to start a new thread?
Newbie Aquarist
Reefing is my middle name
I agree with what indy suggested. Also I would build the stand to accommodate the tallest piece of equipment that you are planning to use. Most likely it will be your protein skimmer and unless you add a head cleaner to it then I would make it a few inches taller to safely remove the head unit.
If its going to be steel then you shouldnt have a problem. If its going to be wood then you have to work around the top part of the stand using eithr 2x6s or 2x8s as for an example.
SPotter
Active member
Jacob, Im definitely leaning towards the 24" because my last tank was 72x36x28 and even though I had access from behind the tank it was still a pain to do anything. I would love to go with a taller stand especially since the room it will be in has 10' ceilings but my entry doors into the house are only 36" so I am limited on the stand height at probably 35" so I have enough room to get the stand in without scratching anything.
Hey Bud....I will start a new thread as I get closer to having everything finalized. Im still up in the air about glass or acrylic but leaning towards glass at this point. Not too sure about being able to do any external overflows on this build because it will be up against the wall and cabinetry will be built around the tank again just like my last one. I will definitely reach out to you to discuss planning of the sump and everything.
Thanks for the input Wayne. My skimmer is 27.5" and I need 2" to pull it off of the neck so I need at least 30" to clean the skimmer. But I am thinking about selling my skimmer and going with a new, external skimmer. It would make it easier to clean since I wont have to wrestle with getting the boby in and out of the sump. I friend of mine in NJ had to replace his BK skimmer due to an unfortunate cleaning accident and went with a Skimz external skimmer. He was a little skeptical at first but he loves it and saved a lot of money. I will definitely be using that material you used for the bottom of your stand to prevent any water from leaking on the new hardwood floors.
Floyd R Turbo
Either busy or sleeping
You can still do a BeanAnimal with an in-tank overflow. I bet someone has done this before but I haven't seen it specifically. I'll get the wheels turning :dance:
