My 400G Through-wall "deceptively deep" tank

[Spaced Cowboy]

Have you solved the sound problem? I have built both a 1200 sq foot movie theater and 2 500 gallon tanks at my house.... I have a few ideas for you but I am currently at 38k feet over New Mexico...so if you still need some ideas PM me (so I get an email) and Ill do my best to get back with you this week. good luck

Well, as far as sound goes, I'm taking a multi-level approach

• There will be 2 layers of greenwall/cementboard/whatever-the-water-resistant-one-is between the tank and the stand. That's the main barrier for sound.
• Then there's a rubber waterproof membrane that will also cover the floor. This will go up as high as the top of the stand.
• Then the stand will have rubber washers between its connections to the drywall and itself. I put the plates-with-holes to fasten the stand to the drywall on the rear of the 2" steel tubing, so there's plenty of space for rubber dampening, then a 2x4, then the drywall.
• The stand itself will sit on a mat of elephant-bark dense rubber - the sort of thing you put on workout floors. Doesn't compress much but will absorb some vibration
• The pumps I'm using are 2 (1 active at a time) reeflo dart golds. These are pretty damn quiet anyway, and they'll not be running at maximum throughput since they're only the return pumps. They'll be sitting on their own vibration-dampening mats - I did this with the last tank and the loudest component of the tank was the skimmer
• The new skimmer is a Royal Exclusive SuperMarin 250, which is (I'm told) a pretty quiet skimmer.
• Piping supports will be damped at their attachment to the wall - again with rubber washers.

So, overall I'm trying to use quiet equipment, dampening any vibration, and using a double-thick wall of drywall to try and limit the noise. I'm certainly open to good ideas though (so PM sent ), and now is a good time because they're starting to work on what will become the "fish room"

Cheers
Simon.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Daily progress

Daily progress

So, the good news is that they figured out how to install the third solar-tube, so the ceiling now looks like:

We've left the covers on for now, but when the room is finished, I'll take those off. I can't see the use for the diffuser on the bottom of the tube - I just want the light focussed on the tank (which they are directly above

... and the plumber has run the PVC piping under the house to the water tanks and installed standpipes so I can push a tube down to the bottom of the standpipe and get to a new freshwater supply and a new saltwater supply. The tanks stay outside the house (which is a good thing, given my lack of space here) and since water finds its own level, they are "effectively" here where they're needed

The final thing they finished off today is the new external door, which will give me access to the fish room from outside the house, since there's no access from inside.

All in all, quite a lot of progress today. It's going to slow down now while we repair/re-lay the floor, sand the entire room and lay 3 coats of stain/sealant - mainly because of the drying time required for each coat.

Simon.

 

[Aquatron]

Everything looks really nice As a 30 year home builder I always enjoy watching/seeing hobbiest build their fish rooms. You and your helper's did have a good day and looks like nice quality work from here. Did you ever check and see if your solar tubs can have a auto dimmer as an option? As said the tubs are nice on their own the auto shutter is nice too.
Down the road when you have some time to kill, rig up three controlled/colored LED's...set them up on top of the solar domes up on your roof then check out the view from your DT
Thanks for sharing!

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Everything looks really nice As a 30 year home builder I always enjoy watching/seeing hobbiest build their fish rooms. You and your helper's did have a good day and looks like nice quality work from here. Did you ever check and see if your solar tubs can have a auto dimmer as an option? As said the tubs are nice on their own the auto shutter is nice too.
Down the road when you have some time to kill, rig up three controlled/colored LED's...set them up on top of the solar domes up on your roof then check out the view from your DT
Thanks for sharing!

Unfortunately the solar tubes can't have any dimming attached (at least there's nothing the manufacturer sells)... However, I have a 3D printer that's big enough to print out something that could attach to the bottom of the tubes, so if it becomes an issue, I'll look into doing something that way

Thanks for the nice comments, but the other guys did all the work I'm in the office all day - I just get to come home and see what they've done. It's great

Cheers
Simon

 

[Swope2bc]

Exciting progress! I'm looking forward to each new update

 

[petere1989]

Unfortunately the solar tubes can't have any dimming attached (at least there's nothing the manufacturer sells)... However, I have a 3D printer that's big enough to print out something that could attach to the bottom of the tubes, so if it becomes an issue, I'll look into doing something that way

Thanks for the nice comments, but the other guys did all the work I'm in the office all day - I just get to come home and see what they've done. It's great

Cheers
Simon

you could print up some kind of flap that attaches to the solar tube, and have it like on a pivot so it can be shut completely or full open. just an idea!

 

[FuzzyZipperbaum]

Thanks it's been planned for months now, and it's starting to feel as though it's finally all coming together. Exciting times



Drain - yep, there's going to be a (small) sink in the rear right corner of the fish room. I've told the plumber that I want to be able to insert tubes into piping to drain, and they're going to put a shower-like drain in the floor too. The whole floor will be lined as if it's a shower.

Vapor barrier etc. - again, going with the shower theme, it's going to be plastic, then cement board or whatever code requires for a shower, then 3 coats of gloss paint.

Sound-proofing - here I have to compromise, and in fact it's one of my main worries. The tank is going to stick through the wall, and I don't want 4" of the precious 6" of protrusion being wasted going through a standard wall's thickness... So there will only be a cement board layer between the tank and the living room.

In fact it's worse than that - the stand will form part of the support structure for the wall, if you look carefully, you can see flanges on the wall side of the stand, to attach the stand to the wall. One thing I have done is make the flanges be 2" away from the wall, and I intend to get rubber pads to go between the 2x4's that the wall will be screwed to, and the stand itself. That way there ought to be some decoupling.

What I really don't want is to turn the wall into a speaker, with a 50hz hum being amplified throughout the house. On the other hand, I really don't want to lose 4" of my precious 6" of overhang as well.

This one is definitely something I'll be keeping my eye on...

Simon.

 

[FuzzyZipperbaum]

got your PM....question.... Can you do anything to the back side of the "cement board" in terms of sound control that is facing into the fish room...

I could write a novel on the subject but you have to address 3 things:

Vibration
Sound Insolation
Bass or low Frequency

The three biggest sounds you will deal with are pumps (including the skimmer) water in the sump and air intake on the skimmer.

Viibration: The more you can reduce vibration the less you work you will have to do. Using rubber like the big rubber floor pads (which I used) and cutting them up in different applications will help. Every time a hard surface touches a hard surface sound will travel through it. I made a mistake by attaching a table with my sumps to the concrete wall without putting rubber in between. I could feel the vibration of my pumps on the second floor of the house because the vibration transferred from the pump, to the stand, to the concrete wall, up to the second floor 2x4 studs to the marble floor above. I have since corrected this..... Think of any hard surface touching a hard surface in your set up...the feet of the stand touching the floor....PVC going through a wall and touching the drywall, etc, etc.... any time you can use something to absorb the vibration it will help.

Sound Isolation: Lots of ways to do this. Could spend hours talking about it... but the best way to start would be the pumps. If you can afford the new high end DC pumps like the new Red Dragon or another brand(rumor is they have a new US RD distributor and he may have even visted this thread) this will limited the sound by a large factor and though they are more expnesive then my Hammerheads, they are WAY MORE quiet. I myself am looking into this option. You have to make sure that every hole or penestration in a wall is filled. If you have PVC going through walls use Acoustic calk all the way around it and dont let the PVC touch the sides. If you have say electrical plug outlits on the wall where the tank is use a product like quiet putty that is basicall silly putty....put it around the outlet from behind can kill all the sound penetration. You can also use high density foam, panels, etc behind the view wall.

Low Frequency/bass: Buidling bass traps will take the low frequency of the pumps and keep the sound from bouning around the fish room.

So...my recommendations:

1. Buy the quietest pumps you can afford and then mounts them on foam or rubber.
2. Instead of using concrete board which will increase sound and vibration...I would use two half inch sheets of green drywall that is used in bathrooms with a product called green glue applied between the sheets. I would use this option between the viewing room and fish room. If you can do this all the way around the room even better. This will add density and will help to eat the sound and not take up much of you valued space.
3. Build or buy acoustic panels and hang them in the fish room.
4. Build or buy bass traps and put the in the corners of the roof of your fish room up high. They will be out of the way.
5. Use rubber or foam everywhere you can think between hard surfaces. You can even use something called acoustic clips with your drywall or your standing plank you are building...

The water and air sound can be addressed later when your set up is finised and is easy to do.

I will provide some links of some of this in a bit....

 

[Newtybar]

subscribed, awesome setup. Keep it coming!

 

[FuzzyZipperbaum]

There are plenty of brands to choose from but here are some examples:

Acoustic putty:

http://www.amazon.com/QuietPutty-Acoustical-Pads-Putty/dp/B004ZG422W

Acoustic Caulk:

https://www.tmsoundproofing.com/acoustical-caulk.html

Green Glue:

http://www.greengluecompany.com

Acoustic clips:

http://www.acoustiguard.com/product-detail/genie-clip/

Google build corner bass traps like this:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/bas.../472582-how-i-built-my-corner-bass-traps.html

Google build acoustic panels like this:

http://acousticsfreq.com/blog/?p=62

I used this material from an AC supply house to build the panels and traps:


http://www.amazon.com/Owens-Corning-703-Fiberglass-Boards/dp/B005V3L834

Then covered them in black burlap....

Hope this helps....it is a topic not much talked about on the fish forums but I spent months studying it to build my theater.

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

There are plenty of brands to choose from but here are some examples:

Acoustic putty:

http://www.amazon.com/QuietPutty-Acoustical-Pads-Putty/dp/B004ZG422W

Acoustic Caulk:

https://www.tmsoundproofing.com/acoustical-caulk.html

Green Glue:

http://www.greengluecompany.com

Acoustic clips:

http://www.acoustiguard.com/product-detail/genie-clip/

Google build corner bass traps like this:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/bas.../472582-how-i-built-my-corner-bass-traps.html

Google build acoustic panels like this:

http://acousticsfreq.com/blog/?p=62

I used this material from an AC supply house to build the panels and traps:


http://www.amazon.com/Owens-Corning-703-Fiberglass-Boards/dp/B005V3L834

Then covered them in black burlap....

Hope this helps....it is a topic not much talked about on the fish forums but I spent months studying it to build my theater.

Thanks for all that - that's really useful. I'll be talking about this with my contractor

Cheers
Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

subscribed, awesome setup. Keep it coming!

Thanks And welcome to the thread

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Floored!

Floored!

So there's not a lot of progress to report this time, but the new flooring is in and it's been stained to match the rest of the house's floor...

This is a slow process because we had to install the new flooring where the old floor was buckled due to a slow plumbing leak over the years, then sand everything down so the new floor integrated with the old one well, then stain to match and wait for that to dry, then there's 3 coats of a clear polyurethane coat, all of which we have to wait to dry before doing the next. We're currently on coat 1 today... Flooring is expected to be finished next Tuesday.

One point of interest wrt the flooring and reef tanks is highlighted over in another thread about moving house. We wanted the tank to be removable if we ever moved house, which meant making the room be able to be restored back to a non-tank situation as easily as possible. From a position of "what's best for just the tank" it would clearly be better to stop the hardwood at the point where the new wall will go, and hot-mop the tank area as if it were a shower, to make sure the water didn't damage anything again. That, however, would make moving pretty damn hard.

So, the actual design calls for the new flooring to go all the way throughout the main room of the house; for the area that the tank will go into to be waterproofed (to protect the hardwood) using a pond liner; and for the wall dividing the "fish-room" from the living room to be non-structural in any way. That way, there's only a minimal cost to repair the damage if we ever decide to remove the tank, or move house.

Even the wall-mounted sink, and the water stand-pipes that supply NSW and NFW from the tanks at the other end of the house are routed through the wall cavity, and do not impact the floor. They're not visible from this angle, but you can see the stand-pipes in previous images.

Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

For some reason, I didn't see this until just now... Replies inline

got your PM....question.... Can you do anything to the back side of the "cement board" in terms of sound control that is facing into the fish room...

I could write a novel on the subject but you have to address 3 things:

Vibration
Sound Insolation
Bass or low Frequency

The three biggest sounds you will deal with are pumps (including the skimmer) water in the sump and air intake on the skimmer.

Viibration: The more you can reduce vibration the less you work you will have to do. Using rubber like the big rubber floor pads (which I used) and cutting them up in different applications will help. Every time a hard surface touches a hard surface sound will travel through it. I made a mistake by attaching a table with my sumps to the concrete wall without putting rubber in between. I could feel the vibration of my pumps on the second floor of the house because the vibration transferred from the pump, to the stand, to the concrete wall, up to the second floor 2x4 studs to the marble floor above. I have since corrected this..... Think of any hard surface touching a hard surface in your set up...the feet of the stand touching the floor....PVC going through a wall and touching the drywall, etc, etc.... any time you can use something to absorb the vibration it will help.

So, the new hardwood floor is very securely fastened down, to provide a solid foundation, then there'll be a thin rubber mat for waterproofing. I don't expect that to do much, but next we have a 3/16" rubber mat that I've used before with pumps etc. And had good results with. The stand will sit on top of the rubber mat, with the tank in turn on top of that. I believe that will take care of vibration connected to the floor, so then there's just the fact that the stand is the structural support for the drywall on the new interior dividing wall.

The stand has several mount-points along the rear of the front face, looking like:

... the reason they are on the rear face of the front of the stand is so I can use vibration-reducing rubber washers to connect those mount-points to 2x4's, and then attach the drywall in turn to those 2x4's. This is sort of pushed on me because I need the stand to form the structure behind the drywall due to the way I wanted the tank to push out from the wall. What I didn't want was the drywall turning into a bass speaker for any pumps etc. that are vibrationally-linked to the stand.

Sound Isolation: Lots of ways to do this. Could spend hours talking about it... but the best way to start would be the pumps. If you can afford the new high end DC pumps like the new Red Dragon or another brand(rumor is they have a new US RD distributor and he may have even visted this thread) this will limited the sound by a large factor and though they are more expnesive then my Hammerheads, they are WAY MORE quiet. I myself am looking into this option. You have to make sure that every hole or penestration in a wall is filled. If you have PVC going through walls use Acoustic calk all the way around it and dont let the PVC touch the sides. If you have say electrical plug outlits on the wall where the tank is use a product like quiet putty that is basicall silly putty....put it around the outlet from behind can kill all the sound penetration. You can also use high density foam, panels, etc behind the view wall.

Low Frequency/bass: Buidling bass traps will take the low frequency of the pumps and keep the sound from bouning around the fish room.

So...my recommendations:

1. Buy the quietest pumps you can afford and then mounts them on foam or rubber.

Yes, I've bought a Bubble King Supermarin 250 internal Protein Skimmer + RD3 Speedy. This is one of those efficient DC pumps and I'm told the '250 is a very quiet skimmer. I'm also intending to use Reeflo Dart Gold pumps for the returns, and the one I have now is quieter than my existing skimmer, even at full bore.

2. Instead of using concrete board which will increase sound and vibration...I would use two half inch sheets of green drywall that is used in bathrooms with a product called green glue applied between the sheets. I would use this option between the viewing room and fish room. If you can do this all the way around the room even better. This will add density and will help to eat the sound and not take up much of you valued space.

I'm conflicted on this one. Because the tank is sticking out into the room, every 1/2" of space I take for sound insulation is another 1/2" that it doesn't stick out. I originally wanted a 9" overhang, but Miracles said "we are happy with a 6" overhang", and one doesn't hire an expert then ignore them... Even with a 6" overhang, I'll only get to 'see' 5 1/4" of overhang due to the drywall. I really don't want to lose any more.

I found this which claims to reduce the sound significantly without incurring the cost of extra width. I sent it to the contractors but they're busy with the floor right now...

3. Build or buy acoustic panels and hang them in the fish room.
4. Build or buy bass traps and put the in the corners of the roof of your fish room up high. They will be out of the way.
5. Use rubber or foam everywhere you can think between hard surfaces. You can even use something called acoustic clips with your drywall or your standing plank you are building...

This is all sound advice (pun intended) and I'll take it on board when finishing off the fish-room Thanks *very* much for taking the time to detail all of this

Cheers
Simon

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

The long-awaited day dawns...

The long-awaited day dawns...

Apologies for this one, it's going to be image-heavy

So, today the tank arrived. To get ready for moving it in, we first laid the waterproof membrane (usually used to line ponds, so it's pretty thick and tough) over the area where the tank was going to be placed. The liner will cover the entire floor, and go all the way up the wall by the sump, and at least 20" up the other walls, apart from where there are doors etc... The membrane will be held in place by roofing nails, and we'll put a strip of wood along the floor/wall junction to keep it properly positioned.

We also laid RAM-Board throughout the living room, where the new floors had just finished being stained/polyurethaned (3 coats of polyurethane, each with 24 hours drying time...). I didn't want those new floors getting marked.

On top of the pool-liner we placed some elephant-bark rubber matting, to absorb any low-frequency vibrations that might otherwise be transmitted through to the floor. But while we were doing that, the tank turned up...

​

It had been stored at the local depot for the last couple of weeks, and I hired "Mike" who has this recovery-vehicle and a fork-lift. He puts the forklift on the vehicle, drives to wherever the job is, and can transport stuff as you see above, it's a pretty unique combination AFAIK. If you click on the above image, you'll see a video of him lowering the forklift to the ground by remote control using the winch on the truck...

Anyway, then he drove it up the path and maneuvered it into place behind the house. I thought his sign was pretty funny...

... so then we took the sump and the stand inside the house. The helpers were under the impression that the sump *was* the tank, not being reef-tank-savvy There were several comments along the lines of "that wasn't so bad", etc. I'm not sure what they thought the crate was for...

Once they'd been carried inside we made sure the stand was level, and the sump was placed correctly inside the stand, and that both were in the correct position, because once the tank was on top, nothing was moving thereafter.

You can just about see the "Elephant Bark" vibration-reducing rubber mat under both the sump and stand in this photo.

[to be continued, due to the limits on images]

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

[continuing]

... Then there was the whole 'uncrating' of the tank itself. Cue several "Ooohhh" and "Ahhh"'s from the crew I have to say that Miracles have done an excellent job with the tank, the seams are gorgeous, there are no obvious scratches or defects anywhere. I'm completely happy with the tank.

... and we were finally ready to move the tank inside the house. I had bought several (9, in fact) of the sucker-type handles, each of which purports to support 200 lbs, so I was *pretty* *sure* they'd hold. They did. Phew!

... but of course the tank was back-to-front relative to how we wanted it to be, so we had to swivel it around by 90 degrees and then swivel around by another 90 degrees to get the front face looking in the right direction...

... the next job was to get everything positioned just so, so that the wall that will be built around it is properly aligned, and that the tank is dead-center of that wall, and the correct distance out from the rear wall. The stand had shifted slightly when we put the tank on top, so we had to get everything perfectly back in place...

And here it is in all its glory, ready for the rest of the renovation to proceed around it. We'll be covering it with RAMboard to protect it while the guys work around it... While it's uncovered, though, you can see the optical clarity of the glass - starfire all round and for tempered 3/4" glass that's very little green being introduced

I have to say that this tank was phenomenally heavy. Really, really, really heavy. Even with 10 of us lifting, it was a real struggle to get the tank up to the stand's height. It took 3 of us to lift the old glass-cages 240G tank onto the back of a pickup, and that was nowhere near the effort of lifting this tank up onto its stand - 3/4" glass is ridiculously heavy...

The other thing this doesn't really show is how the tank utterly dominates that end of the room. As it should, of course

A very happy camper^W^W^W^WSimon.

 

[Swope2bc]

Love it!!! It makes my 40b look like a dwarf lol. I'm looking forward to the next stages of construction.

 

[Sonicboom]

Looks stunning!, i see one guy lifting the tank from the overflow, I would water test just the overflow to be safe..

 

[Spaced Cowboy]

Looks stunning!, i see one guy lifting the tank from the overflow, I would water test just the overflow to be safe..

I did actually tell them not to do that, but I guess the temptation to do that was just too much. Did I mention how heavy this thing is ?

Any water-test will have to wait until after plumbing - there are 3 holes in the bottom of the overflow, but I'll make sure to do that one first

Cheers
Simon

 

[Sonicboom]

I did actually tell them not to do that, but I guess the temptation to do that was just too much. Did I mention how heavy this thing is ?

Any water-test will have to wait until after plumbing - there are 3 holes in the bottom of the overflow, but I'll make sure to do that one first

Cheers
Simon

Yes i can't imagine the weight, i would have had to bring out the bat..lol:deadhorse: