Pics of the new in wall tank build and important plumbing ?'s

Angela Short

New member
Well, we are moving very fast on the new house for this time of year and the new tank will need to be ordered soon. Getting our current house ready for market and overseeing this project has kept me off line completely!

This is the view looking from my kitchen to where it will sit separating the living room and kitchen. The breakfast table is going to sit in front of it so now instead of a dog begging for bites at dinner it will be fish :). The viewing area is going to be a little over 6 feet x 31 tall. I am ordering a 7" tank with starfire panels and the overflows will be on the ends. We will frame over the overflows so they are hidden from veiw but the wall will have to be cut to get the tank out if I ever had issues or got out of reefin so lets not think about the what if's! Especially since its gonna be another glass cages tank!! I need to change the stand a little but will have access panels from the kitchen side.


104_4860-2.jpg






another angle looking from the living room though to the kitchen. This is the view you will see walking in the front door of the home.


104_4859-2.jpg






And a shot of where I want to plumb the remote sump and equipment room. I was thinking under the stairs to the left of the pic. We have a crawlspace so just going down under the tank would be a pain getting to the sump to do anything.


104_4861-2.jpg




I have talked with Wayne about how to get the water down under the house and back up to a sump sitting on floor level and he thinks it would work like a sink trap. Go down the overflows through the floor, drop the 10-15 feet over to under the stairs and back up through the floor into a sump. The sump will be lower than the tank so the pressure of the water from the tank should make this work, right? ( My plumber was almost clueless but didn't see why it wouldn't work) Wayne and I just talked briefly and I haven't had time to get back with him yet but in theory I don't see why it wouldn't work like a sink trap in a way. The only thing I see maybe being an issue is the air the overflows suck to regulate the flow since the water flow has to do a 90 (2 45's) to get back up to the sump. Will all the bubbles create some sort of weird back pressure cutting uphill like that? Should I go from a 1.5 overflow drain to a 2" under the floor to help this? Also we didn't get to talk about how to actually get the water actually into the sump. Do some sort of bulkhead in the bottom of a tank and let the water just come up and in this manner then hit the bubble baffles over to the fuge/sump area. Have a separate sump and fuge tank? Or one huge tank divided? I have tons of room under the stairs and am having a drain and water line installed so plan on doing water changes and everything from under the steps. My 50 gallon barrel fits with lots of room to spare so I am very excited about using all this space if I can get the water over to it!! Any advise is much appreciated.
 
Last edited:
angela, i have no advice....but all i can say is WOW!!!...your house is going to be amazing.....one of these days, i'll be in your shoes.....better yet, adopt me please!!!
 
I am clueless as well same like John.....lol.....It's going to be an awesome house angela!!!!! You can adopt both of us!!!! lol.....
 
I wish this was just a basement sump the trick is it is actually on the same floor just the pipe has to go under the floor over to the closet and then up to the sump. I know water will flow up hill if the starting point is higher then the finishing point. But the one thing I don't know is how will it slow the flow will be she will have 2 overflows and I think unless some one here is a physics major we may have to just try it out. I don't have the measurements yet but will try to go over there and draw something out. So anyone know any formulas like the pull of gravity - the weight of saltwater and the friction of of the size of pipe / some magic number = ? gph. :)
 
BTW Angela you may want to talk to your contractor about greenboard and you may want to paint the wood on your stand before you finish it I would have used treated wood under it but seal it good and you shouldn't have a problem.
 
Nice set-up!

The water will seek its own level so as long as the outlet to the sump is lower than the the inlet (which should be near the of the tank assuming you are using some sort of durso standpipe set-up) your system will act like you have a basement set-up.

As for pipe size...i'm no expert but it would seem that now is not the time to cut corners and going with duel 2" drains would be the way to go here.

hth

Jeff
 
I plumbed this exact setup for a guy 4 years ago. The sump was actually in another room across the house and I ended up using about 200 ft of pipe to do the job. So this definately will work, but you need to keep your frictional losses to a minimum. Your going to have roundly only 6ft or so of static head to work with, so the more you cut into this with frictional losses, the more chance of having problems. What this means is to use 2- 45's instead of a 90, use bigger plumbing if possible, and make sure to sand the inside of all of your connections.
 
I don't know a magic equation, but of course in theory, this will work. The issue is that the water in your downward plumbing will need to fill high enough to put the necessary pressure on the water in the rest of the plumbing to push it in to your sump. So...

I would agree that, unless there is some reason it would be difficult to do, you should go with the larger plumbing right off the bat. A bigger cross section pipe will allow more pressure to build up in the larger pipe while at a lower level than a smaller diameter pipe (if I'm not describing this well, sorry and ask me to clarify). Aside from that, bigger plumbing will be a failsafe as the the plumbing slows over time, won't cost that much more to implement if you do it now, and finding out that smaller plumbing won't work will certainly cost a lot of time and money to reverse.

Figuring out the best way to get water in to the sump is an interesting problem. Seems like going in the bottom of the sump would be good because you'd save another 90. It would get the water in to the sump at the lowest level too, but the water level you're "fighting against" will still be the water level in the sump (so no real gain). A disadvantage of that set-up is if you get a leak in the plumbing, there's no way to isolate the sump volume from the plumbing (unless you somehow put in a valve).

I'd bite the bullet on the extra 90 and bring in the sump input on the side at the water level of the sump. Then putting in a valve is a piece of cake.

Of course, if it doesn't work, don't blame me :)

Very exciting project. I'm a long way away, but let me know if I can help out.
 
I am glad to see that this can work this way! I went to Lowes this morning and got the stuff to "try it out" on my exsisting system since its basically the same thing just overflows in different spots. I was going to dry fit it all in and run it to a tub in a 2 foot upward fashion at the end to see what happens with the air and all.

Chris, how did you bring it back into the sump? I am glad this has been done already and now I don't have to do my messy test I was going to do this morning on my tank.

Problem is I had the plumber putting in 1.5 pipe but did think to have him do 2 45's instead of 90's. I may be able to catch him before he actually glues it up if a 2" is much better. I will call him and put a hold on it if he hasn't done it already.

Thanks for the compliments guys. I plan on trying to go a little slow on this tank and not make mistakes. Yea, The builder put partical board on the stand top also I need to either change or seal REAL good and I was planning on painting all the exposed wood in the wall with that water tight paint. I don't think there will be anything in the stand but the drain pipe as everything will be in the closet. The canopy build I haven't even thought about yet but I am having it and the closet vented directly to the outside so no more dehumidifiers running up my electric hopefully.
 
OK I caught the plumber in time to change the pipe to a 2". I talked with Cstowers on the phone and it sounds like the way you were thinking it would work is perfect Wayne. Now to get the flow set up figured out so I can order the tank. This is the ? I posted on the tunze forum to get Rogers opinion on what to do...


I am planning my 2nd 270 in wall veiwable from front and back this time and was wanting to get away from the closed loops. The tank is 7'x2'x31"tall with overflows on both ends. Or maybe 1 large overflow on 1 end depending on what you think will work best for my set up for flow. The tank is not ordered so it can be made however.

The ends of the tank are recesed within the wall so I wanted to mount a wavebox or streams beside the overflows so they are hidden from the veiwing area also. I was thinking about having the overflows built with 6-8 inches short of being wall to wall as a nice spot to mount my flow devices but am clueless as to how a wavebox works and if it can point to the other side of the tank with another end overflow even. I have no experience with Tunze but have always read great things about them so what would you recomend for this set up? Also I plan on this being mainly an SPS set up if that matters. Thanks!
 
If you are coming to the meeting you will see wave boxes and also the streams also I am planning on making some boxes to hide pumps in.
 
Thats OK Chris ;) I did follow the link though but was wondering why you linked basement stuff. I think its figured out now at least I hope so but any good recommendations for a return pump that will push the water back that far and up to the tank? I will need a pressure rated pump, right?
 
Don't use treated wood under the tank, there are several threads about treated wood stands that warp as the wood cures. Treated wood is very heavy because it has quite a bit of moisture in it. Once this moisture dries up you will not have the same strait boards you started with.
 
That may be true if you are just building a regular stand but when you are doing a in wall type it doesn't warp if you have it secured. The main reason not to use treated boards for regular stands is the chemicals in it and any space under the stand can get contaminated but in a inwall use it can be used and kept from warping but since she is already got it built she needs to seal it because if you thing treated lumber warps you should see regular lumber when in contact with water then dries. Also Angela did you talk to him about greenboard?
 
Back
Top