light rack construction
light rack construction
The next step for this project was to provide some light. It wasn't essential up to this point to have any additional light other than ambient room light, so there was no hurry except that this would determine when I could begin stocking the joint. I had purchased my AquaMedic 250W MH pendant long before I ever put any water in the tank and before I knew where it would be situated in my home (FYI - BAD IDEA). This was one of the only choices I made without sufficient planning. I chose this since this is the light John uses and I really like his setup. Additionally, it was on sale at
www.helolights.com. Also, I liked the idea of a single bulb for my small system. Being a diver and favoring a slightly bluish tint, I selected a 15K XM bulb. There were several challenges to using this MH pendant. First and foremost this pendant is supposed to be hung from the ceiling. I didn't realize that my system would be sitting in front of a column with a ceiling that is probably 30 feet high, so therefore I could not suspend it as recommended in the instructions. I considered building a shelf off of the column behind my tank from which to hang the pendant, but the column is angled (not a flat surface). The angle and the fact that the shelf would have to protrude several feet off of the column meant an extremely difficult construction project as well as a visually unappealing product. I then had a revelation and decided to build the light rack so that it would be attached to the back of the cabinet, then ascend above and project toward the front of the tank. The added bonus is that there's no shelf built into the column behind the tank, meaning less holes to fill if/when the system is taken down. When will that occur? -- when I'm ready to build my monster system. Anyway, back to the light rack - here's how I did it.
I got some more of the 3/4" birch plywood at Home Depot. Again, I wanted the rack to be only minimally visible, and it needed to be secured onto the cabinet. I therefore cut the main vertical piece in the shape of a trapezoid so that it would be tapered behind the tank and therefore, less conspicuous. The lower half of the rack was fashioned as wide as the cabinet so that it could be secured to the cabinet. The height was determined by the fact that I wanted the pendant about 8" off of the water surface.
The horizontal piece at the top projects from back to front over the center of the tank, and that is where I mounted my light. A separate piece of plywood was cut with 45 degree angles and this served as a brace to support the light pendant. Remember this picture from before?
Sorry, I know the rack is finished here, but this shows how I mounted the pendant to the rack. The pendant came with some hardware to hang it from the ceiling. I simply drilled 2 holes into the top of the rack (where it would be centered over the tank), disassembled the hardware, then threaded some wire between the two mounting screws and over the top of my rack, and voala, there I had it! Quite simple, actually. The wire is not visible in the above image, nor is it visible when viewing my tank. In the photo you can see one of the mounting screws over the pendant. The wire passes through this screw, through a hole in the wood, over the top (horozontally) and down the hole on the other side and into the other mounting screw.
The next step was to build a shelf for my light ballast. I didn't want the ballast inside the cabinet due to concerns for heat accumulation, so I placed it behind the light rack. This is just a simple shelf that I extended onto the back of the light rack. I cut it so that it would fit my ballast exactly, and nothing further. I wish I had made it a little bigger, in order to store things on, but I can always add that modification at a later date.
And here it is, completed. Ignore the plumbing, I'll get to that later. The devices on top of the ballast are an Aqualifter air pump and prefilter for my HOB overflow. I should also mention that I drilled numerous holes in the vertical piece of the rack where the ballast sits, in order to provide ventilation. Sorry, don't have a picture of this, but see if you can imagine multiple round holes in the wood behind the ballast ... there you go.
Now I had to provide a way to secure the rack to my cabinet. I used two more pieces of 3/4" plywood that were tall and wide enough to provide several sites to drill into the side 2x4's of my cabinet frame (in the back). These are illustrated here.
What I'm not showing is that I was nervous that these wouldn't be able to handle the weight of my ballast and pendant. I therefore added additional pieces of wood to the right angle joints and screwed these into both the back of the rack and the side "legs," know what I mean?
Here's a view of the bottom of the finished product looking from the left and behind the cabinet (ignore the sump and skimmer, I'll get to those later). The legs are drilled into the inside of the back sides of the cabinet with 3" screws and no wood glue, since I wanted to be able to remove this. This will be essential when I need to do maintenance on my SCWD (recommended every 6 months for cleaning), since I can't get to it with the light rack mounted.
The added benefit of this light rack is that it conceals a lot of the plumbing from the rear of the tank. This is less convenient for me when I need to work behind the tank, but those will be rare occasions (hopefully) and, as I mentioned, aesthetics were of primary importance.
The last few steps were to add some trim to the visible portions of the light rack to conceal the end grain of the plywood. This was added to the entire top surface as well as the upper half of the rack. Once applied, the rack was stained, sealed with polyurethane (3 coats, of course), then mounted onto the cabinet. Oh yeah, almost forgot, I also had to make some holes in the upper brace and at the rear of the rack for my pendant electrical cord. This was a bit of a cluster @#%&. I used a drill and made multiple holes in the wood, then chopped out the intervening segments of wood until I had a hole. I then used a file to smooth out the holes. This doesn't look good but fortunately it's pretty well hidden by the light pendant. You can see the electrical cord passing through the rack in the photo below. I later learned that there's a thing called a hole saw that attaches to a drill and makes a perfect hole ... brilliant! Wish I knew about this before. Oh well, overall I am very happy with how this turned out.