Building Big Bertha: 800G

[bbrantley]

Howdy all!

Warning: long diatribe explaining my thought process in next few paragraphs. Skip to picture if you don't care about it!

I've spent 9 months cycling my 225G tank and watching lots of coralline grow. I've conquered the hair algae, diatoms, and whatever else. I don't even do a water change more than every 6 weeks or so, but I have almost no bioload and so it's pretty easy. (What have I been doing all this time? Getting sidetracked by surprises and issues having nothing to do with reefkeeping!)

Anyway, I settled into analyzing what the next steps were for finishing out my system and I realized that I just don't have enough room under the tank to put all the equipment, and I'm also pretty picky about noise. I've gone to great lengths to reduce the noise to a tiny gurgle, and that's worked out pretty well. (Replacing fans in my Aquactinics hood, stealing the gated-drain-with-emergency-backup idea for no cavitation or bubbles, going to all Poseidon pumps, etc.) However, I have no room left for Ca, phosphate, or kalk reactors... nor a refugium or proper storage for my RODI and saltwater mix containers.

The first solution I came up with was to use one small, extra room on the lower floor of my house as an equipment room. Unfortunately, that room is clear across the house, the downstairs is a completely-finished half-basement, and there is no easy way to run plumbing and data (for controllers) between the two. It can be done, but my estimates are running into the $12,000 range!

So I got to thinking that maybe an alternative is to convert my only-somewhat-used media room into a fish room. This has several nice advantages: it's on the same floor as the tank, it's literally inches from the tank -- separated only by a 4-inch load-bearing internal wall, and it's much bigger (12 x 17 feet instead of 10 by 7). It also isn't below grade, so adding a drain in the floor may be considerably easier.

Once I started thinking about this possibility, it occurred to me that maybe I could just back my tank up into the theoretical equipment room and have an in-wall display instead! This would make things cleaner, buy me back 12 square feet of space in my living room, and move the last remaining dregs of gurgle noise to behind a nice wall.

And (are you drooling yet?), finally, it occurred to me that the marginal cost of moving to a larger tank at the same time would be a relative "bargain!"

So, without further delay, here's what I've got for Bertha so far. First, a rudimentary diagram of the room with the tank laid in:



Two important things to note right away:

1. The upper wall of the tank faces out into my living room and the left wall faces out into the hallway adjacent to my living room. My entire floor is completely open except for this media room's walls, so you'll be able to see in both sides of the tank from most places in the main room. (I'll add a picture of the room in another post soon.)

2. There's a tiny square on the corner. As awesome as I think it would be to have the aquarium "wrap around" the corner of the room there, my architect friend has already confirmed my fears: that "hole" is a load-bearing pair of 2x4's that hold the entire loft (above the media--er, fish--room) up, so it's not going away.

The tank dimensions work out to around 800 gallons if I assume a 32" height. My current tank is 30" and I don't want to go much higher.

Obstacles and leading questions for you guys who have too much time to spend on these forums: [list=1][*]Structural concerns: This tank has to sit on the main floor of my house, underneath which is a fully-finished lower floor/half-basement. For the builders who're reading, the floor is comprised of 12" TJI's at 16" on-center that run vertically in the diagram above. There's a 10-inch steel beam running horizontally directly under the top edge of the tank in that same diagram, so the TJI's span the 17 feet of fish room (which is in the corner of my house.) For reference, I have an 8500-pound fireplace/stove just 10 feet diagonally away from the proposed location of this tank with roughly half the square footage and *three* 8-inch steel beams running in parallel underneath it. I didn't design the house or choose the 8,500-pound stove. I also don't expect anyone to tell me the magic answer here, so I'll submit the drawings to my friendly structural engineer and let you know what he comes up with. I suspect what I'll end up doing is quasi-sistering in 2 or 3 steel beams parallel to and between several of the TJI's directly underneath the tank. I will probably also have to reinforce the 10-inch steel beam described above as well as its steel support posts. (Sorry if I'm mangling the technical terms for these construction gadgets; I'm a total rookie when it comes to building houses!)
[*]Water concerns: It's imperative to me that the water in this tank not present a risk to the rest of my house, structurally or any other way. I don't want rotting, flooding, rusting, or anything else. I do have one small luxury with respect to these problems, and that's that I live at about 9,000 feet and it never gets truly hot or humid here. I do not have any active ventilation system in the fish room (or in my house, for that matter) except for windows... there is radiant floor heat and no air-conditioning. I do have two nice windows in the soon-to-be fish room, both on the bottom right corner in that diagram, and I also have the ability to drill holes in my wall to add fans, plumbing, or whatever else I need. I would appreciate initial thoughts on this. For reference, my 225G is fan-cooled and evaporates at an average of about 4 gallons per day -- 7 or 8 if it gets hot in the house. Those gallons don't even begin to affect the dry air in the main "room" of my first floor, at least as far as I can tell. I'd have 3.5 times the surface area on the new tank, but I think I might also have much better temp stability and I'd certainly consider active chilling if needed.
[*]Plumbing concerns: This I also have to work out with my contractor. I'd want plumbing in that room and I'll have to get it through the floor. I think this is relatively easy EXCEPT I want to make the whole thing into a bathtub floor of some sort, so if disaster strikes I do not ruin the rest of my house. I can't really cut corners on this; it's just not worth it if I can't (literally) catch-all failure modes with a bathtub and a drain. (Well, okay, catastrophic failure of the acrylic wouldn't be caught, but I guess I have to have a reason for homeowner's insurance, right?!)
[*]Sound: I'm a little concerned about noise bleeding through the walls. Since I'll have to repanel all the walls anyway (see "water" above), I can add additional soundproofing and bulk up the door to the hallway to cut that down. I am actually more worried about vibrational noise coming through the floor, in fact. This worries me because I can hear one of my Tunze Streams at night in my bedroom directly underneath the tank today. (I haven't been able to figure out why it's noisier; I think it's just a chance resonance thing.) My house is very quiet (remember, no active ventilation... and I live up in the boonies so there are few cars or people) so these things tend to stick out. I'd love to hear people's experience with this challenge.
[*]Dumb question: This silly question just stems from my general inexperience and newbiness. I have a bunch more, but I'll start with one for now: 'm going to have trouble getting to the front corner of the tank unless I can climb on it, because I don't want to have panels that swing up above the tank. Can I get a tank with an acrylic top that's sturdy enough for me to crawl around on? My 3/4" on my 225G is pretty good, though I wouldn't want to have to stand on it!
[/list=1]
Thanks for reading the lengthy start to this thread. I hope this will come to fruition; a lot hinges on the plans to mitigate the big three concerns I listed first above.

Please let me know your thoughts!

Ben

[bbrantley]

Wow, all quiet on the western front, eh?

I had several conversations with Important People today, including the architect who drew the plans for my house, a structural engineer I've used on other projects, and several acrylic tank builders, including James at Envision Acrylics and my "local" fabricators, Aquatic Design Habitats.

I also started drawing a component diagram with some simple connections. Most of this I already have similarly-plumbed on my existing tank, though with no where near the cleanliness that I'd like to aim for for Bertha. I probably need to add some additional components, too, like a kalk stirrer and maybe a phyto reactor.



Now, somebody say something. And a happy 4th of July to you all, too!

Ben

[29reef]

Can I have it when your done playing with it?

Looks like a lot of work you got there.

[bbrantley]

Originally posted by 29reef
Can I have it when your done playing with it?

Looks like a lot of work you got there.

No problem! You just have to come pick it up.

It will definitely be a lot of work. I've never done major home improvement work before, so it's kind of interesting to me even though I know it will be back-breaking and obnoxious after about day 3. I'm going to hire some more experienced helpers to really knock out a lot of the grunt work quickly, because I want my house to return to a maximally-livable state as quickly as possible.

Speaking of the house, here's a shot of my existing tank (propped up on horses before I got the stand last year) that conveniently shows the corner where the two viewing surfaces will be exposed. I've masked them in blue to give a rough idea of what it will look like. Like I mentioned above, it appears the load-bearing post in the very corner will have to remain, so that's why there are two distinct blue rectangles.

[Bebo77]

good lord man that is a huge display....

[Bax]

Nice, and ambitious project!

Sounds like you are going to have to have your architect friend work out a support system below the tank. that's a lot of weight for a wood floor.

Good luck!

[bbrantley]

Bebo, you're right. It's a little intimidating to think about caring for it.

Bax, thanks, and you're also right. The engineer took the whole week off this week, so it'll be later next week before I get some plans and can start planning the construction.

Here's a scale rendering of what it should end up looking like:



I'm liking this free SketchUp program (Google bought it and they give it away)... it will be helpful to visualize space in the room as I distribute large components, because I have very poor mental visualization skills! I'll throw some of the possibilities in the room later and get your feedback.

[bob21115]

bbrantley,Here's a scale rendering of what it should end up looking like:



Is the front right corner of the tank the load bearing wall you were talking about in the begining of the post?

[bbrantley]

Is the front right corner of the tank the load bearing wall you were talking about in the begining of the post? [/B]

Hi Bob, you got it -- that is a load-bearing post for the loft that sits atop that room. Actually, the house drawings seem to indicate that that entire wall is load-bearing, but I'm not sure if that's actually true. Regardless, the huge chunk of wall that'll have to be re-built will need to be pretty sturdy!

[jayo]

Were you thinking of having a rectangular tank made with the square section cut out on the corner?

If so, you might consider instead to just make a rectangular tank and have it be 'set back' slightly from each wall - sort of a 'porthole' look. Dressed up well this could look great and would be easier to build and more flexible if (heaven forbid!) you ever need to move it to a new location or sell it.

jayo

[bbrantley]

Originally posted by jayo
Were you thinking of having a rectangular tank made with the square section cut out on the corner?

If so, you might consider instead to just make a rectangular tank and have it be 'set back' slightly from each wall - sort of a 'porthole' look. Dressed up well this could look great and would be easier to build and more flexible if (heaven forbid!) you ever need to move it to a new location or sell it.

jayo

Jayo, you make a very legitimate point about potentially re-use and viability down the road. I've been thinking about that on and off, and I agree that having a more traditional shape would be more sensible in that respect. To your concern about difficulty to build, the folks I've spoken with don't seem concerned about this at all. In fact, it essentially just adds a couple cuts and a couple extra seams... so it probably costs me another $200 to do the "cut-out." (The seams don't have to be polished because they will be hidden behind the walls.) Doing it this way potentially saves a good bit of work and cost involved in rebuilding the walls as well.

The real question is, what's the aesthetic value of having it flush with the wall versus backed off 4-5 inches? I think it's pretty high for me, but it's really tough to say without seeing both... which I doubt I ever will! I'll try adding a scale version of my living room to the sketch and rendering it to scale, set back 4 inches, and see what that looks like.

In any event, thanks for your suggestion. I'll keep a-ponderin'.

Ben

[H20ENG]

I just built a sump with a notch in one corner. I simply built the sump, then glued up 2 pieces for the corner, trimmed to fit, glued it in, then had at it with the flush trim bit.

You could always fill the setback ledge with sand, then put some "fake glass" flush with the wall.

Nice project!
Chris

[bbrantley]

Originally posted by H20ENG
You could always fill the setback ledge with sand, then put some "fake glass" flush with the wall.

Ha, ha! I'll, err, keep that one in my back pocket, Chris.

Okay, so here's a question for my extensive fan base: I'm trying to figure out a way to have my cake and eat it, too. I use the constricted-overflow approach in my tank today to keep my sump splashing, bubbles, and noise to effectively zero. All I have to do is dial down the gate valve on my primary overflow to the point where the backpressure caused by water in the sump forces water in the overflow box to remain stably above the top of the drain intake.

I should emphasize stably, because this is the real problem: if the water level in the sump fluctuates a bit, the backpressure changes, and the level of the water in the overflow changes to match. If that level goes too low, I start sucking air into the drain and noise ensues. (If it goes too high, the water fills up until it starts falling through the backup drain, which is, of course, unconstricted and super-noisy.) In practice, this now happens only occasionally, since my auto-topoff manages to keep the level reasonably close to the same point all the time. But still...

What I would like to do is use this same noise-killing approach in Bertha, but without the dependency on the height of the water in the sump. I figure the only way I can do this is by raising the bottom of the drain line so that it is NOT in the water at all. Problem is, then I get to listen to at least some splashing, and I might get a lot of excess bubbles to boot. Enter my Dumb Idea:



I figure maybe I can come up with a way to spread the draining water out a bit and have it dump onto the top edge of this pink angled acrylic sheet. Then I end up with more a nice, quiet(er) laminar flow that smoothly sheets down into the sump's water level. I'm sure somebody has done something like this before, so tell me if you think this makes any sense (and what you'd do differently).

[H20ENG]

If your sump is setup so that the drain portion is compartmentalized, that portions' level will never change regardless of the topoff level. You can even use a bucket or a large piece of pipe as long as its higher than the rest of the sumps water level.

That said, your PINK baffle (which is very, umm, "sensitive", BTW ) WILL quiet your flow a bit. This is used in the HOB Deltec skimmer to quiet the flow.
HTH

[bbrantley]

Originally posted by H20ENG
If your sump is setup so that the drain portion is compartmentalized, that portions' level will never change regardless of the topoff level. You can even use a bucket or a large piece of pipe as long as its higher than the rest of the sumps water level.

That said, your PINK baffle (which is very, umm, "sensitive", BTW ) WILL quiet your flow a bit. This is used in the HOB Deltec skimmer to quiet the flow.
HTH

Thank you for these insightful comments. Especially the one about my special pink baffle. Now I know what colors to pick in my future renderings.

You know, it seems so obvious now that you mention it. I can achieve the same "sheeting" effect simply by sticking the drain in a tall cylinder. This allows more flexibility and keeps me from having to engineer a way to spread the water from the drainpipe out, too. How depressingly obvious, now that you mention it.

Thanks much.

Ben

[H20ENG]

"How depressingly obvious"

Just stare at that pink baffle, the color is supposed to soothe.....

No worries, now you know

The larger diameter pipe you can use, the smoother (and quieter) the flow. Even better if you route the top smooth with a roundover bit inside and out.

I plan to have my skimmer in a big box in my next sump. This box will be able to overflow from all 4 sides. My skimmer will have no bottom, but will be "floating" in this box. This is so I can drain my overflow line right into my skimmer. Since I will have a surge, this will help keep the skimmer water level stable. It'll also be real easy to clean out the skimmer

[bbrantley]

Originally posted by H20ENG
"How depressingly obvious"

Just stare at that pink baffle, the color is supposed to soothe.....

No worries, now you know

The larger diameter pipe you can use, the smoother (and quieter) the flow. Even better if you route the top smooth with a roundover bit inside and out.

I plan to have my skimmer in a big box in my next sump. This box will be able to overflow from all 4 sides. My skimmer will have no bottom, but will be "floating" in this box. This is so I can drain my overflow line right into my skimmer. Since I will have a surge, this will help keep the skimmer water level stable. It'll also be real easy to clean out the skimmer

Cool. I'm hoping to gravity-feed my skimmer, also to achieve direct skimming from what will probably be a coast-to-coast external overflow on the short end of the tank.

BTW, you have pictures of a lot of impressive gadgets in your gallery. Do you keep a tank at home as well, or are most of those for your "day job?"

[H20ENG]

Most of that cool stuff was for other people or at my old job. My tanks are kind of neglected at the moment. My 90 is still dark to cook the rock. One of my little tanks still has a water bottle skimmer that I made 15 minutes before going on vacation. Cobblers kids have no shoes...
Still working on my setup, but someday I'll have some cool pics.

Remember that if you do a surge, it will make your skimmer fluctuate. Not if you use an OceansMotions, but a big head tank and resulting dump.

Sweet project!

[bbrantley]

Okay, I'm really ready now for some input on the ventilation in the room. Here are the relevant facts:

1. The tank and all supporting equipment will all be in one 200 square foot room.

2. The room has two windows to the outside and will be sealed off from the rest of the house with a weather-stripped door and moisture barriers behind all the walls, floor, and ceiling.

3. The room has radiant floor heating; there are no ventilation ducts anywhere in the house.

4. It's easy for me to cut holes in the side of the room that vent to the outside.

5. I live in a dry climate (Colorado) at 8,500 feet. It is consistently cold here in all but the summer months, and it is relatively cool in the summer -- never more than 80F and typically about 45F at night.


Given the above, what are my choices for managing heat and humidity? I've read about HRV's, simple exhausts, active air-conditioners, eco-coolers, bathroom fans, and more. It's a little overwhelming and kind of hard for me to understand what's really effective. My priorities are, in rough order, quiet, energy efficient, inexpensive, and easy to install.

What do you folks suggest?

[bbrantley]

Today we have good news and, well, news.

First the good news: I cross-posted my plea for HVAC advice and capncapo, resident RC HVAC expert, answered with the following:

Having vents to the outside that would be manually opened, closed and adjusted when necessary would satisfy just about every one of your criteria... Placing one of the vents low and the other high will make for a natural flow of air into and out of your room with no noise.

This is conveniently fantastic. Everything else is more expensive up here, but at least humidity control is not.


Now for the other news. The structural engineer came back with a list of modifications that will be required to support the load of the tank and all its supporting equipment including mixing reservoirs, sump, refugium, etc. Here's the list of recommendations:

1. Double the number of floor joists to 8" on center.
2. Replace the steel beam bearing one end of the joists with a beam twice as big, or weld a big steel plate to the bottom of it.
3. Double the size of the foundation footing that the steel beam loads onto.
4. Above the cut-outs in the walls for the tank, install a header consisting of two 9.25" microlam beams.

I can't say any of this is really a huge surprise, but it's a daunting list. A lot of the work will require access (and big messes) underneath the room, and all of that area is filled with a bunch of small finished areas (closets, bathrooms, utility closet, part of a bedroom, ventilation soffet, etc.). So the job will be decidedly non-trivial.

Next step is to get some builders to come render their "expert" opinion, and also quote me prices. I plan to do some of it myself, but the heavy lifting, welding, and the structural stuff I'm going to have to hand off to people with more time and musclepower than me.

[DamienHanna]

I would be skeptical that passive netillation will be enough with this much water in a room that size. With your tank, sump, refuge, mixing setup you will be over 1000 gallons of water in a pretty small space.

I have 600+ gallons of water in my tank room and I consistently run 10%-30% (depending on time of day) above ambient humidity and I have a 600cfm extractor fan going 24/7.

I live in the Los Angeles SF Valley and it's very dry out here. The drier (sp?) the air the more evaporation you will get, which is great for cooling, but a lot of moisture gets dumped into the air and it needs to go somewhere. I lose 20+ gallons of water per day in the summer on my system and you will lose more. Think about how much water that is!!!

At the very least I would hook a powerful ventillation fan up to a humidity sensor to pull the mosit air out when it hits a threshold.

Humidity control with a system this size is very important; just ask Mr. 4000...

[bbrantley]

Originally posted by DamienHanna
I would be skeptical that passive netillation will be enough with this much water in a room that size. With your tank, sump, refuge, mixing setup you will be over 1000 gallons of water in a pretty small space.

I have 600+ gallons of water in my tank room and I consistently run 10%-30% (depending on time of day) above ambient humidity and I have a 600cfm extractor fan going 24/7.

I live in the Los Angeles SF Valley and it's very dry out here. The drier (sp?) the air the more evaporation you will get, which is great for cooling, but a lot of moisture gets dumped into the air and it needs to go somewhere. I lose 20+ gallons of water per day in the summer on my system and you will lose more. Think about how much water that is!!!

At the very least I would hook a powerful ventillation fan up to a humidity sensor to pull the mosit air out when it hits a threshold.

Humidity control with a system this size is very important; just ask Mr. 4000...

Good points, Damien. I'll certainly be specing the ventilation pretty large so I can move a lot of air quickly, and I'll be able to position the exhaust pretty near the tank for maximum water suckage.

I lose about 4 gpd on my 225 today on warm days when the fan engages for cooling, so 20 sounds about right given that it is pretty much a function of surface area. Another thing that will happen to help mediate it, I believe, is that the humidity will come up to something "normal" pretty easily -- and then the rate of evap will be reduced, helping to slow things down a bit. At least, I think it will.

I read of Mr. 4000's system demise several years ago when I first started reading RC, and his story has made a lasting impression on me, to say the least.

Ben

[bbrantley]

Okay, I have a couple of "big tank" questions, or maybe they should really be called "deep tank" questions:

1. Are there any super-long gloves that actually work? I have the long purple-and-orange ones you can buy from the various internet fish stores, and they sorta work... but they're not quite long enough to really go up and cover the whole shoulder and let you get to those bottom few inches of the tank. I've looked and looked for gloves that might be a few inches longer, perhaps with some kind of strap, instead of elastic, to hold them up high on the body. No dice. Any ideas?

2. I use a magnetic scraper on my 3/4" acrylic today and it's good for 90% of the surface area. The very bottom and very top of the tank don't work well, though, so I use Kent scrapes of various lengths to do those. The problem is that the Kent rods that make the scrapers long are so flimsy... you have to bend 'em to get enough torque to scrape down low, and then the handle is so small that it gets tiring and hard to control. I'm thinking there should be a scraper built onto the end of a much longer, more rigid plastic handle with a serious hand grip on the end... something more like the thickness of those squeegees you use at the gas station to clean your car windows. Has anyone found something like this that works well? If not, perhaps I will have to try concocting a super-scraper out of one. I'm thinking this is going to be even more important when Bertha is built and I have to scrape from 4 or 5 feet away sometimes.

Ben

[H20ENG]

Hi again, Ben.
At 5 ft. you need to look at something like a fiberglass pole that you can attach various scrapers or pads to. Square tube will be the most rigid. The stuff is kinda spendy, but you may be able to find one thats pre made for something else like painting, etc, then modify it to your use.

You might try filling some pvc pipe with thickened epoxy, but for the hassle, go with fiberglass.

We always used painted aluminum tools. There were no issues with water quality since the tools were only in the tanks for a very short time. A fresh water rinse keeps them in good shape.

Re: ventilation;
If you can keep any areas of your tank or sump covered, this will really help evaporation. But, if you need that much cooling you will want it opened up.

I personally would want less evap taking place in the room, and build a cooling tower for outside, or a geo loop.

Also, when its really cold out (read DRY), your tank will still evaporate like mad causing you to continue to make up water, and run the heaters to counteract the cooling that takes place.

I know many people dont want to cover their tanks, but for me the cost and headache savings is worth it.

Food for thought
Chris

[bbrantley]

Hey Chris,

Originally posted by H20ENG
[B]Hi again, Ben.
At 5 ft. you need to look at something like a fiberglass pole that you can attach various scrapers or pads to. Square tube will be the most rigid. The stuff is kinda spendy, but you may be able to find one thats pre made for something else like painting, etc, then modify it to your use.

...

We always used painted aluminum tools. There were no issues with water quality since the tools were only in the tanks for a very short time. A fresh water rinse keeps them in good shape.

Ah, good idea. Yeah, the 5 foot span front-to-back will mean that I will be scraping either from the back with a long pole or scraping from atop the tank. Unfortunately, when I'm on top of the tank I won't be able to stand (I'll have to sit or be on my knees) and so I won't have the leverage or the stamina that I would otherwise. I'm thinking I'll definitely need a couple different lengths of scrapers just like I have now, except Industrial Strength. I'll do some probing around when I'm in the hardware store next time and see what I can rig up.

If you can keep any areas of your tank or sump covered, this will really help evaporation. But, if you need that much cooling you will want it opened up.

I personally would want less evap taking place in the room, and build a cooling tower for outside, or a geo loop.

Also, when its really cold out (read DRY), your tank will still evaporate like mad causing you to continue to make up water, and run the heaters to counteract the cooling that takes place.

Well, I think the light hood I end up building will provide a lot of enclosure -- but it won't be seal, no. I can control the evaporative surface area on the rest with lids as well, so I guess it remains to be seen how much I'll need to do it. I do like the idea of avoiding venting the evaporative loss by just putting that component outside to begin with... but I think I can do it quickly with some 6" fans if I have to.

One interesting note about living here: our relative humidity actually stays fairly constant from winter to summer. For instance, today is about as hot as it ever gets here, 84F, and our rel humidity is 17%. We also hover in the 15's to 20's in the winter when it is 20F on average. (Yes, we use a lot of Chapstick!) The one good thing about this low humidity is that the 17% in the summer means there is a LOT more evaporative capacity than the winter, so I actually observe an inverse effect with evaporative loss.

Now, it also happens that when it's 84F here, like today, the fans on my tank run at about half-duty all day long... so I end up with an EXTRA LOT evaporation since I have no air-conditioning in this house.

Ben