High Tide Aquatics

Anyone have XL tank above garage?

dragnflyjunk

dragnflyjunk

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In the bay area, seems common to have living space in the second floor... ie. San Francisco houses, etc.

I've been wanting to build a room above my garage (in the Pacifica) where I want to house a 375G tank.
Even though I've hired a structural engineer to calculate what needs to be done to hold this, my wife is veto-ing the entire idea because it just seems like an idiotic idea to do this in a place where earthquakes occur.

My question is, is it? Intuitively, it does seem pretty insane to put a 6000+ lbs tank above a flimsy garage...plus if there's an earthquake and it compromises the structural integrity of the room above and the weight just not only f**ks up my garage but the cars underneath it... I'll be lucky if she doesn't divorce me. lol.

Bad idea? Thoughts?

Love to hear!
 
Well, if you hire a structural engineer to add bracing in the garage, I don't see the issue.
You do need to consider side loads during an earthquake though, and likely add some shear supports as well
as normal vertical supports. I would assume the engineer would advise that.
Remember that 6000 pounds is not all that much compared to the weight of a house.

A better idea: Sell the cars, and make a fish-man-cave in the garage. :cool:
 
Yep. The job of the structural engineer is to make that 'flimsy' garage into something that can hold the tank, addition and all your stuff. It's what they do!

After the remodel the garage will be the safest place in your house. There is an unreal amount of structure to meet current quake standards.

Even better idea :): Sell the cars, turn garage into massive fish room to support mega DT tank upstairs. :cool::cool:

Go big or go home!
 
Most newer buildings are designed to withstand an earthquake only enough to get the people inside safely out before they collapse (cheery thought, huh?). If you are in an older building built before around 1990, it probably won't even meet that minimum standard because we didn't really understand how buildings behaved in earthquakes. My point is that there's a significant chance that your current garage is going to fall over in a moderate earthquake and destroy your cars, even without a tank in the attic.

However, if you upgrade the garage structure, add some steel beams, moment frames, or shear walls as part of the tank upgrade, then the chance of your garage surviving an earthquake could be significantly improved. So technically, the addition of the tank would make the garage safer.
 
Bluprntguy said:
Most newer buildings are designed to withstand an earthquake only enough to get the people inside safely out before they collapse (cheery thought, huh?).
Click to expand...

You sure about that?

You are supposed to go INTO a building during a quake.

When we remodeled there was lots of structure to keep the house up and prevent damage. Look at what collapsed houses in the Marina during the Loma Prieta quake. They came off the foundations. Our addition has BIG metal brackets attached to the structure and bolted into the foundation.

All the shear walls have an unreal nail pattern. IIRC, every 2" OC in the field.

I worry much more about the stuff inside the house. A friend in LA said his frig ended up in the middle of the kitchen during the Northridge quake. My cousin in Napa lost his aquarium. Rocks fell and broke it. Stuff fell out of all the cabinets.

Even in the huge San Francisco (1906) quake, most of the damage was from fire. Since we don't have wood burning stoves now it won't be as big a deal. A walking frig is one thing, but a walking wood stove is a real hazard!
 
aqua-nut said:
You sure about that?

You are supposed to go INTO a building during a quake.

When we remodeled there was lots of structure to keep the house up and prevent damage. Look at what collapsed houses in the Marina during the Loma Prieta quake. They came off the foundations. Our addition has BIG metal brackets attached to the structure and bolted into the foundation.

All the shear walls have an unreal nail pattern. IIRC, every 2" OC in the field.

I worry much more about the stuff inside the house. A friend in LA said his frig ended up in the middle of the kitchen during the Northridge quake. My cousin in Napa lost his aquarium. Rocks fell and broke it. Stuff fell out of all the cabinets.

Even in the huge San Francisco (1906) quake, most of the damage was from fire. Since we don't have wood burning stoves now it won't be as big a deal. A walking frig is one thing, but a walking wood stove is a real hazard!
Click to expand...

Maybe I wasn't super clear: Hospitals, police stations, fire stations are all "critical and essential buildings" and are designed to withstand a major earthquake and remain safe and operational afterwards. The vast majority of all other buildings are designed only to withstand a major earthquake and allow everyone to get out safely, but it's assumed that they will be so heavily damaged that they may not be safe for continued use afterwards without major structural repairs (or complete rebuilding). It would cost far too much to build all buildings to withstand a major earthquake and survive without any major damage. This is assuming a major earthquake in close proximity to the buildings. The further you get from the epicenter and the lower the magnitude, the more likely your house is going to survive without major damage. It's likely that new buildings in SF would survive another Loma Prieta type quake that is 70 miles away without damage, but probably not a similar sized quake centered right under SF.

I did a renovation on a building in union square that "survived" the 1906 earthquake and it basically had two structures inside. One that was built before 1906 and the one underneath that actually holds it all up now. Just because buildings were still standing after the quake doesn't mean that they were safe or habitable afterwards.

We don't have wood burning stoves, but most of us have pressurized natural gas lines under and inside our homes now...

Sorry for the doom and gloom... Really, we are all going to be just fine...
 
If say go for it. Make it strong and it will be ok. I have my 225 in a similar situation. Added some support, not too worried about it. A quake big enough to mess that up and we will all have much bigger things to worry about I think...
 
Thanks for the discussion. Pretty healthy talk huh?

In any case, I'm curious to hear from more folks who have this situation who have a 375g or bigger on the 2nd floor above a garage too.

Glad to know 225g is fine... if my wife continues to veto the idea of the 375, I might have to downgrade to a 225 or 250...
 
I think as long as your have a structural engineer (or two) figure out the proper reinforcements, you should be fine. Besides, if it's a large enough earthquake that it would still bring the tank crashing down are reinforcements, you'll probably have bigger problems than that.
 
6000 pounds is nothing compared to the weight of a whole other room.

Lets say the room you build is 10' x 10' x 8' high, the framing around the perimeter is going to have a 2x4 every 16", that's going to be about 8 per wall (ignoring any doubling up for doorways/windows/etc. That's going to be nearly 350pounds just from the wall studs, Put plywood for sheathing for the walls is going to take 10 sheets, that's 450 pounds right there, drywall is going to run another 650 pounds, so just putting tiny walls on the thing is going to run nearly 1500 pounds, we still haven't had floors, or ceiling, and roof (which is where the weight really gets tacked on).

Bottom line a structural engineer has that title for a reason, no offense towards your wife but I'd take his word over hers... although I do understand if you go the other way since you need to live with her ;)
 
Also you said cars... plural, is this a double wide garage? Those are pretty horrible because there's such a large un-reinforced void. But in the 1989 earthquake just about the only houses that collapsed were ones near the marina IIRC. My house is still here, and it has a double wide garage AND living space on top of it :)
 
Your best bet for "Wife Acceptance Factor" is one tidbit mentioned above:
After the structural changes, the house will likely be stronger and safer than it is now,
even with the tank there.

PS: I feel that the 250G is a rather nice size for a large tank.
Big enough to handle most any fish you would want, big enough
to get you into an 8 foot length, but not so giant it becomes a huge hassle.
 
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