H2OPlayar
Supporting Member
Ask and ye shall receive.
Here is the construction post.... No reefing here, just engineering and construction. Disclaimer, I did some of this myself, but was supervised by a professional general contractor with drawings that were signed off by a real structural engineer. I was and still am super happy with the remodel and specifically my general contractor. If anyone ever needs an opinion, or real work done in the bay, let me know and I will put you in touch. He is a huge reason this turned out as well as it did. Thank you Jesse at Buildsmith Construction!
Here is the room before we broke any walls. The back left corner is where the reef tank will live eventually. In short, we wanted to remove the wall there there was one, and add a wall to the small section of area where there isn't a wall.
Destruction mode!
We had to get under the floor to dig some holes where new concrete footings will go. The sub floor is 2" thick, interlocking tongue and groove. This means the floor by itself can support a large load. The beams under the sub floor are 4"x6"s at 4 foot on center. (I will double check with my GC later on these numbers). Even though the floor is strong, it likely isn't strong enough to put a car in my living room, or in this case a reef tank which weighs more than my friends Miata.
I got under the house and dug a hole, it was as fun as it sounds. I at least figured out that we could use the Sawzall with an old blade as a mini jack hammer to loosen the dirt, because the dirt here in Sunnyvale is hard clay.
Rebar on concrete risers in a hole.
A frame for the footing was built, and the rebar inspected by the city prior to the pour.
And concrete was poured around the rebar.
The subfloor was filled back in, and some lumbar added to support the ridge beam, which holds up the roof. We also framed out the window for the pass through on the tank. We let the kitchen designer make the house the way that the house should feel without the tank, then we designed the tank to fit the remaining space. We worked with the electrician early on to get extra outlets with high gauge wire to the tank. We also added some additional strength to the ceiling over the tank as we were thinking of doing a hanging lights at one point, but that was a very far distance to hang, so we went another direction with the light mounting.
Spray foam was added to the ceiling for Title 22 energy compliance.
Here we are sizing the tank with the couch and the island. Getting a feel for the room while you are in it was invaluable to the outcome. Originally we were thinking of an 18" wide tank. Then it turned into 24" when I saw how small the gallon size was with 18". Then, we were only 6" away from the edge of the tank being directly over the concrete footing, so in the end, to the chagrin of my designer, we ended up with a 30" wide tank.
We talked with the hvac team and decided it would be ok to have an inlet this high away from the tank. We did add some height to the inlet to keep it away from any salt. There were some humidity concerns, but they are negated due to the size of the room the tank is in. The drywall was added after framing and insulation. We decided that due to the low cost of drywall and paint, we would not take any precautions for the drywall and plan on replacing it when the day comes that the tank is no longer wanted in that location. We can also fill in the pass through with drywall to give a more blocked feel if the tank is removed as well. For the record, I do not plan on taking this down ever.
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...Wow, so cool. That's living my dream: A vaulted ceiling & wall-build aquarium. Got me & my wife talking about what to do if we won the lotto: extra high vault w/ a loft 2nd floor, knocking down walls to expand the living room, placing an XL wall-build talk.... "But first, the kitchen", is what she ended that with...lol.
