catastraphe waiting to happen

jessie

jessie

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Mar 3, 2004
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when i bought my 135 gallon tank i tried to get under my house to beef up the floor joist, but when i ripped up the floor in the closet i found that i have no crawl space at all. i only had about 3 inches of clearance between the joist and the ground. i knew the floor had been replaced right before my wife( then just a freind) bought the house. i could also see brick blocking in several differant places. i figured that i would be safe. now my door to the bedroom wont shut. its about a foot away from my tank, and the tank now has a slight lean towards the center of the room. im going to have to tear it down, i have no crawlspace, not even an entrance to dig one out. so what to do with the fish,,,,,,, my poor little tangs :sad: . i can make do with a couple 20 gallon tanks to house all the coral/rock/sand/crabs/small fish and such. but what about my tangs, i cant hardly stand the thought of having to get rid of them. i just told my wife about 2 months ago,,,, the tank is done, no more fish, no more live rock, no more equipment, maybe just an occasional coral. i am an iron worker and can build/repair just about anything from wood to metal to plastic, but i dont see a feesable way to fix the floor that wont take either a considerable amount of money or alot of good old fashion elbow grease and about 2 weeks of digging, some foundation work, and a sump pump to drain the hole. the only reason my house stays dry now is because the yard is so uneven. i can just about guarantee that it will hold water if i dig it down. other problem with that is i live in indiana, and drive about 200 miles a day to and from work in illinois. i leave at 6am and dont get home untill about 6pm, after taking care of fish, dogs and myself, i dont have any time since its winter. so i guess my question is what size tank would it take to house a 7 inch sailfin, a 11 inch hippo and a 6 inch naso. i can do it individually, it doesnt have to be all together, and it may only be for about 6 months till i move. i dont want to take them back to the lfs, i know they wont be there when im ready to get them and i have grown very attached. so whats the options.... good or bad let me have it.
 
So sorry to hear this. Where there is a will there is a way...
I'd try asking an lfs to put them up for awhile as a showpiece for the store, maybe put up your whole tank there too, until you get things in order.
Goodluck!!!!
 
Wow, your litterally stuck between a rock, and a hard place...

I think you could get away with a couple 55's spread out through your house... If you do it that way you should be able to group things together with the equipment that would come out of the big tank. That tricky though, you have an 11inch fish and most 55g tanks are only 48inch end to end, so that really with scrunch his movement...

Can you see the sag in the joists? if you can maybe you can empy the tank and slide some bricks under. but from the sounds of it you already considered this...

All else fails, I'll drive a couple hundred miles and give you my 2 55g tanks and a couple misc other tanks if you need them and you can help me load the 135 on a trailor... :p:

Best of luck,
LS
 
Can you look in the attic? If you can, see where the ceiling joists bear. Those walls will be load-bearing walls and will have a footing. It should be allright to locate the tank against those walls, or any exterior wall, which are also load-bearing and have good footings. If you move the tank, move it next to a load-bearing wall, or better still, if you find one, the intersection of a load-bearing interior wall with the exterior wall.

How old is this house? It is highly irregular to have no crawl space in a wood-framed house with wood floor joists. It is also against code in most (if not all) states. Do you think the closet where you raised the floorboards could have been over a dirt mound in the crawl space? Without a crawl space your floor is in danger of rotting from high humidity and no ventilation! In addition, mold spores that could really affect your health very badly would have an ideal environment! Also naturally occurring radon gas, which is poisonous, could seep into the house (radon occurrs in some locations more than others - it is not a danger in all locations). If you cannot dig a crawl space because of high water table (which really makes the mold issue very, very probable), you could jack the house up and build a proper foundation wall under it. This would be far better than digging, as it would not undermine your footings, and would allow ventilation of the new crawl space.

The house should have foundation vents (grilles or louvers on the exterior wall below the floor level) and at least 2'-0" of crawl space to prevent the problems I described. In addition, the crawl space should be mostly covered with a 4 mil vapor barrier (polyurethane or other). If you see the grilles or louvers from the outside, you do have a crawl space. If you have a crawl space, you also have an access panel to it, either on the outside of the house, or in the floor of some closet or under the stairs if it's a two story house.

I'm sorry to give you all the bad news above, but I believe you need to investigate further... the good news is that the floor deflection that's jamming your door and tilting the floor is probably going away by itself once you relocate the tank to a load-bearing wall. Good luck!

By the way, I am an architect, and work with wood frame residential buildings every day.
 
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do i have outside louvers, yes. do i have a crawlspace, no. do i have access to the underneath of my house, only to a sump pump. is there any other way into the underneath of the house , nope. this house was built in 1940, it has a footer with 1 block foundation. the footer is sunk into the ground like every other footer so only about 3 inches of the block clear the ground. if they had used a 3 or 4 block footer then i would have had enough room to have a crawlspace. you can look across the entire ground area and see only 3 to 4 inches of clearance. you can tell by the foundation that this house was originally built as a small 4 room house. it has had the kitchen and bathroom and utility room built on later, and the rear wall had been removed. the place that the tank sits was the only place i had room for it, there isnt another place to put it. thats one of the reasons im gonna tear it down.

i used to build residential homes before i became a union iron worker.
 
Wow! I guess then you cannot install floor jacks under the tank with no space to access.

I thought I might give you some pointers, but it sounds like you have all the bases covered already. Good luck with whatever you do.
 
only way i see to do that is cut a hole in front room floor(wife gives dirty looks) dig out dirt and haul it through front room(wife getting hostile) and then go from there. i just called about getting a 55 to put elsewhere to start putting my corals in. hopefully we get to move soon. im just gonna store the 135 untill i can put it up at next house. i might have to take my sialfin tang and my hippo tang back to inland. :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad:
 
well i just got back from terre haute, i went and bought an ALL GLASS 55 gallon aquarium to start shuffling my coral and rock to. after this one is full ill have to see what else im gonna have to deal with.
 
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