Building base and hood for 260 gal tank. Design ideas? Anyone use LVL beams?

[Dominic]

I will be building the base for a new tank coming in November. It is 84"x24"x30" -260g.

I would like to consider using LVL (laminated veneer lumber) beams for the 7' long horizontal supports since this might permit having no intervening vertical supports at all.

Has anyone tried this and if so how have you worked out the loading? I figure the tank, water rock etc. will put this over 3000 lbs. Split that across the primary horizontals and then workout the deflection load to understand what beam dimensions might be needed to keep deflections to under ~ 1/32". Trouble is, I did not do engineering and don't know how to work out the loading details.

I will probably only have lots of clearance on one end of the tank. I suppose that could be used to slide items in and out.

If not an LVL do you have other design considerations? The under tank components are still not defined although the store has some recommendations that seem ok. The point is that I have some flexibility.

Thank you,

Dominic

 

[toddhgr]

Personally I'd use steel. .25" walled 1x3 box tubing would be sufficient and leave you plenty of room underneath for filtration and storage. Lvls would take up quite a bit of headspace and make the stand incredibly heavy.

 

[reefstarter]

plus 1 on steel , LVL beams carrying approximately 4000 lbs would need to be at least 8 inches for that span . and they aren't cheap I used them in my house to replace the old beams that termites got to ,

 

[Dominic]

Ah, 8" tells me what I needed. Thank you. I am a woodworker so I thought I'd look at that route first but you make a good case.

I like the steel idea. Being a bit of a numbers guy I'd love to see confirmation of the deformation under load characteristics to see what the dimensions you quote are capable of handling. I sure don't ever want to have to shim anything. Do you know how I could get that?

 

[Dominic]

I don't know if anyone from this thread is still around. It took me 10 years to get back to this -lots of life happened. But, I did. I went with a welded .25" steel frame. U-section in front, right angle elsewhere with right angle braces about every 24". The frame is supported by some white oak legs bolted to the frame. The legs are in turn bolted to a couple of oak legers that are in turn screwed into the wall studs. I have a new dedicated 20A circuit for it and it is mounted enough off the wall to easily fish power up behind for lights, or network control. The tank is now on the base. The base will get a bottom to it, and later some enclosures, probably plywood sheets set into some kind of support. I have a UV sterilizer and an Eschopps-300 sump for the moment. I also have an empty 20g and an empty 40g to use.
Lots more to do of course. I will get an RO system soon. The biggest question for me is lighting, and then controls. I am hoping to do something with an arduino or raspberry-pi control and build lights. I'd like to have an internal web page to report on sensors. Perhaps that's aspirational, but I hope so.
In the nearer term I have to figure out a sequence of startup and populating the tank.
I hope folks will be liberal with their suggestions!
Dominic