Fish Room Expansion

Krampus

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Hello, everyone! I originally started a build thread for my first fish room on here years ago but I never followed through with the completion and let the thread die. I figured I'd make a new one since I outgrew that room almost immediately and am expanding now. My original room is 7'x7', with the 150 gallon display tank on the other side of a wall in the living room. I plumbed through the walls, so underneath the display is nothing but shelves. The new fish room will be 9'x18' with plenty of room to try new things and experiment. Plus, I plan on making it a cool room to just hang out in! I'm not terribly active on r2r but I'd like to document the process, none the less, to give others an idea of what's possible and how to do it. I'm very much a DIY guy.

So here's the original room. Super messy and cluttered, because like I said, I ran out of space very quickly. Originally, it had a window where the window unit is, and the room is plumbed for air conditioning from the central unit. However, the heat proved to be too much, so a window unit was required. With no window, it made the interior feel much smaller.

Photo Jan 12, 12 23 24 PM.jpg




Photo Jan 12, 12 23 51 PM.jpg


Photo Jan 12, 12 23 59 PM.jpg


Those pics are from the doors perspective. The wall to the right is the one that's shared by the living room, which the display plumbs through.

For the expansion, I wanted to extend out as much as possible so as to not have to rebuild the room a third time, but I wanted to keep part of my garage. Like I mentioned, I'm a DIY guy and I can't live without my tools and place to house all of them. The cnc router, table saw, etc are all on wheels so the I can move them around as I need them. The plan was to wall off half of the garage (outside of the existing room), get temperature in control behind the new wall, then slowly disassemble the old room, thus making one big open room.


Plotting out the new wall layout. Before, it was an L-shaped room. Now, it will be just one solid wall from side to side.

Photo Jan 13, 5 07 18 PM.jpg


Laser levels are straight up cheating when it comes to this kind of work.

Photo Jan 13, 5 56 41 PM.jpg


Photo Jan 16, 2 11 10 PM.jpg


Putting the top and bottom frames in place so that I could come back and put in the studs. The wall isn't structural so there's no real wrong way to do it, so long as it's sturdy and insulated well. As far as anchoring the bottom 2x4's to the slab, I originally used bolt anchors on the first room. They're going to have to be ground down after I remove the original walls, so I didn't want to go that route again. Plus, drilling into the slab was much more difficult than just using these concrete screws, which are easily removed later, in the event I ever take the wall down.

Photo Jan 16, 3 03 58 PM.jpg



Framing coming along

Photo Jan 17, 7 57 33 PM.jpg


More framing

Photo Jan 19, 7 27 49 PM.jpg


Photo Jan 19, 7 27 40 PM.jpg
 
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Krampus

Krampus

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Framing done!

Photo Jan 19, 7 27 23 PM.jpg


Hey! What do you know! The door even fits!

Photo Jan 23, 9 17 28 PM.jpg



Before I started doing drywall and insulation, I needed to run electrical wiring. The original room had two dedicated 20amp breakers and outlets added to it, in addition to the existing 20amp circuit that originally existed in the garage. I was thinking about adding two more 20amp breakers, but then I did the calculations and 100amps total is just not necessary. I will leap-frog the two 20amp lines to new outlets via junction boxes in the attic, add one more 20amp breaker and outlet, and settle with 80 amps over four outlets. That should be more than enough for anything that I could imagine.

Photo Jan 29, 10 33 54 AM.jpg


Photo Jan 29, 5 10 43 PM.jpg



I also hung the drywall on the inside while I was plotting the running of the electrical wires. Looks like the new 20amp breaker and outlet work! Thanks to my buddy that's an electrician! I'm not there yet, but the existing two outlets in the old room will be moved to the new outlets on the new wall via junction boxes in the attic. More to come later on that.

Photo Jan 29, 6 46 39 PM.jpg
 

Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

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