Weather is starting to cool down, no time like the present to get started. Let me know when you do so I can follow along. What's the dimensions of your 300?
We really enjoyed your thread, thanks for sharing, comradeSnap a few USB's and a CAT6 in place, screw the plates on just to take the pictures
During all of this the doorbell rang and looky what just came in time to keep me moving forward:
I purchased a 0.6 sones 80 cfm exhaust fan that will be controlled by a humidistat. Once I get that in and connect the 1/4 water lines for the ATO and hopefully an automatic water change system down the road, I will be able to start drywalling.
I'm flattered! I certainly get hung up in design details, In the end none of it really makes a difference in having a beautiful tank.
Is that a pet door I see there in the last photo????The plumber came over to finish everything so that I can move on. Last week we took a trip to the plumbing supply store to get everything necessary to do all the sewage but when he laid everything out he said, "this isn't going to work" so we went back to the supply store to get more stuff, plus all the copper to run the supply line in. I'm not one to marvel at efficiency because I rarely see it but I was amazed to sit back and watch him work, it's like he does this stuff every day. He would take measurements of the sink drain, mumble some numbers as if he's adding and subtracting fractions in his head, then mark the wall, take a few more measurements and repeat the process until all the marks he needed was placed on the wall. Then he just started cutting ABS into various sizes and before you knew it holes were drilled and everything was dry fit and ready to be glued. within 10 minutes my walls went from nothing to this:
He did the same thing with the copper he measured, mumbled, drilled, cut and sweat.
and there it is, in it's finished state:
I felt like I wasn't contributing at all, as he was cleaning up to move outside to tie everything up, I started thinking, I don't want to run a screw through pipe after the walls are enclosed, I sprang into action and grabbed these safety plates and hammered them to the wall... there, I did something other than stand and watch
Some of you may want to know the purpose of the black pipe that is going up underneath the drywall. That is a vent pipe. Most homes have vent pipes that simply run to the roof and the basic need is to allow the drain to breath, if it was sealed off the water running down the pipe will trap air and gurgle, as reefers I'm sure most of us have run across this in our efforts to plumb the tank.
I didn't want to run a breather tube all the way out the roof, the easy fix was to put an automatic vent in the wall. Basically it's a 1 way check valve that allows fresh air in the system but doesn't allow sewer smell out. The plumber told me that I'd want to have access to it just in case it ever needs to be serviced or replaced. He wanted to run the vent back out of the wall to have access and I wanted to leave it in the wall to avoid the ugliness. This was my solution:
Use a large enough vent return that will gives easy access and allow that section of wall to breath.
I used this mesh to hide the possibility of being able to look past the vent and seeing it. I just hot glued it into place
The only obstacle this now poses is that I am planning to put shelving up there, I will have to work around that and hopefully I wont have to gain access to service often if ever!!!
And as for the outside, he tied everything in so quick that I didn't have time to take any pictures, these are from this morning before I filled in the holes:
Hello there Josh,
That’s one way to solve it. I just pump straight into my main tank up high.4 times a week a pump in my 55 gallon RODI storage tank fills a 10 gallon ATO container that sits next to my sump.
The problem is that when the ATO container is completely full the end of the hose (red line) that delivers RODI water to the sump is lower than the water line in the ATO container. You already know where this is going... This is a cause for concern because 4 times a week I get a high water alarm because the RODI is siphoning into my sump.
Because the system is over 300 gallons, there's no concern for major salinity fluctuation, which means the alerts were more an annoyance rather than a big problem, also meaning it wasn't a priority to deal with.
Today, I decided to deal with it. I could easily cut a piece of acrylic, drill a hole and bond it to the inside of the sump higher than the ATO container water line. I thought, "where's the innovation in that?". So I turned to solidworks and designed a funnel to elevate the red hose higher than the ATO water line when full.
Bottom side
Top Side
Slid the hose in place and pressed the funnel into the acrylic shelf.
Now when I get a high water alert, I will have to take it serious.
Hey Ben,
A few weeks back, my brother in law and his son were visiting from Wisconsin to take in all the car auctions in the area.
When he came over for dinner, he pointed something out that I have become tolerantly blinded to. He said, "I see, you still haven't put wood trim around the tank". Wait what? He's right!! He pointed out something that I have complacently forgot about, I've looked at the tank for so long that "No border" looked like a finished product to me.
Horrible about taking pictures of the process, here's some old pics to give a visual
I have since become reliant on having the front open so that I can push the screens forward to gain access to the tank from behind.
I can't permanently block that after all these years... And if you know me, you probably already guessed, I'm going to completely complicate this part as well!!! hehe.
Last week a local reefer named Ken sent a text stated he was bored and wanted to do something, of course he wanted to drop everything and go on a 6 hour road trip to CA to check out some of the LFS's. My alternative suggestion was, come help me pick out the wood for this project..... He was here in the hour.
In the past I've given it a lot of thought and decided I want to match the decor of the maple kitchen cabinets, specifically the crown molding and fluted accents.
After explaining to Ken what I wanted, he (who is a wood worker himself) new just where to go to get the maple required to get the job done. Sorry no pictures...
With my first big reef tank (125g), I made an oak stand for it and over the years it got the occasional splashing of salt water dripped on it and eventually it soaked into the wood changing the color. And with maple being such a light color I wanted to learn from that and decided to make each piece separately and seal them front to back and side to side with polyurethane. First was the bottom, after cutting, gluing and sanding I added 2 coats of tung oil hand rubbed, and 10 coats of hand rubbed poly:
Next was the crown molding. I stewed over how to tackle this for almost a week. I wanted the crown molding look, but because it was going to be at most peoples head level, I didn't want it protruding off the wall at a 45 degree like most all crowns do. I ended up setting up the tablesaw to cut a few angles and brought it in 15 degrees.
It's hard to see but the profile of the one on the right is normal and the new 30 degree cut is on the left.
With that out of the way I had to make the dental portion of the crown to match the kitchen. Again no photos of the painstaking process.
Here I am entertaining myself with proper fit of the dental pieces. Wood workers, machinists might appreciate the complex angles that I had to add to the dental to make it parallel to the wall.
before seeing the crown completed, as stated earlier, I loved being able to pull the screens out from the front, which meant I needed to figure out a way to move the top molding up out of the way so that the screens can slide out.
I had 2 criteria, What ever idea I went with, it needed to be hidden, and I didn't want the action of moving it to damage the wall.
Another few days went by while pondering the issue, I decided to use 4" drawer glides, they were short enough to be hidden and if I mounted the glides 2 degrees from parallel it will pull away from the wall as it travels up.
Up, slightly pulled away from the wall
Down, hugging the wall with 1/16th gap
Unfortunately, I'm not quite done with the framing, but hot off the 3D printer, the mechanism that will hold the crown molding up:
Mounting it with 2 screws on the back
My daughter being the trooper she is, held the camera while I showed off this part:
Building up the effort to finish the fluted sides, and when I'm done with that I will post up the finished product.
Thanks for following along.
