Heavy duty adjustable feet for a 135g stand

[Integral9]

I've been looking for some cabinet feet to put on my tank stand to allow me to level it once I get it in place and I found these:

http://www.rockler.c...t.cfm?page=2053 With a load capacity of 600lbs each they look promising. Also, I am told they can be adjusted with a load on them.

 

I was wondering if anyone else has used or put adjustable legs on their stands? Would 4 be enough?

[L8 2 RISE]

Thanks for this, I'm placing the order now. We have these on some of our other furniture and they work great. I'll be putting these on my new stand. It's a 160 gallon tank, so 8 pounds/gallon water, plus rock, say 10 pound's per gallon to be safe, that's 1600 pounds. 4 X 600 = 2400 so it gives me a large margin for error.

[Integral9]

That's great. Please let us know how they work out for you. btw. Depending on what's in / under your tank, you may have more weight than you are estimating. My setup will be all or mostly all in the stand, so I am estimating about 2200 lbs.

 

I think I'm gonna order them tomorrow. Just looking for a dock sealer now to seal the inside of the cabinet.

[L8 2 RISE]

My sump and fuge won't be under my stand, they'll be in the room behind the tank.

[extreme_tooth_decay]

Thanks for this, I'm placing the order now. We have these on some of our other furniture and they work great. I'll be putting these on my new stand. It's a 160 gallon tank, so 8 pounds/gallon water, plus rock, say 10 pound's per gallon to be safe, that's 1600 pounds. 4 X 600 = 2400 so it gives me a large margin for error.

 

 

Is is acrylic or glass? If glass, you probably have 300-400 pounds of tank and stand. Also, it is easy to get a couple hundred pounds of sand in a tank like that (I had 340 pounds in my 125), which doesn't seem to displace all that much water. (this by itself, even adding a lot of displacement for water, adds up to more than the extra 2 pounds per gallon you are adding for rock/sand, without even talking about the rock)

 

Also, the 600 pounds rating is probably under some type of ideal conditions, which you may not have.

 

It also might be difficult to make sure the load is balanced on the feet. It could be that 3 feet are carrying most of the load.

 

I'd say you are cutting it pretty close. I'd use a couple more to be safe. And find a way to make sure they are all carrying somewhat equal load.

Edited August 17, 2010 by extreme_tooth_decay

[L8 2 RISE]

Is is acrylic or glass? If glass, you probably have 300-400 pounds of tank and stand. Also, it is easy to get a couple hundred pounds of sand in a tank like that (I had 340 pounds in my 125), which doesn't seem to displace all that much water.

 

Also, the 600 pounds rating is probably under some type of ideal conditions, which you may not have.

 

It also might be difficult to make sure the load is balanced on the feet. It could be that 3 feet are carrying most of the load.

 

I'd say you are cutting it pretty close. I'd use a couple more to be safe. And find a way to make sure they are all carrying somewhat equal load.

 

good point, it's acrylic though. I'll get two sets and put four on each of the corners, and four half way between on all of the sides.

[extreme_tooth_decay]

good point, it's acrylic though. I'll get two sets and put four on each of the corners, and four half way between on all of the sides.

 

I figured it was acrylic because it is an odd volume.

 

Still, more peace of mind for not much money, that is how I would do it.

 

One more thing to consider is making sure the metal lip under the leveler is under a structural part of your stand. Some stands have facing on top of the structural parts that might not be trustworthy to hold the entire weight for years (or in some cases, minutes). The lip does not look very big. I think the lip is doing the heavy lifting, not the screws.

Edited August 17, 2010 by extreme_tooth_decay

[Chad]

The other thing to think about with this type of a setup is the feet become almost point loads on the floor. Something like concrete has a compressive strength around 3ksi usually would be totally fine, but wood flooring needs more consideration (location and direction of joists, thickness of material, moisture, etc.). Overall, unless it was concrete, I would make sure you completely understand how the load is tranferred to structural members in the flooring.

[Integral9]

Good point. My tank will be sitting on my concrete foundation in my basement. If I was going to do this on my hardwood floors upstairs, I probably wouldn't be using these feet. There are wider based feet available on the site, although I haven't really looked into them for this application. To be honest, I would probably be looking at doing a floating support for the tank so that I could put as much of the stand on the ground as possible.

 

I'm looking for some casters now to make moving the stand around a bit easier. Not loaded of course.

[L8 2 RISE]

Good point. My tank will be sitting on my concrete foundation in my basement. If I was going to do this on my hardwood floors upstairs, I probably wouldn't be using these feet.

 

+1, Mines on concrete

[davelin315]

I'm the king of over building, but I'd run two of those in tandem with each other and weld them (or at least screw them in which might reduce their strength) to something much denser than wood. I agree with the assessment that the lip looks like it is what supports the weight and I'm picturing a 2x4 on it's edge compressing and cracking due to a lot of weight being put on a single point. If I am recalling what my architecture buddies told me (and I could be way way off), a 2x4 can support 800 lbs. + per inch, but that's when running against the grain, or vertically rather than horizontally. I would think that on a stand the wood would fail and once one goes, the whole thing would topple because of the sudden shift in weight. If you used two of them that were directly across from each other and bolted together to prevent them from coming off (bracketing the piece of wood) I think you'd have a much sounder build, but again, I'd make sure to reinforce the bottom of the wood with a strip of metal or something that will help to distribute the weight evenly across the length of the wood.

[Integral9]

Well shoot! I'm going to have to figure something out. After dragging my stand outside and sanding and restaining it, it looks awesome btw. I noticed the bottom of the stand wasn't what I was expecting. Do'h!

 

So the problem is my tank stand's supports on the ends are not the inner most board on the bottom of the stand. So I cannot attach the legs to those boards as they do not carry the load of the display tank. So, on the bottom of my stand, there is an outer board that is the kick-plate or molding, then the middle board is the board that supports the display tank on top, and finally the inner board is the support for the bottom shelf inside the stand (which looks like it was designed to support a sump). These three boards are glued and screwed together and all are about 3/8" thick.

 

So basically, I have come up with a few options.

1) I have some left over oak flooring boards from my hardwood flooring install I did. It wouldn't be very pretty, but I could attach those boards to the bottom to distribute the wieght more. My concern is the weight of the display tank is going to push up on the supports for the sump.

 

2) I could try to find some metal brackets to secure under the stand where the feet will go to distribute the weight better. Would I need machine grade metal brackets? Same concern as #1 though.

 

3) The front and rear supports do not have the problem of the ends with the extra board on the inside. I could attach the legs to the front and rear under the vertical supports.

 

4) I could move the supports for the sump in a bit. My sump will not be going from end to end, so I really don't need support all the way out and the bottom board looks like another piece of oak so it should be plenty strong and able to support a couple of inches on it's own.

 

I'm leaning towards #2 and #4, but was wondering what you all thought.

 

fyi: the stand is an AGA oak stand (I saw the label while sanding) and is about 30 years old (according to the seller). It looks like solid oak. I didn't notice any MDF.

[Grav]

Why cant you just shim the stand with composite shims?

 

Maybe I don't understand the problem.

[Integral9]

Were do you get composite shims? I can't find them at the orange or blue box stores in my area.

 

After speaking to my ME buddy, tearing out my carpet and shimming is the only way to go without tearing the stand apart and starting fresh. I was hoping to make use of the $50 in support legs I purchased, but I guess I'll have to save them for my next build.