Using Leveling feet on a DIY 55g Stand

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sachem87184

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 9, 2011
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My stand would be roughly 48.5x16x32. If I was to put this leveler "http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=2053" in approx 3.5 inches deep on each side of the 48.5 inch piece would it work out okay?
I'm just fishing for ideas atm.
 
I would not recommend using them! The pad looks like it is less than 1 square inch. Your 55g is going to weigh somewhere around 1000lbs. Those feet are going to be exerting somewhere around 250psi on the floor surface. If the total weight was supported by a 2 x 4 at each end of the stand the extra surface area would reduce the pressure to around 10psi by spreading the load over a greater area.

I just don't think you will want to concentrate so much weight at four such small points!
 
i think its closer to 625lbs +whatever substrate u put in it. but oughtsix does make sense. i do think its a nice idea . maybe try and use some shims instead
 
Sadly, shimming is a little out of the question. I live in a 1920's house and my floors are far from level.
 
I just solved a similar problem, but it involved me building a new stand. :/

I pretty much used the same box model as everyone does, and I have that stand sitting on another rectangular frame made of 2x4s. Inbetween them I have 8 DIY leveling feet that are basically a double end screw drilled into the bottom of my stand, then a bold and washers put onto the threaded end sticking out. There's holes drilled into the bottom frame, and by moving the bolts up and down I was about to perfectly level my stand without putting mass amounts of pressure on my old floor.

If that was confusing I can post some pictures when I get home tonight.
 
You'd want to increase the number of "pegs" so that you didn't put too much pressure on just 8 with a tank that big, but I don't really see why it wouldn't work on that scale. I didn't get any pictures yesterday, but I'll get some this afternoon. Until then, here's a really bad ASCII drawing of it...

________________________________
bottom of stand / \
_____________| |________________
| | <--- screw
[===] <--- bolt
==| |== <--- washer
====| |==== <--- bigger washer (which I'm only using because I drilled my holes too big)
___________ |__| _____________
| |
|________| <--- hole drilled into "foot"
bottom "foot"
_________________________________


It's basically just a regular leveling foot, except all the "foot parts" are connected into one big rectangle at the bottom so its not pinpointing the pressure on my floor.

EDIT: Oh geeze, it formatted my post really bad. I'll just take a picture when I go home.
 
My house was built in the 20's also and I shim my tank stands
 
I can't think of a situation where shimming won't work, I just like to over complicate situations. That's why I built my stand the way I did.
 
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