~Electrical Needs ~

[BigAl07]

I'm in the process of getting bids from subcontractors on a new house build. The house will have a "Built-In" tank on the main level with an equipment room directly behind the tank and another equipment room in the basement directly below the main tank room.

Upper Tank room will house Display tank (LED lights 3x), clean-up sink, shelving and of course some support equipment. Lower Tank Room will hold 1x 300g (or 150g if size is limited) Sump, 1x 300g (or 150g if size is limited) Fuge, 100g frag tank, and various other "support" equipment (LARGE return pump, skimmer, heaters, GHL ProfiLux controller etc).

Here are some specs:

Main Tank: Approx 240g (72" x 30" x 25")
Main Tank Room: 96" x 96" (8' x 8')
Lower Tank Room: 96" x 288" (8' x 24')
Frag Tank: Size to be determined later
Sump Tank: 300g 63" x 69" x 25" 150g 58" x 39" x 25"
Fuge Tank: 300g 63" x 69" x 25" 150g 58" x 39" x 25"


So I'm talking with my contractor and I can't decide just how MUCH electrical I need in the tank room and in the lower tank room.

What are the thoughts here?

Does each room need it's own dedicated circuit?
How many AMPs do I need to allow for?
How many outlets should I have him install around each room?
Any suggestions that I'm over looking?

Here are some snap shots from the blueprint:

Main Level (partial)


Tank Room Upper (Close Up)


Lower Level (partial)

Lower Level (partial)

​

 

[BigAl07]

This is what I "may" use for sump & fuge tanks

Fiberglass Tanks With Side-View Window New models are gel coated and have thicker sidewalls!

 

[theplantman]

Sounds nice Al. If it were me, I would just pull the power requirements for each piece of equipment and then the counts on numbers of cords. from there you can plan for the size of each circuit or number of outlets. What would be nice is to have the rooms designed maybe with the standard 1 or 2 outlets per wall depending on the length of the room, then have a built in power center with dedicated circuits specifically for the tanks. When the house is wired, make sure they put all the breakers for the fish rooms together on the panel so they are easily defined and I would go with 30 amp breakers for the dedicated tank circuits if you go that route. Although if you think 100 amps would do it, you could put in a dedicated 100amp breaker box that holds up to 12 breakers. That way you could have 1 control all lights, one flow pumps, 1 heating and cooling, one for filtration, etc. etc. It would take some pretty slick planning but man would that be nice, flip of a switch and you could shut just the part of the system you need to down. Good luck

 

[nivek]

Room airconditioning/heating needs to be taken into account as well. Not sure how the electrical system is laid out in your place but my house runs on 3 phase circuit with a different phase for ground, first floor and exterior (ponds etc). That way if one trips, it will not affect the other sectors.

 

[BigAl07]

Thanks for the input guys

I would love to be able to pull the specs for each component and count cords but since none of the equipment is bought yet that's not possible. The electrician will be doing his magic long before most of the goodies are in-hand. I'll just have to wing-it and hope for the best. I'm confident a dedicated 30amp service should be sufficient for this one area of the house. I plan to have everything "Tank Related" on it's own circuit with it's own panel. This will also make it easier to run "Critical Life Support" items from the generator and allowing me to easily turn off non life support items from the breaker box.

 

[AC273]

I custom build a house as well, and this is where I made a mistake. I should have had the contractor put the tank on a separate 20amp breaker. I also had a few garage issues, as I like to build cars and do projects in the garage, and so I added a second 20amp circuit and twin outlets for the garage. (shhhh...don't tell the city)

Based on what I see for your setup, I would recommend a 20amp circuit for the main tank. You can plug in lighting, etc for the main tank into these. Put these outlets near the display tank. The rest of the room should be wired with a second 20amp circuit, which should handle the other equipment you run in that room. Same for the downstairs should work. 20amp circuit for the sump and fuge and a 20amp circuit for the rest of the rooms outlets.

You are not going to need any 220-240v outlets are you?

This looks like it is going to be quite the setup when your done.

 

[BigAl07]

Thanks AC! That sounds like a solid plan. I plan to sit down and do some "equipment lists" later this week and that should help me to get a better idea of the demand I'll be needing.

So far as I can tell I wont need any 220-240 service in these areas but it might be a good idea to have at least 1 as an option. Who knows I might want to fire up the welder in there or something lol

I hope it's a good set-up. It's going to take a while to get it all together and then set up but it should be worth it.

 

[DaveK]

Thanks for the input guys

... I'm confident a dedicated 30amp service should be sufficient for this one area of the house. I plan to have everything "Tank Related" on it's own circuit with it's own panel. ...

I would suggest using 2 or 3 dedicated 15 amp circuits for the aquarium related stuff.

First, you may want most of them on GFI, but you might want critical filtration pumps so they are not on GFI.

Second, you may want multiple main pumps. With 2 or more circuits you can split the critical stuff between the circuits so that if one trips you still have the other. You can also shut one off so you can add outlets or do other upgrades.

It wouldn't cost much more to do this when the house is built, but would be a [expletive deleted] to add at a later time.

Good luck on this new project.

 

[BigAl07]

Excellent idea Dave! I put all of this into my "Builder Notes".... should be interesting trying to explain everything to him and the subs LOL!

Y'all should have seen what my architect had drawn for the tank room.. I explained there would be a tank built into the wall on the main level and then some supplemental tank(s) in the tank room below. He drew it to where both rooms were completely one large tank from ceiling to basement floor LOL!

 

[goma]

Sweet setup Al! Will be looking forward to this build!

 

[Mpfaff77]

I just want to throw this out there. If you plan on using an aqua controller such as an apex. You may not need as many outlets as you think. I have a tank room, although not as big as yours. I have a dedicated 20amp circuit and I had electrician install 6 outlets and few were double outlets. It was great at first with plenty of outlets for my equipment. I added a Apex controller about 2 years after the build and now I only use 2 of those outlets for my energy bars to plug Into which are 8 plugs each. Now I have 10-12 plugs they have no use.

P.s. I strongly recommend an Apex with all those tanks and equipment you have planned. For the money your gonna be putting out for that setup an additional 600 for apex and add ons is a drop in the bucket.


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[BigAl07]

Thanks for the suggestion Mpfaff77 and you're completely right in regards to needing fewer outlets. On the flip side I'm a GHL ProfiLux dealer here in North America so I have an idea of what the controller can do in this regards. I'll probably build it with the needed # of outlets just in case I need them in the future. If I don't need them that's fine too

I sincerely appreciate your input and I'm sure others will learn from your post re:controllers.

Keep the ideas coming

 

[SubRosa]

Location of the outlets is important as well. Placing them at the standard height doesn't make sense for aquaria. Get them up where you can reach them, and where drips and splashes won't get to them. And using outdoor boxes isn't a bad thing either, unless their protrusion is an issue.

 

[Mrsalt]

Don't know if your allowed in the states, but I'm a electrician and over here in the uk we put in ring mains 32amp rcbo with as put sockets on the ring. But as your 110v this would probably be impossible to get the 2 cables in the back of the sockets due to size. But I would definitly keep fish distribution boards separate from rest of house if wiring from new so that if the house blows a lamp etc it doesn't knock the tank off etc. I would also be inclined to put a changeover switch so that the feed to the board can engaged to a generator via a socket perhaps outside so that in the extreme circumstances of a prolonged outage the genny can run the tank.


Alan

 

[Choff]

Sweet Al! I'm in the early stages of doing the same thing!

A lot of good points above. I'm working out the wiring as well as the additional bracing needed, but do not overlook venting!

I recently put a 125G sump, 40g frag tank and 2 x 55g mixing drums in my nice cool basement. Guess What? My basement isn't so nice and cool anymore. It's a swamp. If I wasn't moving I would be cutting in exhaust fans.

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[Kongor]

I bought my house first then a tank and when I first plugged in all the equipment BAM, lights went out in my living room haha.

I was lucky and had spares in my circuit breaker box (and was an EE in college durrrr) and added a 20AMP breaker dedicated to the tank. I've been running my 64 3W LEDs, canister, protein skimmer, mp-40, fuge light (hob), 300w heater and 3 mj1200s on the 20 amps no problem. 20 is alot of juice so unless your going to be running a heater/cooler (maybe a stove to prepare food for the fishes lol) in those rooms sharing the same circuit I wouldn't bother going above 20. But 30 amp breakers aren't much more, about 7 bucks, so if you realllly want to be safe I'd go with the 30's since you never know what you might add on later.

What kind of lights are you thinking of? I saw you mentioned LED x3 but not sure if you chose one out.

 

[BigAl07]

What kind of lights are you thinking of? I saw you mentioned LED x3 but not sure if you chose one out.

I'll be running 3 of these units
GHL Mitras from Reef Bytes

Here are some images of the Mitras