GoToSleep's 700g Build Thread (& complete remodel)

This sounds very exciting, Ill definitely keep watch.

 

Glad to see this is finally getting built! Love the wine cellar!

Let us know if you need anything....we work real cheap....for, uh, gatorade?? LOL!

 

WOW Very cool space you have, to work with. Looking forward to seeing more

J

 

Sheet Rock partially done. That's the HVAC expert cussin' the climate control system for the wine cellar. We needed to hang this first drywall and do the duct work rough-in before the insulation.

A little view of the fish closet with sheet rock on the back wall but none on the front wall yet. You can see the dedicated HVAC unit for this room in the 'mechanical room' above the closet.

How do ya'll like the coloful walls? The green is 'Green Board' or moisture resistant sheet rock commonly used in bath rooms and any other place with high humidity or possible water exposure like my fish closet. The purple was something I hadn't seen before. As a matter of fact is was stressed when I saw it hanging because I had spec'd green board for all those locations. I now know that the purple or blue board is a fairly new product that has even more moisture and mildew resistance than the green board. A good choice for that wall that is going to have my tank sitting against it.

 

as a reefer AND a semi-regular house builder i am actually salivating. i'm stuck out here in chicago where i can't get my construction fix. if you lived in illinois i would have volunteered

 

i cant wait to see when this is done

 

Two of my BIG concerns are trying to keep this tank cool (preferably without a chiller) and dealing with moisture in the room. Those of you not interested in the finer points of HVAC design may GoToSleep at this point in the presentation:zzzz: In order to be energy efficient you want to have your HVAC unit appropriately sized for the room. Tangster can explain much better than I can but I understand that have a significantly oversized unit has almost as many problems as an undersized unit. Now if I were to have an exhaust fan that sucked air from above the tank and vented it to outside, that would create a vacuum in the room that would suck outside air into the room. It doesn't matter how well I insulate or how much I yell at the kids to 'shut that door', if I'm blowing 240 cfm of air out of the room then one way or another 240 cfm of air is infiltrating into the space. I'm told that this is about the amount of air movement that I could expect with one of the garage doors left up. Since this didn't bode well for a comfortable room, I considered having an intake duct that would pull air from outside over the tank and then exhaust it back outside. By keeping the fish closet and the space above the tank fairly air tight, this would allow me good airflow through the hot and humid places without causing a big impact on the living space. I think that this would have worked great for me if I lived in Hawaii but unfortunately, summers in Virginia easily hit 100 F and 100% humidity. These kinds of days certainly weren't going to help me cool my tank or MH's by blowing more hot humid air over them. The option that I finally came up with is to suck 240 cfm of conditioned air from the room through the fish closet and across the top of the tank through the hood. This air will pick up some heat and humidity and will then be discharged into the mechanical room where it will mix with the much larger volume of room air before being picked up by the HVAC intake and conditioned again. This will make the HVAC work a bit harder than if I didn't have a tank but we all face this issue to one degree or another. Since the air that is being sucked from the room is being returned to the room there is no vacuum created and no increase to outside air infiltration. This fan set up doesn't remove moisture from the room and I will have to rely on the HVAC to do that. Thankfully it is a super efficient unit (geothermal) and I'm hoping that it will get the job done. If not, I may need to add a serious dehumidifier.
Another challenge for us was to find a workable solution for the ductwork that would be running throught the aquarium hood. Stainless steel duct is insanely expensive but I didn't want ony of the more typical duct work for fear that it would corrode or mildew or both. After a bit of brainstorming, My HVAC contractor suggested 6" PVC. It's relatively cheap @ $10/ft, big enough to move plenty of air, and definately able to stand up to reef conditions.

Here you can see the duct that runs to the far end of where the hood will go. The short duct just below allows air from the fishcloset to enter the left side of the hood where it is pulled across the top of the tank and sucked into the end of the duct at the right side of the hood.

It then comes through the wall and up the duct work to the in-line exhaust fan that is located in the mechanical space above. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of using Panasonic vent fans before, these things are amazingly quiet.

 

If I'd paid more attention in 9th typing class, I'd be done by now.



time flys like an arrow, fruit flys like a banana.

 

Just in case there are any wine lovers out there, here's a shot of inside the wine cellar before insullation.

To the right you can see the window that I had to cover over. Supply and returns ducts visible in the ceiling and line set for the split cooling unit visible running down the back wall. The compressor for the cooling unit is outside and the airhandler is above the wine cellar. There's also a heater in the duct work and a humidifier.
A shot looking in...

and looking out...

after the closed cell urethane insulation was sprayed. R13 walls and R30 ceiling not counting the insulation that was in the preexisting walls. The most important thing is that this stuff is totally vapor proof and prevents the movement of any air or moisture.
As long as the crew was out there, they sprayed the 30" of concrete block around the lower portion of the room pretty much as a freebee.

 

Love it! Wish I had the cash for that, I will keep an eye on it....Thats gonna rock....You got Tangster helping you ya got it made...He is extremely sharp in the SW arena...
Danny