Calling engineers

[Mr bigolsworth]

So looking at getting a red sea 425XL and my flooring comes to mind. Im from the south were crawl spaces are a new idea to me. I purchased a house about a year ago and my flooring is 2x12 joist spaced 24 inches apart. i plan to keep the tank against an exterior wall and ideally would spread the tank over three joist. however maybe only 2 since i want to center it on a wall. I'm curious how much weight is safe on these kinds of beams if i go even bigger in the future?

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

You are totally fine. You could probably go up to a 240 system before I would add any additional bracing.

You are really not even close though. I think you are still around the 50lb/ sq. ft. live load that is standard for residential floors.

I on the other hand am putting a 600 gallon aquarium over 16" OC 2x12s. THAT is going to require some fun times in the crawl space.

disclaimer: I am not a licensed engineer but I work at an structural engineering firm and know how to read deflection tables, apply safety factors, etc. etc. and have done the calcs on various tanks just for the fun of it.