Fish Room Electrical Advice

Hello All

I will introduce myself as Kevin as I believe this is my first post.

I signed up to this forum a couple of years ago when I first ventured into Discus although I never posted anything.

Long story short, after 20+ years of having tanks dotted all over the house, my better half has finally agreed to let me turn our outside store into a small fish room. I say small as its only 8ft x 6ft and 7ft tall.

It is brick built double skin, with a concrete slab roof and is currently an empty shell of a room, I have decided how i'm gong to insulate, plumb, vent and heat the room, I am even fitting a floor drain as the raised foundation lends itself nicely to such an install.

My concerns are the electrics, I intend to have them all surface mounted and running in conduit to the sockets. but will the sockets themselves be an issue with humidity? (I am in the UK Btw)

I wondered about using weatherproof sockets as these will help protect from splashes, although I do keep all my aquariums covered and have learned to be careful over the years.

The ring main supplying the fish room is protected by a 30ma RCD at the consumer unit, is this enough or should I use RCD protected sockets as well?

I intend to line all the walls and ceiling with the pvc hygienic wall cladding that's commonly used in commercial kitchens to keep it water resistant and wipe clean. for ventilation I have a 9" x 6" wall vent at each end of the room and plan to run a wall mounted fan to keep the air circulating, as for heating my intention is to heat the room with tube heaters to take the load off the tank heaters (for such a small space this should work out more cost effective)

Until the whole thing is up and running though I have no idea how much humidity I will be dealing with and with pvc walls not absorbing any moisture the last thing I want is condensation dripping onto the outlets.

I guess what I am hoping for is for some of you guys with fish rooms to share your experiences and advice, Would you use weatherproof sockets? add an extractor? or do you think what I am planning will work out ok?

Thanks in advance.

Just don't put sockets and switches over the tank. I know that in fishkeeping it is sometimes complicated to follow all the electric safety standards, but try to do so as much as you can.

I'm using 2 amps circuit breakers for light and filters and 6 amps for heating (on 240V AC). I also use a residual-current device and three wire setup. One RCD can be enough if you don't run a fail-safe duplicated design. I have also connected all metal parts with a PE wire.
And no, I'm not using waterproof sockets because they tend to stop to be waterproof when you plug anything in.

Hi Kevin, I'm also in the UK with a brick built fish room. How are you planning to insulate the room? The cladding is a good idea for sure. Surface mounting the sockets should be fine, mine are all surface mounted above the tanks. Condensation will only form on something if it's cold enough to be below the dew point. Being surface mounted your sockets should be the same temperature as the rest of the fish room so condensation shouldn't be an issue. I use normal surface mounted sockets (this is my 5th fish room) and have never had a problem.

Looking at your plans though, you will have issues with condensation in there with the ventilation you've planned and it will be horrible to work in there because of it. A lot of people use dehumidifiers but unless you are PERFECTLY vapour sealed on walls and ceiling, moisture will find its way behind your insulation and then condense on the cold walls or ceiling behind. Every time you open or close the door the change in air pressure will force air behind it. I used a dehumidifier in my last fish room and had this issue and had water dripping from the ceiling and had to install an extract fan (all of my other fish rooms only ever used an extract fan). An extract fan fixes the problem 100%, of course, you do lose heat, but they are at least cheaper to run than a dehumidifier. One of my fish rooms was in a wooden shed for 8 years and when I stripped it down when I moved house there was no sign of moisture anywhere after using an extract fan.

My current fish room is 14' x 9' with about 25 tanks in there. I only heat my discus tanks (currently 10 of them) and unless it's a cold winter day / night the fish room temperature usually sits around 77-80f. If I'm working in there on a hot day I have to crack open the door into the garage a bit as the temperature rises with me in there!

Guys,
Thanks for sharing this information. Fish Room threads are always my favorites here on Simply Discus!