New fish room project.

[Discus-Hans]

Dehumidifiers best investment I made lately.

Brought in 1 day the humidity down from 70~75% to 40~45%

Most pipes for the constant drain installed today (still 3 to go)

I'm happy......................... Air exchanger for sale lol

Hans

[Darrell Ward]

Those dehumidifiers do work great. My wife went to Lowes and bought one last year. It's amazing how much moisture that thing removes from the house with all the tanks running, even with glass tops on them.

[Discus-n00b]

The Cokes must of been warming up to fast. Haha I guess its different if you have a fishroom....but I don't mind it...I live it every day I walk outside.

[gw]

Hi Hans,
Quick question. I have a friend intending to build a fish rack like yours. I cannot tell from photos but do you secure the top of the racks to the wall or ceiling or are they free standing. I'm thinking they must be secured but with your craftsmanship, maybe not??

Thanks, Glenn

[Discus-Hans]

Hi Hans,
Quick question. I have a friend intending to build a fish rack like yours. I cannot tell from photos but do you secure the top of the racks to the wall or ceiling or are they free standing. I'm thinking they must be secured but with your craftsmanship, maybe not??

Thanks, Glenn

Hi Glenn,

what I did was attach every rack to the one close to it, so every 2 racks are together. The 2 high racks are both at one side of a wall, at the top = higher as the wall, they are attached.

Hans

[Kingdom Come Discus]

Hans I am glad I saw this post. I was days away from ordering a air exchanger. I replaced our 43 year old furnace and air conditioner which was in the fish room a few weeks ago. It was so leaky it circulated the air in the fish room and keep the humidity down. Now that I have this new tight unit, the mildew, humidity and the smell is so bad I have developed a respiratory illness which I have been fighting for weeks.

I was on the phone to Jemco yesterday and had decided today to order their smallest air exchanger next week. All the issues you were not happy with I was concerned with. Temperature in the winter especially. My room is a measly 300 sq ft. Could you tell me how many sq. ft. per dehumidifier you are using? Did you do by a certain brand at lowes or just what you could find in stock? Thanks for all your help.

Kraig Koontz

[Northwoods Discus]

The dehumidifiers from the "big box" stores are great at first. Then they break down and get noisy and use a ton of energy. I went through 3 of them in a year. Happy at first, then hate them. I don't know what the best answer is. I went with the air exchanger after many failed dehumidifiers.
The A/C removes the humidity while it is hot out. The air exchanger will hopefully do its job in the winter. Dry air in the outdoors in winter.
With a non air conditioned fish room air exchange will not be effective because you are exchanging with high humidity air.

[AirCapital]

what I found to work the best is sealing the room up as good as possible and using a squarill cage fan and add it to a window blowing the humid air outside, much cheaper than a dehumidifer to run. yes it does blow cold aitside in the summer but a dehumidifier makes warm air as it works so to me they are about equal in that dept, the fan just takes alot less energy to run.
and in the winter use a natural gas heater to heat the room which will help keep some of the humidity down

[Skip]

WOW!! nice DIY! are they are Plans/Specs running around somewhere? i am interested in the Support/bolts.. trying to get ideas for my apartment..

[edosan]

Excelent post and easy to undestand...thanks for sharing!!

It was as I imagine...later some Q.

[discus.hunter]

@Hans, really impressed with your rack and now i'm considering to make my own one, currently i'm planning to build a rack using wood. i have a humble questions Hans, could you tell me your wood size?, i'm planning to use 5cm X 7cm as the "pole" for 65 gallon aquarium racks, do you think my wood size is able to support the aquarium?

here is the picture

[acroken]

Dehumidifiers best investment I made lately.

Brought in 1 day the humidity down from 70~75% to 40~45%

Most pipes for the constant drain installed today (still 3 to go)

I'm happy......................... Air exchanger for sale lol

Hans

I took Han's advise and switched my heat exchanger to dehumidifiers. I have one on each end of the room and working perfectly. I added fresh air intakes to keep air quality levels up. Heating the whole area is a bit of a challenge but with the dehumidifiers and fresh air intakes i have found a nice balance.I bought GE dehumidifiers and very happy with them so far. Thanks Hans.

Kenny

[Discus-Hans]

@Hans, really impressed with your rack and now i'm considering to make my own one, currently i'm planning to build a rack using wood. i have a humble questions Hans, could you tell me your wood size?, i'm planning to use 5cm X 7cm as the "pole" for 65 gallon aquarium racks, do you think my wood size is able to support the aquarium?

here is the picture

Hi Hunter,

I've used 2" x 4" I always feel they steal from me because in real they are 1 1/2" x 3 1/2" in cm that is: 4 x 9cm. All my wood work is made of those,

Hans

I took Han's advise and switched my heat exchanger to dehumidifiers. I have one on each end of the room and working perfectly. I added fresh air intakes to keep air quality levels up. Heating the whole area is a bit of a challenge but with the dehumidifiers and fresh air intakes i have found a nice balance.I bought GE dehumidifiers and very happy with them so far. Thanks Hans.

Kenny

No problem Kenny, you know....... I'm here to help.

Must say Joanne was not to happy with me when the first electric bill (after the dehumidifiers were set up) came in........+ $500 - 600 but I must say it's getting colder now for a few weeks but the heater (oil) hardly goes on. Have to see after the winter, how ever you do it, you always get bitten by the dog or scratched by the cat lol lol

Hans

[plecoman]

Wow! That's a very impressive system! The best I've seen!

[daniel19831123]

Hans, is there any chance of seeing how you connect your water storage system to the delivery of the fresh water to your sump? I've been trying to work out in my head how you connect those massive storage and I can't seemed to find a proper solution to linking them up to circulate the water. I'm afraid that my head will explode if I don't see the pic. :P

Hans, do you coat the rack with any paint before putting them together? If it's not paint, do you mind telling me what kind of wood is it and is the wood pressure treated? I've heard a lot of bad stuff about pressure treated wood and I'm not sure if I'm going to go for those. On the positive side it's long lasting but the down side is the health implication and also the cost compare to a normal pine timber.