Welcome back guys to the latest Tidal Gardens building video.
Time flies, man!
I just looked and the last time I did an official building update was back in January.
As always I wish more was done, but then again, there were some major milestones we accomplished
between then and now.
Ok, let’s get to it.
The first major announcement is I got the floors stained and sealed.
This was a somewhat unexpected upgrade to the building.
Staining and sealing the floor wasn’t in the original plan a year ago, but as the project
timeline got extended it gave me a little bit of flexibility to inject some improvements
along the way.
I decided to pull the trigger on the staining and sealing of the floor because I want to
be absolutely sure I am happy with the building before the tanks go in.
There are just some projects that can’t be done once there are operational reef aquariums.
Spraying horrible concrete products qualifies as one of those things.
A second reason I am glad the floor got finished is it really polished the look of the building.
It is always going to look industrial but the new floor warms the place up visually
and gives it a sense of refinement.
The third and final reason is the sealing did a lot as far as protecting the concrete
floor from water spills and also made it a lot easier to keep clean.
Saltwater does a ton of damage to concrete and I was told by several people leading up
to my decision that some kind of coating would be necessary.
As for cleaning, the sealing helped out immensely.
While unsealed, the concrete always looked dirty even minutes after I mopped the floor.
Also, it would always give off dust over time making the space even more dirty.
Mopping the floor wasn’t that easy either because the floor would grab and it took forever
to mop up 5,000 sq. ft.
All those issues ended once the floor was sealed.
I can easily mop the floor with a 48” microfiber broom and also apply a coat of concrete wax
to further protect it.
The wax coat is taking a bit of a beating now with the carpenter working on the posts
and the plumber working on the RO system, but then again, that’s what the wax is supposed
to do.
It takes the hit so the sealer doesn’t have to and then you can add more wax later and
burnish it to get it mirror polished again.
A worry that I had was that the newly sealed floor would be slippery when wet.
I was fully expecting to have to put on a top coat with some type of grit, but it really
wasn’t necessary.
I’ve walked around with wet shoes, tracked in snow, and it never was that bad.
Moving onto the RO system, the water treatment corner is starting to take shape.
As a refresher, the plan for this building is to make as much of our RO water from collected
rain water.
The entire roof of the new building collects rain water.
All of the downspouts go underground to a centrifugal filter that separates out any
debris like leaves and other gunk that makes its way down.
That water is then collected in a 10,000 gallon cistern underground.
Fast forward to today, and we are taking water into the building first into a pressure tank
to make it easier on the pump out in the cistern.
From there, we need to disinfect the water.
When the water is in the cistern, it is a bacteria farm.
That bacteria would seriously damage the RO membrane so we have to sterilize it before
it gets there.
That gets done in this 120-gallon chlorine contact tank.
It gets bleach periodically dosed by this pump depending on the flow going into the
tank.
While the chlorine does the job killing bacteria it too must be removed before getting to the
RO membrane because chlorine also damages them.
That gets handled in this next stage with this activated carbon chamber.
The activated carbon soaks up and permanently binds up chlorine as well as a bunch of other
things.
We are almost to the RO system, but we need one last filter before we get there.
There are critters that live in the water that can survive the chlorine treatment and
will make it through the carbon filtration.
They are about 6 microns in size, so this filter is a 1 micron filter that stops all
of them as well as any fine debris coming out of the activated carbon stage.
Finally we get to the RO system itself.
This is a commercial 3,000-gallon per day unit.
As crazy as it sounds, this unit can be upgraded in the future to something REALLY big if we
need to by adding additional membranes and installing a bigger recirculating pump but
I don’t think we are going to need anything more than this because we can only store so
much water at any given time.
The nice thing about these commercial units is how ridiculously long-lasting the membranes
are if you take good care of them.
While a typical hobbyist RO membrane should be replaced every 6-12 months, these giant
membranes can last up to ten years.
At the greenhouse I used a 1,000-gallon per day membrane and I did change it once ever
out of a feeling of obligation after 7 years and when I took out the old membrane it looked
brand new.
I totally believe I can get 10 years out of these new membranes.
The last thing I will mention about this RO unit is there is a recirculation valve to
send waste water back through the unit to make less waste water.
I’ve seen in some home aquarium setups they daisy chain multiple RO units with booster
pumps to utilize waste water over and over again.
This is a similar concept.
This RO runs at around 180 PSI so it can handle a lot of waste water recirculation, so at
the end of all this, we expect about 1 to 1 purified water to waste water ratio.
From here, the waste water goes outside to water the lawn and the clean water goes to
the 1,000-gallon freshwater holding tank.
We’ve got one freshwater tank and one saltwater tank, each one is 1,000 gallons and both are
heated to 77-degrees by the boiler system upstairs.
From these tanks, there are two Variable Speed Drives that provide on-demand fresh and salt
water to every sump in both this building and the greenhouse next door.
This should make maintenance a lot easier.
Let’s talk about the stands.
These stands are aluminum t-slot stands made by 80/20.
They have their pros and cons, but overall I am really happy with them.
For the pros, I like how sleek and professional they look.
I’ve only ever had wood stands and our cinderblock construction in the greenhouse.
Given the choice, I would 100 out of 100 times go with this aluminum stand over those two
options.
I think Aluminum will hold up to water better over time as well.
Besides appearance, the whole system is an erector set so there is the possibility of
changing stuff around in the future or adding stuff like shelves.
Depending on the design of the stand, that may be really challenging and might involve
disassembling a lot of pieces, but it CAN be done if you really wanted to.
As for cons, the obvious one that can’t be ignored is that they are expensive.
Everything is custom cut and designed for your specific project so there is that markup
reflected in the price.
Also, the material itself is considerably more expensive than wood, so if you decide
to go this route, expect to pay for it.
The other con is it is just not at all fun to work with and it took a fair bit of trial
and error to get familiar with it.
There are no instructions whatsoever.
There is a drawing of what the stand is supposed to look like, but it is just a picture.
Nothing is labeled, there are no measurements which often leads to the wrong piece being
used because it turns out that the pile of extrusions over there?
Yeah, some of them are 1” longer than the other and you need to grab the right ones.
Screws?
There are a few different types, several hundred of each, and hopefully you use the right ones
in the right places, because there is exactly the number that you need.
Not one screw extra.
So it is kind of horrifying to fully build a couple stands and then realize the numbers
aren’t looking right and you have to take it all apart because you used the wrong screws.
Once we could actually see a built stand in front of us, we could more easily go through
and figure out a calculator how many screws of a certain type they SHOULD be and match
it up with the bags to confirm.
Once we did that, we figured out a lot BUT we had all these washers and screws that didn’t
have a home.
Hundreds of them…
again to our horror we discovered that some of the pieces came with default hardware that
we were supposed to replace with this other hardware because it was stainless while the
original hardware was another kind of steel.
Now we get to add on about 3 days to disassemble and re-assemble the stands previously constructed
to now use the correctly swapped out hardware.
Did I mention there were no instructions?
Pain in the butt…
Still, we eventually got good at it so moving forward I feel like I have a really good understanding
of how to build these damn things.
One other thing I will mention about these stands is that I made a last minute modification
to them.
Originally they were designed to sit flat on the ground with the frame resting on the
floor.
The more I thought about it, the more I came to the inevitable truth that I needed leveling
feet and leveling casters.
There were three main reasons for this.
The first is obviously the ability to move the stands.
Being able to easily move them from the front of the building to its final position at the
back is huge.
I’m never going to move these tanks with water in it, but just being able to move the
tanks from the loading area to the back of the building reduced my anxiety about move-in
day substantially.
All I have to worry about now is getting it from the truck to the stand right at the door.
The added mobility of the stands also allowed us to brainstorm other tank layouts.
We spent an afternoon moving them around into different configurations and after all that
we ended up going back to the original plan.
It was nice to be able to move stands around and walk around the space just to do that
mental exercise and the best part is that it confirmed that the original layout was
indeed the best layout.
The second reason is we plan on running the drainage from the tanks to the sumps using
a single 4” drain that the overflow boxes will connect to.
I want this 4” pipe to sit directly on the floor.
Occasionally that 4” pipe will cross a walkway so we will have to build a small step over
it.
Not a big deal.
The problem with the original design of the stands is because the frame sits on the floor,
the 4” pipe has to sit on top of is so what was originally a 4” step is now an 8”
step in some cases.
Once we added the wheels though, the frame sits 6” off the ground allowing space for
that 4” drain line.
The third and last reason is to be able to easily level the stands.
This concrete floor is supposed to be dead level, but there is no way it’s going to
be perfectly level.
Each stand rests on six leveling casters that can each handle 2200 lbs.
In addition, there are four feet that can handle about 2000 lbs each.
Being able to level each of the 10 contact points to perfectly level the stands is a
nice luxury.
That pretty much covers the major developments up to this point.
As for next steps, there are some small carpentry projects that still need to be done, like
putting up Azek trim and covering the posts.
There are some REALLY big carpentry projects like the kitchen break area upstairs that
I’m honestly putting no resources into right now.
If you’ve ever done a big kitchen you know how much money gets dumped into those projects
and right now I’m all about getting actual aquariums up and running.
One day it will be a sweet space, but… no day soon.
Next Step #2…
We are waiting on the sumps which are going to be 96 x 48 x 24 which doesn’t seem that
big when I measure it out on the floor, but when I visited Ryan’s tank in Dallas, he
had a sump that was SLIGHTLY smaller and it looked absolutely gigantic standing next to
it.
It’s not super critical that we get the sumps right away, but it will be cool to get
one into the space and see what it looks like.
Finally, we are waiting on the tanks themselves.
I was hoping they would be here by now, but Felix at Reef Savvy moved his workshop so
it pushes our time-table back even further.
If you thought these tanks were going to show up on time, you haven’t been paying attention
to this whole building project.
EVERYTHING gets delayed…
It’s a blessing in disguise though because it lets me knock out some of these other bills
as they come up and generate some funds to actually pay for the tanks with a little bit
more breathing room.
Anyhow, this is the last update I’m planning on doing before the tanks are here and full
of water.
Thank you all so much for your interest in this series.
It’s been a really long ride getting to this point so I appreciate all the excitement
over this project even without a single reef aquarium involved!
Believe me, there is nobody on earth that wants to get these tanks in than me, but we
all have to wait a little longer.
Now that we are building the stands it is getting easier and easier to envision how
the space will be utilized.
It’s exciting stuff.
Ok guys, please feel free to share your comments below, and don’t forget to subscribe and
the notification bell to stay up to date on this build.
As always please leave a like on your way out and I’ll see you all next video.
Happy reefing.