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Originally Posted by Natalia  My problem is that my basement is nothing like yours. It is unfinished, unheated, not well lit and has noisy equippment lincluding oil tank and furnace. I am pretty sure there are mice there and who knows what else. While we do entertain ourselves with the idea to convert it into a living space one day, realistically this won't happen in the near future. Therefore, if I put the tank in the basement half of the fun (sitting and watching it for hours) will be gone. I have to still think about possible options here... |
You might like your basement more than mine at the moment. Our two year-old flooded ours a couple of weeks ago with sewage. Don't even ask how that happened. Just today the workers came to replace the drywall they tore out. It's been a regular three-ring catastrophe here lately. Ugggh. Do you know how long it takes a 2 year-old to do $10,000 damage? About one minute it turns out.......
When thinking about the weight, imagine 15 or 20 full-grown adults standing quite close to one another. You'd be enormously surprised if a little group of people at a party suddenly fell through the floor. Probably no one here has even heard of such a thing. If your house is old and if the joists are full of termite holes, I'd proceed with caution. If the house is relatively new and you can locate the tank quite close to the load-bearing walls that support the joists you'll be much better off. It sounds like you're aware that spreading the load between cross-wise along several joists is better than placing it long-wise along only one or two. Depending on your basement you might be able to add some floor-to-ceiling supports in key locations to reinforce the area where the tank will be. These are commonly used to retrofit older homes that start to sag.
If you're going to go to the trouble of setting up a tank that big it absolutely needs to be where it can add beauty to your home. Done right, the overall effect is stunning.
For 'scaping, I use some 18" long tweezers and some 16" curved mayo scissors. I still go in up to my armpit at times. My wife was kind enough to buy me a stepstool. Without the cheating instruments it would be pretty hopeless.