Height adjustable feet for DIY stand

[ajm83]

Thinking of making a stand, but my floor (in fact the whole house) is a bit wonky. Current tank is 85 cm across, new one is probably going to be approx 130 - 140, so the wonky water line would be a good deal more visible I think.

So would it be a spectacularly bad idea to use something like these to enable easy levelling?

(just examples, not these exact ones).
I would of course ensure they are rated to cope with a good deal more weight than needed, and probably use 8 to spread the weight as much as possible.

Flooring is laminate over suspended wooden floorboards, tank would be approx 250L I think.

Thanks.
Andrew.

 

[ian_m]

Bad idea as these are many many times too small to take the weight. If your tank is say 140cm x 40cm x 40cm (guessing) that's 0.14 x 0.4 x 0.4 = 0.0224m3 which is 224Kg. Adding stand and substrate you are approaching 300Kg.

Thus even with say 8 to spread the weight, that's about 40Kg per leg assuming weight is spread evenly (which it won't be) !!!.

You really should be aiming for something like this (maybe a bit over the top)...

Or read my post below on how to get stands level.
http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/800-ltr.37573/page-2#post-406412

Or if you want feet use something like this.
http://www.petercookint.com/retail/index.php/wooden-feet/wsr71-2163.html
and trim say 8 off to the required heights in order to get the stand level.

 

[Rahms]

well if you can find some that are rated for the weight required, they'll be fine. But I'm not sure you can. A lot of people use the doorstop looking things to level their tank. Probably easier?

like this

 

[ajm83]

Thanks for the info. Good idea trimming fixed feet, hadn't thought of that. Also I was gutted for the OP when reading that 800ltr thread.

As for being able to find feet which will take the weight, I don't think that's a problem.

http://www.rosshandling.co.uk/tilting-feet.asp

Does the highlighted one look okay for this kind of usage?

What appeals about the feet is that I think I could match the stand to the Besta TV unit which sits next to it and itself has adjustable feet and a 'floating appearance'.
If I could make the whole lot match by using a couple of the spare Besta doors sitting in the loft, I would be in for some serious Brownie points!

 

[ian_m]

Look good, all you need now is some way of getting that load into you unit. Some form of threaded plate ?

What would be best would be a metal strip with a couple of M12 (or m10) bolts welded to it. Screw strip to bottom of stand, screw feet into bolts and adjust away.The metal strip would spread the load.

 

[Wizard]

U gotta think ...it's rated to that load but what is it sat on ? 300kg pushing on a small area creates a lot of force ....question is can the floor handle it?

Laminate over suspended wooden beams and small feet with 250+kg on top ..... To me thats just asking for trouble :-/
As to how I would solve the problem ....I personaly would place the cabinet on top of a wooden frame (that's painted black) say 24-50mm off the floor that's 50-100mm in , from the cabinet edges (to give the suspended look), but make the frame so it is level on the floor and levels the cabinet

 

[Rahms]

You could just place the feet onto a flat board to distribute the weight for the floor. Possibly may ruin your floating look a bit, but you could paint the board the same as your carpet That's what I intend to do for my stand, don't want shims etc damaging the main stand anyways!

Wizards idea could be amazing, depends on what the rest of your stand is like. I'd be a bit uncomfortable if my main supports for the tank were on top of the floating part. But it would be easy to design a stand that avoids that if you haven't got anything built yet