Electrical power
My electrical panel is full, but I did have a mostly unused
50A circuit for an unused hot tub connection.
My original thought was that I would need to bring an electrician in to
remove the 50A circuit and use that slot to install two 20A circuit breakers.
After opening up my panel box, I realized that the family room where the
tank is going is a dedicated circuit without any real power consumption on it,
so I already had one mostly dedicated circuit in place.
And, contrary to normal Murphy’s Law, there was an unused 20A breaker
in the box as well! I don’t
usually get that lucky. The other
good thing is that the electrical panel is in the garage and the tank is being
installed on the opposite side of the wall, so I only needed to run power a few
feet.
After the discovery of the unused breaker, the
electrical upgrade was very straightforward.
I just cut a hole in the drywall in the garage where I wanted to install
the new outlet box. I then ran
nomex from the breaker down to the crawlspace and back up through the bottom
joist where I drilled a hole to pass the wires through.
Then it was just a matter of cutting a hole in the paneling, then
mounting and wiring up the electrical outlet.
Below is a diagram of my electrical circuits.
'T' indicates that the circuit uses a timer to control operation.
Floor Bracing
The tank is going 10” out from a load bearing wall,
so it has considerable support on the back side.
I did feel like I needed some bracing on the front side of the tank to
ensure that the floor would not sag. This
floor is over a crawl space about 30” high.
I went down to a RV center and bought a package of 4 trailer support
stands for $30. I placed each of
these stands on top of a cement block under the floor joists along the front
edge of the tank. I used a thick
metal plate between the jack and the joist to spread the load out.
Then it was just a matter of screwing the jackscrews out until they were
snug under the joists. Not real
fancy, but I think that it will serve the purpose.
