Building a DIY canopy

Hi guys

I am new to the site and have read through the forums about building your own canopy.
Everyone said something different so i just want to confirm a few things:

What is the best and cost effective wood to use?
What must i use to seal the tank? I see some talking about using gloss enamel paint, does this then act as a varnish that seals the wood?

I am in Cape Town, so some stores that have good prices would also be great

Thanks guys

 

Supawood is not bad and much cheaper that Pine. Or you can use hardboard, depends what you can afford. As for sealing the wood inside I would advise you to first paint it with normal builders PVA 2x and then paint with gloss enamel.

 

i will have a look at the prices of those wood and see which one will suit my budget best.

Thanks for advice on paint and quick response

 

Dude most of the wood is dirt cheap at Builders, I used pine because it looked and felt so much sturdier.
I was there about two weeks ago and the had a special on the Pine, size was 530mm wide and 3000mm long
Precut and covered in plastic ready to go..

as far as I can remember it was-close to R200 and the charged me 10 bucks to cut it to the sizes I wanted.

Paint I cant advise because I used them for top of stand planks
Sanded my life away making it all smooth and rounded edges and triple varnished it over a week.

After all that work I had this perfect piece of wood, then I went and put a fish tank on top of it.. now I can only see the edges of my hard labor.

 

Hi mudkip. Welcome to the Forum!

What is the dimensions of your tank?

I was also contemplating on building my own canopy but I think that is one of the more difficult things to build. You must take into consideration the weight of the canopy, where the lights are going to be, condensate, wood treatment, etc.
One thing that puzzles me is how do you protect the lights and the fittings from the condensate and how do you make sure that there's no water running on the outside of your tank.
I know you get this foamy rubber strip from builders that could work in sealing the canopy, not sure if that's the best option.

Haven't come across a canopy build thread, but then again haven't actually looked.

Sorry my post isn't any help, just interested in seeing what it looks like when your finished.
Please post photo's of your build, would like to see how it's done.

 

i will try and post some photos when i am done. There are quiet a few threads about building your own canopy in the forums. Will definitely have to do my homework and take a lot of things into consideration before i start building the canopy.

 

Hallo and welcome. Glad you joined (newshost member?)

 

thats right