First idea for the cabinet

As Paludarium 1.0 is sold and gone, I’ve begun to design the cabinet that will be built under the new paludarium. I plan to use kitchen cabinets for this purpose, and include a section to put the TV on as well.

Using kitchen cabinets

When building our new kitchen, it dawned on me that using kitchen cabinets might make the perfect cabinet under the new paludarium. It is very sturdy, relatively well resistant to water and moist, and best of all… A depth of around 65cm will not be a problem at all (since most cabinets you buy are 50cm deep or less).

Also, we can get the cabinet in the same style as our new kitchen. It would be very cool if this cabinet has the same look and feel as our kitchen.


Drawing 1.0

The following drawing is the first idea of the new cabinet that will support the new paludarium. Hopefully our kitchen supplier is able to deliver all the weird sizes we need:

Kitchen cabinet to double as both paludarium and TV cabinet

Depth of the entire cabinet wil be 65cm. That should leave some room for any tubing behind the paludarium.With two cabinets underneath which are 60cm wide each, there should be plenty of room to place an external aquarium filter, a reverse osmosis filter, a CO2 cylinder and any other electrical stuff I need in there.


Adaptations in the construction

The paludarium will weigh in at about 400KG. Not just some cabinet required. Any decent kitchen cabinet will hold this weight, only the legs under the cabinets are generally placed wrong to cope with these extreme forces. So instead of the standard legs under a kitchen cabinet, I will leave out these legs altogether and replace them by wooden beams that run exactly under the vertical plating (see the picture above). This way the forces imposed on the cabinet continues straight down through the material, through the beam which rests directly on the concrete floor. Should work!