Tag Archives: Paludarium cabinet

Electronics and Waterworks in a Cabinet How?

The next issue I faced was one I remember well and I think you may actually “feel” as well: You add stuff and add more stuff in the cabinet underneath, and at some point it is just wires, tubes, pipes and devices… Completely inaccessible.

I wanted to do these things differently this time. What did I come up with? Why not install a slider drawer inside the cabinet! I can put all electronics on one side, water-related stuff (osmosis, heating, valves and pumps) on the other side. If I add enough length to all wires and hoses, I’d be able to pull out the entire
“module” to do work on without banging my head ever again! As a picture says a thousand words:

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The Birth of a new paludarium – Palu2022

Yes, I am back! Ok, ok, I can hear you saying: “Yeah we are in 2023 and you are building a 2022 model”. Well true, but these things take a LONG way before they actually see the light of day, especially given the nature of the paludarium projects I run. Every single time there is more pipes, more sensors, more lights, more stuff. This project was started over a year ago…

WHY? Well, welcome to the age of Zoom and Teams calls

I have come to the realization that things will not change much after the pandemic. Especially in the world of IT where I am still part of (#IworkForDell !) the movement back to how things were are slow or maybe even absent. Where I used to be on a plane like once a week I am now cooked up in my house doing online calls. Also, it doesn’t help that I do have a room where I can work, but it is in the “Mancave” and it has NO outside windows. Yuck!!

So what to do?

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Building paludarium 2.5

Yes, paludarium 2.5. Not 3.0 (yet). It was taking too long to construct version 3.0, so now I’ve started to build version 2.5, which is a high-tech version but not in the new acrylic houseing. It will be a classic glass construction like the ones I’ve built before.

Building the wooden table

The glass paludarium is already here, and it is 50cm x 50cm x 100cm (length x depth x height) in size, with 28cm of water. Before building the paludarium out I wanted to construct Read more »

The new cabinet has arrived!

After a lot of thinking, rethinking and selecting kitchen suppliers, I finally managed to get a cabinet ordered tuned to my exact requirements! In this blog post I’ll share some of the details that make up “the perfect cabinet” for me.



How it looks on the outside

The first thing to consider, was that the new cabinet should fit neatly into our living room. So we wanted the style of the cabinet to match. That is where the idea of using kitchen cabinets first came to mind (also see “First Idea for the Cabinet“).

The next challenge was to find kitchen supplier that could build what we required. We started out with the supplier that supplied our kitchen. Unfortunately, they where unable to deliver the height we needed. As it turned out, almost all kitchen suppliers were unable to deliver what we needed. Especially the lower part of the cabinet turned out to be impossible for most suppliers to deliver.

Finally we found a kitchen supplier that built all of their cabinets themselves, and were able to deliver any (!!) size we wanted. As an input we had these requirements:

Kitchen cabinet to double as both paludarium and TV cabinet

And here is the final result:

The paludarium cabinet as it turned out; TV on the right on a lower section, and room for the paludarium on a higher section on the left.

We are very happy with the result; this cabinet should deliver enough room and strength to carry my beloved paludarium 2.0. Please note I did not use the original stands under the cabinets. As they are not in line with the vertical sides of the cabinets, the huge weight might destroy the cabinet. Instead, I used small wooden beams positioned directly under the vertical sides that support them from back to front (as you can see in the schematical drawing).


A look inside the cabinet

Inside the cabinet I now have the luxury of having tap water and a sewer drain, so I can completely automate the process of refilling, changing water. Also, the rain can now come directly from the tap water pressure, so I’ll just need an electric valve and no longer any rainwater pumps. The rain will be completely silent apart from the hissing of the sprinklers. I can live with the downside that it will be raining cold tap water:

Details of the drain and tap inside the new paludarium cabinet.

The total space under the paludarium should be more than enough to house all the stuff I need under there like a reverse osmosis appliance, all the plumbing and valves, the external filter and the a bunch of electronics. If I can store all this stuff there, I should not have a problem:

If I can store all this stuff under the paludarium, it should surely be enough to store all filters, valves, plumbing and electronics!

Up next… Finalize all details around the paludarium sizing and pass-throughs, then order the glass…!!!

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 Read more »