Wood Expert Required For Blown Chipboard

[ShinySideUp]

I have a 640 litre tank, six foot long weighing—with stand— about 800kg. I have noticed that a small section at the front of the stand at floor level has 'blown'.  I presume I have spilt some water on the floor at some time which has been absorbed by the outside chipboard upright piece. As far as I can tell only a bit about an inch long is affected but with so much weight on the stand I am a little concerned. Moving the tank is a non-starter but is there anything I can do to stop the 'blowing' spreading or fix the bit that has been affected?

 

[elmo666]

Hi. Loads on aquarium cabinets are spread over the whole footprint of the cabinet, so an inch or two of damage will have no impact on its strength at all. I've seen some pretty dodgey looking cabinets still going strong with lots of water damage. Chipboard is made from wood particles bonded with resins. The water gets into the dry timber particles as wood is hydroscopic, can take in and give of water readily. Sadly, the swelling breaks the bond between the wood and resin, pushes apart and then can never go back to its original "tightness", so the swelling remains after it dries out. If it were only chipboard, with no melamine facing, it could possibly sand it back, ofcourse this won't be the case. If you ever get the chance to empty the tank, you can gently cut away a little chipboard from the centre of the swelling, apply some wood glue and using two blocks and a g cramp, squeeze it back together and leave it overnight to dry. Not much help I know, try to put it out of mind and focus on your tank

 

[ShinySideUp]

Thanks for that Elmo, that's quite a lot of help actually.
 
Cheers
 
Martin
 
PS It's pretty stupid that they don't seal the bottoms of the chipboard when they make them. I was going to check the bottom when the tank arrived but I forgot and couldn't lift the tank off the stand afterward and decided that ...'it'll be alright, I'm sure'. Hmm.

 

[Gruntle]

My base was MDF (which if I remember is basically sawdust and glue). Even though it was heavily varnished it seems the previous owner had scratched the varnish (maybe taking the canister filter in and out over a series of years). I had a volcano-like infestation of powdery dust in a few places. So even a heavy coat of varnish won't save you from all possible "accidents" that happen.
 
Luckily the rest of the cabinet is solid wood so I just replaced the base with some tongue and groove cut to size and all is well.

 

[elmo666]

If you leave rolled up tissue paper along the entire edge to suck out any remaining moisture you can then apply clear silicone along the bottom to form a seal to avoid any further damage from future spillage........unless it's carpet of course lol.

 

[ShinySideUp]

........unless it's carpet of course lol.

 
It is.

 
TBH that is probably the problem because with even a small spill the carpet absorbs the moisture and then it gets passed to the stand. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I'd probably take up the carpet and put down a layer of breeze blocks if I did it again.