So... this morning, a bit of an adventure.
In the morning I went to grab some tools and rented a couple of the large 8" suction cups (I would have rented four but they only had 3 so..).
Joe (Wretch) arrived at about 10am and we chatted for a bit, before the truck driver showed up. I called up Andrew (Piscez) who also dragged his son Matthew out for the move.
Unfortunately, the freight company miscalculated the length of the crate slightly, its tailgate was NOT 8' at all, so it ended up like this:
The tank was literally hanging off into the air for a while when he lowered the tailgate. The driver was nice enough to use his jack to "deliver" it close to my patio entrance, up until a gravel section. We uncrated it there, used the suction cups, and carried it all the way in. The cups really helped with the lifting itself, with four of us guys (me being the weak one), we had no trouble moving the tank onto the stand.
Andrew and his son had to leave afterwards, so they couldn't enjoy the pizza party:
Thanks so much for coming to help, you guys really made my life easier!
(boxed up pizza was Hawaiian. Eew pineapples, amiright?)
After we got the tank up onto the stand, however, we realized the sump could not be fitted in "normally" and had to be slipped in from the open end of the stand, which was already flushed against the wall. With that in mind, we (Joe, Joanne, and I) had to lift the tank off onto the floor, move the stand, move the sump in, and lift the tank back onto the stand. Not cool.
The end result, though, was a worthy sight to behold. See
Happy the Octopus invading our tank and drinking a Steamworks pilsner.
So now the tank is getting wet for the leak test. Plumbing will be done tomorrow. I'm going to install the lights later today.
Thank you so much to Joe. The guy even helped me throw away all the garbage (smashing the pallet was sorta fun) and ate many of my pizza and beer
Thank you to Andrew and Matthew for your grunt work too. There was absolutely no way I could have done this without help.
And now, onto the rest of the work.