How much weight can a condo support?

[MarkLV]

The tank is 108 inches (9ft) long 30 inches wide and 30 inches tall. You could hardly live in it as someone suggested. It won't be competition for the Shedd either. It's not much longer than my couch.

And yes if it broke it would create a large mess but tanks don't just break. The acrylic's seams are chemically bonded. They don't just spring leaks. If it does break its because it has been hit by something and in that case someone would be home to deal with it. For everything else you have redundant fail safes. It has been through a few earthquakes without a drop hitting the floor. I'm not worried about a flood although I can see an HOA having a problem with it.

I know it can be done as I have seen aquariums in some of the condos we have looked at through Redfin.com. It's just hard to tell the size of the tank a picture. I think I will instead contact one of the many places in the area that install aquariums and see what buildings they have had luck in. Thanks for the help.

[ToriaT]

One idea is to look into moving into a loft condo on the ground floor. There are quite a few loft condos in the city and most of them are quite nice. I doubt if anyone will allow such an aquarium up on higher floors. Not only because of the floor weight but if something broke loose the water would come cascading down. there are web sites that are devoted just to loft condos. these are scattered all over the city but primarily on the near west side, printers row and near south side and north side. The printers row buildings were made to hold large printing presses. Look for addresses on south dearborn or plymouth court, etc.

[Mr Downtown]

I don't think it will be a huge problem in a modern concrete building, or particularly in a concrete loft such as Dearborn Tower, which was built as a cold storage warehouse. The original intended use would have been storage of various kinds of frozen water, stacked up to the ceiling. Your tank would only be 130 psf, well within the commonly rated live load for concrete construction. The South Loop and River North are full of concrete warehouses, built in an era of structural overcompensation, that have been converted to condos.