Does anyone have any experience, advice, or suggestions regarding coatings for the inside of tender water tanks?

Is there a good quality, easy to apply, coating that can be applied over light surface rust?

Rob,
I don't know the economics of this however POR15 would be a great coating. It is expensive though but perhaps a larger quantity would be more cost effective. This stuff absolutely stops rust and it is almost bullet proof. Don't get it on your hands because you either sand it off or wait until you shed your skin. It will also work as an external boiler shell paint. Once again it stops rust, is stronger than even epoxy paints and will go to 600F. Try www.POR15.com

POR-15 is great stuff, but it's around $60 a gallon or so.

Apexior, the same brand name for the high-temp paint for flues and boiler interiors, makes an excellent coating fro the interior of the tender tank, where high temps are not a factor.

Apexior is made and sold by The Dampney Co.

Here in Utah on the Heber Valley we have a company that will actually spray the interior of the tender with a plastic material that will hold thousands of p.s.i. (weight of the water at thousands of gallons). They come in and sand blast the top of the tender where the material is the thickest. They then spray the palstic liner in the tender thus creating a "bag" if you will in the tender. On the 75, we have a 7,000 gallon tank. The bid on the job, which we are still yet to complete was about $7,000.00

I would be more than happy to share contact names and numbers, please reply for more info.

John E. Rimmasch
CMO/HVRR

> POR-15 is great stuff, but it's around $60 a
> gallon or so.

> Apexior, the same brand name for the
> high-temp paint for flues and boiler
> interiors, makes an excellent coating fro
> the interior of the tender tank, where high
> temps are not a factor.

> Apexior is made and sold by The Dampney Co.


jrimmasch@yahoo.com

Thanks for the replies. I am checking into the POR-15, which sounds more like my price range. The spray on plastic may be worth looking into also, but sounds like it would be a bit pricey for this 9000 gallon cylindrical tank.

I thought I had heard of an Apexior product for water tanks, and will have to look into that as well. The main requirement is being able to apply over surface rust, since the interior of the tank is in pretty good shape now, and I would like to avoid the trouble of sandblasting if I can.

Try coaltar epoxy made by Apexior or Rustoleum.
The traditional tank paint made by Apexior is asphalt and does not last long. The key seems to be coaltar, It is much more resistent to water the asphalt is

hgorin@ix.netcom.com

Let me suggest either Sherwin-Williams "Targuard" or Carboline 300M Bitumastic. Both are two part coal tar epoxies. In my real world job, we use either of them to coat the trash racks at our hydro power generating plants.

Also you may want to look into products used to coat waterboxes in steam (either nuclear or fossil) power plant condensers. Plasticoat is one name that comes to mind but there are others.

GMR

TVRM Shop Updates by Steve Freer
aw90h@cs.com

>Dear Rob:
I have used Apexior No 2 on the water side of our No. 97's cistern and was very disappointed. We needle scaled and wirebrushed the surfaces, but the stuff didn't last a season.
I have used Aperior No. 1 on the inside of boilers for years with excellent results.
After wasting a lot of time with a variety of coatings (Bars-Rust, etc.), in 1992 we sandblasted the inside of our cisterns and painted them with three coats of Rustoleum 9100 series epoxy with the special activator for immersion service. The stuff works great. Typically, we spend a day sanding and touching up little spots each year during our annual inspection work.
The secret is in the surface preparation (sandblast).
J.David

jdconrad@snet.net

My father is an industrial coatings contractor and his company specializes in coatings and rehabilitations for water tanks of all sizes. So, here's what I can tell you.

The surface preparation is the key (see post by J. David). Any coating is only as good as the surface to which it is applied. As for the coating itself, there are a number of good coatings made by several companies. Any coal tar based product is probably not what you want for this particular application, as I don't see the inside of a tender taking much abuse from abrasion (the coal bunker - yes, as we did at TVRM). An epoxy coating of some sort is your best bet. The question for which one should be determined by a number of factors, including how clean the surface will be, the condition of the steel, and what kind of chemicals you use to treat the water. Carboline makes several coating systems that would work, as well as Sherwin-Williams, Pittsburg Industrial, and several others. My recommendation for the most widely regarded coatings by utilities for everything from potable water storage tanks to waste-water clarifiers and sewage plants are the coating systems made by the TNEMEC company.

Service life and durability from many coating systems can range from 5 to 20 years or more with only minor maintenance given proper adherance to specifications and the willingness to do it right the first time.

Mike Brown
TVRM

> Does anyone have any experience, advice, or
> suggestions regarding coatings for the
> inside of tender water tanks?

> Is there a good quality, easy to apply,
> coating that can be applied over light
> surface rust?


Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum
newriver400@cs.com