Water tank coatings

[RayNWanda]

 We had a thread on water tanks and there seemed to be a lot of interest. One of the recurring questions was about coatings. We are interested in coating the inside of ours too, but like everybody else, I could not find anything suitable. One of the epoxy manufacturers sent me to the NSF website. I poked around on their site, finally sent them an email. I got a reply with search instructions of how to find what we are looking for. It looks like there are several that are suitable for small potable water tanks. Read the footnotes- some of the coatings have to be applied/cured at high temperatures, ect. But there are several that will cure at 75-77 degrees in 1-3 days. Here is the email:

Good afternoon Ray, Bruce Bartley sent me your email below. I would recommend that you go to the NSF website and search our listings for coating-tanks. Please find below the instructions that will lead you to the listings for coatings Certified to NSF/ANSI 61 for coating tanks and the restrictions/parameters of those listings.



www.nsf.org

select search listings in the upper right hand side of the screen

select Drinking Water System Components

Under Product Type select coatings-tank from the drop down menu and then hit search

This will pull up all coatings certified for tank end use. If you would like to narrow that to just epoxy, you can select the material type from the drop down menu in addition to selecting your product type.



I hope this helps you find the information you are looking for. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.





From: Ray
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 4:09 PM
To: Bartley, Bruce
Subject: Potable water tanks



We are looking for a coating (epoxy?) to use in the potable water tanks in our sailboat. The tanks are fiberglass and the water picks up a strong chemical taste and smell after sitting in the tanks for several days. We opened the tanks and scrubbed them last spring, so they are clean. Is there a barrier or epoxy coating available that would help? There are 3- 50 gallon tanks.

[Randy]

Great info. Please let us know which product you use and how it works out.

[RayNWanda]

 Right now I'm thinking Waterline from HydraTech. It is ANSI/NSF 61 approved for potable water tanks greater than 5 gallons. Easy to mix-2:1 ratio. The water tanks would be useable after 16 hours. It is sold only by the gallon, 70.00/gallon. It is sold mainly for rehabbing water lines, but it can be used on a variety of materials. You do have to rough up fiberglass to get good adhesion. Probably wet sanding with a medium grit sanding sponge would do it, and no dust to fool with. They sell to anybody, and they take all forms of plastic. I'm still bouncing notes back and forth with their sales manager, but this looks very promising. The only downside I can see right now is the 15-20 minute working time, but that can be worked around.

http://www.hydratechllc.com/

[slokat]

I was thinking that there are pond epoxies for koi that are non toxic...  since they are very sensitive fish.

two links:

http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/3048/Epoxy-Paint-1-Gallon

http://www.pondarmor.com/

I remodeled the facilities that Pond Armor moved into when they started business, however don't drop my name as I ended up in a lawsuit with the owner on another project when he tried to skate on the final bill... I won, or actually more like it was decided in my favor & I paid my lawyer 4 times more than I was owed to get to that verdict.

Did those come up on the list, they are both supposed to stick to anything (& anyone is a common complaint).

[Higgins]

Thanks for the post RayNWanda.  I've been looking for that info ever since I've owned the boat!