Rain Water harvesting is a good practice in the season of Monsoon to maintain a near-constant supply of water at your home or in outdoor buildings. Mostly, the rainwater tanks Sydney built structures are large enough to facilitate the added volume of rainwater within the stored supply of water that’s drawn from pumps.
Rainwater harvesting, however, requires that you maintain certain practices to keep the water clean. It also requires that you take additional care of your rainwater tank because the unfiltered rainwater can prove to be harmful when it’s collected from surfaces that are built from preservative-treated woods or coated with lead protected paint, and so on.
Even if the rainwater isn’t collected through harmful ways, it can comparatively corrode your water tank rather quickly, especially faster when the water tank is itself subjected to direct rain falling on it. But, you could prevent that outcome and maintain the life capacity of your water tank by performing some comprehensive protection treatments.
Protection Against Corrosion
Any of the rainwater tanks Sydney built casing could easily lose its life fairly quickly when it begins to corrode. This could be mostly due to climatic conditions or simply because the tank hasn’t been cleaned regularly, which allows the sediments to gather up and chemically react with the molecules of the tank.
The tanks that are kept at ground level or ones that are too huge for routine maintenance suffer from corrosion that often leads to leakages and bad quality water supply.
A number of techniques, which are mentioned below, could help to prevent such occurrences and to protect the integrity of the water that reaches your tap from these rainwater tanks.
Outdoor Corrosion Control
The modern eco-friendly waterborne coating applications could benefit your ground level rainwater tanks as they provide better adhesion. This helps them to bond better with the steel surface and the outer surface of the tanks which then prevents corrosion, provided if the tanks are cleaned properly and routinely.
Above Ground Protection
Structures that are used to hold the tank at a high level from the ground could corrode too which when reacts with the surface of the tank, leads to the decaying of the latter. Again, this could be prevented by staging the tank with another support so that the structure is in contact with the tank through an anti-corrosive material. You could also simply paint the structures regularly but that will raise the maintenance cost significantly.
Corrosion Preventive Coating
Post the ban of lead-based coatings, various types of coating materials have emerged to provide reliable protection against corrosion. These coatings serve as a barrier between the chemical compounds of the tank and the outside elements while also providing valuable protection against moisture buildup.
Following are some of the widely used coating materials that are used to prevent corrosion on and within the installed rainwater tanks:
Table of Contents
New Systems
Multiple types of coating materials such as urethanes, waterborne epoxies, acrylics, high solid, and mastic epoxies are known to deliver good corrosion protection even when they’re directly exposed to UV rays and direct rain. These coating materials meet the VOC emission standards therefore they’re incredibly dependable.
● Exterior Coating
Commonly for the exterior coatings, Acrylic-based polymers are used as they’re mighty resistant to UV light besides also offering great flexibility. Their durability is also deemed to be solid as they offer superior corrosion and chemical resistance which allows them to be also applied as primers on the exterior surface of the tanks. These coatings could also allow providing unique finishes.
● Waterborne Epoxies
Such coatings are typically known to contain monomer group compounds that make them into a dense and tight film-like structure which is also why they’re easy to apply. These waterborne polymers are resistant to alkali, certain acids, and moisture which makes them capable of having quality abrasion resistance.
Their properties also make them dry up easily which when added with silver nitrate while application, could help with the prevention of flash rusting.
● High Solid Epoxy Mastics
These coatings are salt, acid, chemical, and moisture resistant and are compatible with old paint films as well as with intact coating. They provide good adhesion due to the presence of dry prepared substrates in them which also require that this coating be applied prior to coating the tank with a primer based material.
● High Solid Epoxies
These epoxies coating materials have gained much recognition after the ban of lead-based alkyds and they’re formulated to match the right limit for VOC emission levels. This, in turn, allows these products to support immersion service applications on storage tanks.
Comprehensive Water Tank Maintenance
Maintaining your water tank is as important as ascertaining its protection against corrosion and other factors. A comprehensive rainwater tanks Sydney maintenance service could offer you various choices to protect it better for keeping it well for a longer period of time.