Secondary Containment Areas Reduce Liability and Costs.
Posted: Thursday, March 11, 2010
by Harvey Chichester
Durall Industrial Flooring
Contamination caused by chemical and waste spills can be very expensive to clean up. The liability associated with spills is not limited to clean up. The testing required to identify if a spill has caused contamination can be very expensive and tie up resources for years. This is why having a designated containment area with impervious coatings to hold spills for clean up are so important. Core samples, testing and monitoring of wells can often cost 100 times as much as the containment area construction costs.
To assure that your secondary containment area reduces your investigation and monitoring costs you need to employ a coating that is contiguous even after the spill. Any visible crack, break, peel, or lifted area can make all your efforts meaningless. Concrete is very porous and will need to be coated to assure spill investigators that the spill was contained. The coating needs to be durable enough to hold most spills until they can be recovered or neutralized and disposed of without showing damage to the film integrity. To maintain integrity concrete and most other construction materials need to be coated with chemically resistant finishes to resist incidental contact with the chemicals and substances that may be present. This coating is designed to repel moisture, abrasion and inhibit rust and corrosion. This coating is able to stand up to highly acidic solutions, bleaches, caustics and various petroleum products. Solutions like sulfuric acid, chlorine, potassium chloride and fuel oil just to name a few.
When used and applied in multiple coats a good containment creates an impermeable and contiguous chemically resistant shield over your containment area. Normal application achieves a thickness of 10-15 mils per coat. These coatings are an economical approach to meet the requirements to protect concrete, wood, plastic and even asphalt. Because of the importance of this system to be truly effective it should be applied to a surface that is free from holes and other irregularities.
Berm & Containment applications include:
Wash-down, storage and secondary containment for aircraft, trucks, tankers, trailers and other equipment in a variety of berm sizes.
Containment of oil, fuel, chemicals, acids, generators, trucks and other power equipment used in-plant or in remote locations
Coating
Secondary containment coating systems, once applied, generally contain two or more coats applied to a thickness of 20 to 40 mils providing exceptional chemical resistance for incidental spills and recovery.
Crack Bridging and Hole Repair
Secondary containment areas often require support materials to bridge cracks and fill holes as required to achieve a cost-effective impermeable barrier.
For a free cost analysis customized to your project including step by step instructions go to www.concrete-floor-coatings.com . The kits include what you will need to achieve a sufficiently smooth surface that the coating will adhere to creating an impermeable contiguous chemically resistant barrier. Quotes include crack and joint repair materials and fillers as needed. Appropriate detailing can be achieved so that the coating systems can handle a working environment with normal wear and tear.
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