Failed coatings in secondary containment areas can produce a host of undesirable consequences ranging from the slow but steady destruction of the concrete containment area all the way to severe EPA fines for polluting soil or ground water.  Given the possible ramifications, it might seem surprising that these containment areas are typically poured with concrete and then coated with inexpensive commodity coatings yet this is precisely what is most common in industry.  There are quite a number of different construction and material selection decisions which can cause coatings to fail in this service.  Settlement or cracking of the concrete due to poor soil compaction, failure to place a vapor barrier in the case of slab-on-grade, improper construction joint placement (I have personally seen 80’x20’ containment areas without a single construction joint) all invariably lead to the coating applied over top cracking or blistering or both and ultimately failing to serve as a barrier when it is needed.  Even if the concrete beneath the coating is sound and stable, many coatings selected are atmospheric coatings meaning they are not tested or rated for immersion in water let alone the one or more chemicals that they are meant to contain.  To further compound the problem, all coating manufacturers use a “simplified” chemical resistance chart in which coatings are rated excellent, good, fair, or poor to a given chemical.  This can be a gross oversimplification since most coating manufacturers do not offer clarity as to what these various ratings actually translate to in real world lifespan.  Some coating manufacturers that rate a coating excellent have in fact only tested for a month of immersion!

Belzona’s excellent rating means that the coating showed no blistering, cracking, softening, or delamination after 52 weeks of continuous immersion.  Even a fair rating implies three weeks of protection before the onset of failure which in a secondary containment area should correspond to numerous 72 hour losses of primary containment.  What Belzona calls fair other manufacturers sometimes label excellent.

Belzona offers a range of different coatings, elastomers, and repair compounds as well as an abundance of clear information to help engineers select the most appropriate product for an intended service.  Elastomers can address cracking in concrete as well as failed expansion joints.  Epoxy mortars can repair and replace concrete lost to chemical dissolution and spalling in floors, troughs, and drains.  Finally, several families of coatings can be used singly or as systems to deliver exactly the right amount of protection needed without overly inflating the cost of the installed system.  Belzona 4361 is Belzona’s newest coating for secondary containment areas which remarkably can expand and contract 25% thus allowing for cracking of concrete beneath all while being rated excellent to 80% sulfuric acid!  Typically only elastomers can tolerate this amount of movement and they are most certainly not able to resist highly concentrated inorganic acids.  Belzona has been repairing and protecting secondary containment areas since the 1950s and continues to innovate.  

Please contact us to see how we can help you with your problematic secondary containment areas.

Chris Lucas

clucas@rumfordgroup.com
937-435-4650
RumfordGroup.com