Hi, I'm Jordan I work with a company that builds water tanks and there is an aspect to it that has to have a more reasonable fix.

So these tanks are bolted together with sealer in between the sheets. Where the 4 sheets come together we call that a 4 corner joint. The 4 corner joint is where 9 out of 10 leaks come from.

To fix these leaks we take a grease gun with a metal needle on the end and pump sealer ( what the original sealer is made of ) into the 4 corner. It stops the leak dead as long as there isn't too much water in the tank causing pressure and it pushes the sealer right out.

So when we load the grease gun with the sealer (which is a 750 ml sausage tube) its only good for a day as the sealer can not be cleaned out of the gun. So you're talking a 20-30 dollar loss each time those days may come around. So over the year you could be talking 1000$ in guns alone.

The answer I'm looking for is what is an alternative to injecting the sealer and losing the gun after a day? You can't clean it out. you cant cap it and it not get hard. Different reusable tool?

The cheapest long term solution I can think of off the top of my head is 3d printing the guns using cheap materials.

-e

Might not even be an option for you

This post was edited by Ep0ch on Aug 30 2018 05:24pm

I don't think that would be able to be done here

Maybe store the gun under an inert gas when complete? Nitrogen is pretty cheap.

In Johnny English movie (the first movie), the film-maker uses paintball guns to make grey impacts on the walls.

They use paintball guns with bullets full of grey painting.

The scenes are in the DVD.

Perhaps you should use bullets filled with the sealer rather than just placing the sealer in the gun.

Hope it helps,
Good luck.

This post was edited by Chevaucheur on Aug 31 2018 03:20am

why not just build better water tanks?

or properly repair it and not prolong inevitable.

Good question really, these tanks we are going to could be freshly built and they tank expands when filled, or 20 years old and they require some maintenance, and the township can't afford to shut down a tank that could be say a fire suppression tank because they don't have a secondary tank. Otherwise going inside of the tank and fixing it is the optimal thing to do. Just rarely available.


And Shev it's a pretty delicate process from the outside so you don't make anything worse, interesting thought though.

This post was edited by xVile on Sep 1 2018 07:41am

Find an applicator that can keep the sealant in an inactive state, if the overhead of guns and wasted sealant is continuously high then it may be cost effectice to have something custom made

use shrinking tubes