Solution Spot | Carboline

The Red Bucket - Episode 29. Closing knowledge gaps in concrete secondary containment maintenance (Feat. Chris Imms)

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 11:00:08 -0400

Summary

Concrete secondary containments and the coating systems that protect them are vital to safe, clean, compliant operation in any facility handling harmful or toxic commodities. But if that's the case, then why are they so often left in disrepair? Chris Imms, President of Helena, Alabama-based Imms Industrial Coatings, joins The Red Bucket to help close a knowledge gap impacting facility personnel and coating contractors alike.

Also, Chris reveals which Halloween candy he believes is an act of cruelty.

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

00:00 - Introduction
01:38 - Secondary containment purpose and performance
04:27 - Secondary containment structures are often overlooked
06:30 - A simple test for containment integrity
07:35 - Real consequences of a failure
10:24 - Contractor knowledge, responsibility, and liability
12:42 - The challenges of protecting concrete
14:36 - Building expertise through education and experience
18:42 - Educating facility owners and engineers
20:39 - The importance of listening and collaboration
22:37 - Continued workforce training and development
23:53 - The coating manufacturer's role
26:15 - The four questions

Transcript

Introduction

Toby Wall: These two things are true at once: Concrete secondary containment structures are absolutely essential to safe operations and facilities handling harmful or toxic commodities, and the proper upkeep of these structures is often misunderstood and frequently ignored. Today on The Red Bucket, an experienced contractor helps us explore why that is and what the industry has to gain by some old-fashioned listening and learning.

I am pleased to welcome Chris Imms of Imms Industrial Coatings to The Red Bucket. Chris, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Chris Imms: I appreciate the time.

Toby: I'd love for you to give us a quick download on yourself and on Imms Industrial Coatings before we get to our subject.

Chris: I am, uh, President of Imms Industrial Coatings. I'm also a project manager, worked here for about 30 years. Um, we do... We're a heavy industrial contractor. We work in the oil and gas, we work in power, we work in manufacturing. Uh, we get exposed to a lot of different, um, substrates and tasks. Um, we've been around for 53 years now. Um, we are a union contractor, and we've used Carboline for years, and it's just we have a lot of experience in this world, it seems.

Secondary containment purpose and performance

Toby: Which is a good thing and brings us to the reason why we wanted to have you on, because there's some experience that you all have that not everybody has. More specifically, this is the subject of secondary containment. So, the whole reason we wanted you to come here was, uh, earlier this month, Carboline had a LinkedIn post on that subject, secondary containment, and then you reposted it, and you shared a comment, which we will get to in just a minute. Um, but it was based on what you said that made me think, "Oh, here's, here's someone with some perspective that the rest of the industry probably needs to hear." Before we do that, not everybody understands secondary containment. If you had to summarize that in one or two sentences, how would you, how would you summarize secondary containment?

Chris: I'm creating a pool to handle your mess.

Toby: What, what kind of mess could we be talking about here?

Chris: You know, a lot of these secondary containments are critical. Um, they were designed and engineered a certain way so that they could contain a spill from a vessel, a tank, a process. They were designed this way, and they're not maintained, is one of the things we often see.

But they were designed and made to create a pool in which you get 72 hours to clean up your mess, or your disaster, or your small leak. They're generally a simple idea. They're generally a easy to maintain idea, but it just doesn't always happen.

Toby: And you say that you have 72 hours to clean it up. Where is that coming from? Because that's not really a suggestion, right?

Chris: That's not a suggestion. Most of the chemicals, uh, and the linings that you see out there, they're, they're geared towards allowing, you know, 72 hours before the actual coating begins to break down. So I'll often tell people, "You've got three days before this thing becomes a problem." As long as it's maintained correctly, as long as you've created that pool, you will have time to clean up before you create an environmental issue, before things start leaching in the ground, spilling over into other processes, et cetera. There's a lot of weight on these things, a lot of responsibility, uh, for these containments.

And when you say containment, I mean, it's in the event of a spill, it's in the event of a leak, a process error. Um, they're completely designed to hold those. They're critical to the operation, and they were designed and engineered originally to these structures be- just in case. A lot of times, too, though, you've just got general spillage, general leaks that occur during their operations. They also hold those as well, um, and that's what they're designed to do.

Secondary containment structures are often overlooked

Toby: We published some content on our company's website, and you made a comment, I will quote you: "It is the number one item overlooked and passed over by facility managers and engineers." And I, I wonder if you could take it from there. How have you arrived at that conclusion?

Chris: 30 years of experience, 30 years of walking around, 30 years of seeing budgets get cut, 30 years of seeing, hey, just put some enamel on there. It's just paint. Uh, it's just gotta hold it a little while. Um, 30 years of let's just kick this can down the road, 30 years of watching them be left alone, uh, not maintained, not budgeted for, not... And not fully understanding what their intent was.

You have a structure that was designed and built, but yet you're ignoring its purpose, and it's obvious what it's there for. Um, and I constantly see it with every level of customer, from the richest to the poorest, to the most technical, to the most archaic.

Um, they are just completely ignored, um, because they're not sometimes cheap to rebuild. They're not... They've gone too far, um, or the coatings are too expensive in, you know, in their view.

Um, but also the cleanup's more expensive, you know. Um, the results can be catastrophic in a lot of sense, um, not just a nuisance.

Um, and they're just completely passed over. Those... For 30 years, I have seen these things be ignored, um, and in, sometimes in some very intense environments like the chemical industry, especially. I... You just don't even know how some people are getting away with it sometimes. It's a continued process, and it's a lack of education, I think, in the intent of these containments, the intent of the, uh, original design, um, and it's a lack of knowledge about what they have there.

A simple test for containment integrity

Toby: Talk about the, the, the test that you give to engineers that starts this whole process.

Chris: It's a very simple question that I ask them, uh, when they're looking at their containment. I simply ask them, "Where does our water go when it rains?" And they'll say, "In the ground." I say, "What do you think your chemical or process is gonna go when it hits that containment.

It's gonna follow it straight into the ground. Or they'll think they have adequate containment, and I'll ask them, "Do you have a sump pump?" "No, we don't." "Well, why isn't it holding water? It's supposed to hold water. If it's gonna hold the chemical, it's gotta hold water." And then it, the education and the questions start to happen.

Um, you often will bid a job to do it right, and you'll come in behind somebody. You'll bid a job, six months later show back up for another, another bid meeting. You'll look, "Oh, you got your containment done." "Oh, yeah, we sure did." I said, "Man, it rained last night. Where's your water going? Why isn't it holding water?"

So that's the number one question, and it's a simple answer, and it always follows the same path of knowledge.

Real consequences of a failure

Toby: Do you have any real, tangible examples from your memory of when there was a failure to, just to drive home to people listening, this isn't just on paper? Really awful, terrible things can happen if secondary containment systems are not maintained or are not taken seriously.

Chris: It was one particular case where a vessel, the tank, was not maintained, and the reason it wasn't maintained is because somewhere down the line someone had the idea that they were going to change products. And when they changed the product, the liner inside the tank could not handle the product, so it rotted the, the vessel out and caused a leak.

And that leak then went into the containment, which did not have the proper lining, or barely any lining existed anymore. And there was separation from the concrete walls, and the spill went right into the ground. They cleaned up what they had, and they just abandoned the vessel and abandoned the containment, just left it there, and continued operations elsewhere.

Um, when all of that could've been avoided by simply, "Okay, we're gonna switch products. What's the temperatures we're gonna have in here? What do we have in here now?" And a simple consultation to someone like, you know, Carboline or myself saying, "Hey, what do we got here? Is this gonna handle it?" It's just ignored or not ignored in a sense; it's just looked over.

Like, the engineers or the process managers just simply said, "It's gonna be okay," and just simply switched over. I've also seen people be proactive when shown and educated a little. Um, one client had gaps in their walls between the s- the, uh, foundation wall and the floor, and you had about an inch and a half there.

Um, and we showed them those inch-and-a-halves on a very large containment. They sat on top of a lake, um, a very pretty lake, a very large lake, and the chemicals they had in there could've caused great damage. Could've gone instantly into the groundwater, right into that lake. Uh, they had enough product there that it could leak down.

Um, and by sh- educating them and showing them, I mean, the, the containment never had a lining on it at all, ever, and they had taken on more chemicals and more processes over the years, and they were all ears. And fortunately for us and them, you know, they were on board with getting that corrected. Um, they've not had any leaks since then, um, since we applied that, so they were fortunate.

You know, we were fortunate to get the project. But, um, we found that it was just a simple lack of knowledge, um, of what a containment is, and it's, it's a major lack of education out there on how important they are.

Contractor knowledge, responsibility, and liability

Toby: From Carboline's viewpoint, uh, we've seen the same that you have seen, which is that facility personnel aren't always grasping secondary containment or, or, you know, its importance.

Those aren't the only people who face that knowledge gap, and I think you and I agree here that the contractor pool also does not universally have a good grip on this. They don't always understand them, uh, as well as I think we and I think you wish they did. Is that a fair statement?

Chris: You know, every contractor's different. I can't speak to them. Some are smarter than others, or some are more educated than others, in the sense of what they're getting into in their environments. A lot are moving into different industries to take advantage of budgets or take advantage of work without the education of, "Hey, what do I got here?"

And the customer, like I said, will ask, "Hey, just put some enamel paint on it," and they'll do it without the knowledge of their responsibility and their liability if there is a leak. Because there's a lot of, been a lot of occasions that I will turn down the project and refuse to do it because they're not going to do it right.

And I feel like I have a liability in that. If they do have a leak, they're going to come back to me, and they're going to say, "Hey, you didn't provide a containment for these guys like you said you'd do, were." And then you're responsible for that leak because you didn't do it right. Even though you didn't cause the leak, you were, you were the one that was supposed to catch it.

There are a lot of contractors that need to know a little bit more about them. Um, and you often have, um, painters and concrete guys can be separate beasts. Sometimes they don't meet. Um, sometimes they don't have a lot of experience. Um, for instance, concrete guys don't know much about steel, and steel guys don't know much about concrete, or they don't, they're not exposed to it lo- for a long enough period of time to learn about it, either one.

So cross-training your employees, um, and creating those guys that can work both in steel and concrete is very important, and that comes down to education and training.

The challenges of protecting concrete

Toby: Yeah, you're, you're getting to, uh, some territory that I wanted to get into next anyway, especially your remark about the, the concrete guys knowing what they know and the paint guys knowing what they know, and sometimes there is overlap, sometimes there's not. Concrete i- is a very highly technical substrate. I think it is a substrate that, if you looked at everybody in the protective materials industry, they probably are less familiar with concrete than they are with steel - I'm painting with a really broad brush here - and understanding how to protect it. That, that understanding just isn't quite where it is with regard to steel.

Chris: Absolutely correct. Concrete is a living, breathing organism. It's ever-changing. It has a lot, I guess you could say, tricks of the trade. It has a lot of, um, problems. You can be trained on concrete just enough to know that, hey, I shouldn't coat concrete, uh, because it's so particular, but there are ways to get around that.

Um, but steel and concrete are completely different animals. Um, but yet they share the same responsibilities, and they also share the same coatings. So their applications are different, but it's all achievable. It's all achievable with time. It's all achievable with education. It's all achievable with experience.

But concrete itself is a very difficult animal to coat correctly. Um, and you also have to have a pretty good working understanding of how the structure was built and why it was built, um, and when it was built, because you'll often see protections that aren't there. Moisture is often a problem, uh, even when it's not existent. Moisture vapor transmission's a real problem with concrete, and you have to, um, you have to account for that.

Building expertise through education and experience

Toby: So there was a point in the history, somewhere along the timeline of your business, where the decision was made, "Hey, we need to understand this. We will go after that education. We will try to get that knowledge so that we can take these kinds of jobs and do them the right way." What, what was it that led to that? How did you decide, "We need to up-skill, um, so that we can be proactive, constructive players in this, in this specialty," if you will?

Chris: The first time I was asked to do a concrete floor, I realized what little knowledge I had. I was very much a steel guy. I was trained and taught and got my hands dirty on steel. Um, but once I started looking at concrete, it, it honestly scared me because I didn't understand it fully. So I decided I'm gonna take some classes and I'm gonna get my hands dirty with it. Uh, and I'm gonna start learning from others so that we can take on these projects, because there's a lot of concrete in this world, and there's a lot of concrete that needs to be taken care of in this world, and I need to be able to handle it for my customers.

I need to be able to be a one source for them so they don't have to call a separate contractor, and we have two teams trying to do the same project, uh, is really where it came from. Um, we wanted to be the guy they call for anything to do with coatings, and again, a lot of concrete in this world.

Toby: When you said that there were classes you individually went and took, what were some of those? Like, what was... Who, who sponsored them and what the subject matter was?

Chris: Well, the very first one I took was a NACE concrete coating class. Still got the book behind me. Um, and that was the class. It was about a four or five-day class that I came out of thinking, "Boy, you really shouldn't coat concrete," you know?

Um, because it's so difficult to do, and there's so many things that can go wrong. Um, but that also set me off into understanding even more. So I would sit down with my vendors and often take educational classes to begin to familiarize myself more with concrete. And that's where it started. Um, and then I became a, uh, concrete coating inspector through SSPC.

Because of, uh, all the concrete coating work we were doing, I wanted to be able to talk to inspectors on their level and know their language and what they're looking for, and also be able to inspect my own work to make sure I was doing the right things.

Toby: If you fast-forward to today, now after having built up this knowledge base and built up this experience base, what would you say the impact on your business has been now that you've added this, call it this tool in your toolbox?

Chris: Oh, we've probably added about 30% to our revenue stream, um, simply because we can now coat concrete successfully and feel confident, um, in what we're doing. It's opened up a new world, not just through secondary containment into flooring as well. Um, there's a lot of floors in this world, um, that are often handled by specialty contractors that only handle concrete floors.

Uh, so we got into that business. It was a simple jump, to be honest, um, into that world. We just had to understand concrete itself a little bit better and the techniques required to coat it. Um, and secondary containments are a big, big part of our business now. Um, and there's a lot of opportunity there because of what I've seen over the years of them getting ignored.

Um, and we feel like there's a huge opportunity there, but we've got to educate our customers and sit down with them, let them understand what they actually have there, and the responsibilities that they have with those containments.

Educating facility owners and engineers

Toby: You said earlier that you've had the chance to be the one providing that education to customers. I assume that they're receptive to it. Like, once you have their ear and you can tell them, "Here's what's going on," do you see the light bulb go off in their own heads?

Chris: Yes. I have to protect my customers from themselves in spite of themselves. I often say that my job is to make a process engineer, a project management engineer, or just a general engineer in general look really good, because they cannot be knowledgeable in everything that they do.

It's, it's very difficult. Um, and since we're such a specialty in the sense of coatings, uh, we're just one part of their world, um, we have to often sit down with them, say, "Hey, we see this. We think it's a good idea that you look at it," and explain to them why-the basics, um, and what we're trying to achieve. Um, not just to spend their money, um, but to provide them a service and a knowledge. And hey, I'm here to make them look good, and that's what I want to do.

Toby: Has the industry provided sufficient learning materials for someone in your shoes?

Chris: There's a... There's plenty of resources. You can be trained, you can be taught, and you can educate yourself to go out there and educate others and bring that knowledge to bear, and it comes down to experience and actually doing the work, getting your hands dirty with the products and understanding them.

And always be open to hearing from your vendors about new things that have come out, new, new processes, new linings, new coatings, whatever, new resins, whatever the case may be. It's simply a matter of deciding, "I want to learn." And you can go out, and there's plenty of resources out there, especially with the internet these days and, uh, online education, um, and artificial intelligence coming down the pipe with that. Um, there's, there's plenty of opportunity to educate yourself.

The importance of listening and collaboration

Toby: And do you think that that's the right balance of responsibility? You know, 'cause we're talking about how these- Facility personnel don't always know, and we're not saying we expect that they should. They shouldn't be the expert on concrete or coatings that protect it. But you're able to, to find out what you don't know and go fix it. What should they be doing? What should facility folks be doing so that they know what they ought to know?

Chris: Listening. They need to listen. Um, that you're not just there... I mean, you're creating work for yourself. There's no question there.

We're not doing this for free. Um, but more listening to your, to your contractor, the contractor being knowledgeable and being open to, "Hey, what are we doing wrong? What can we do better?" Um, and the back and forth between you and your customer, the contractor and the engineer, the contractor and the budget manager, of "Here's what we gotta do. Here's how we have to do it. Well, how can we f- make this work in a perfect world or an imperfect world to fit both of our needs?"

You know, "Hey, you guys gotta have enough time to do this. What do I need to give you? But you guys gotta understand we have a process, and we're here to create XYZ." Um, not just, you know, we do our containments.

How can we make this work together? So it's, it's a listening game from both of you, and contractors know that. But it really, you need more open-mindedness and more education on the process side and the ownership side because that's where it's severely lacking. Because it's honestly just like a big question mark in their head.

They're like, "What are you talking about? I thought this was fine. There's concrete walls here." No, man, this is a sponge. This is a very, um, porous rock at best that's gonna absorb everything. Once they understand what the kinda substrate it is, they begin to open their minds like, "Oh, my gosh, I do have to do something here."

Continued workforce training and development

Toby: What role do you think the manufacturer should, should play here? You know, as far as the, the, the type of help that we can provide, what do you think that should be?

Chris: A lot of it's already done. You're always there, you know, as a resource to provide us with technical information. But also, when you do get the opportunity to sit with the owner and the engineers, uh, conferences and, and technical symposiums, I guess you could say, you know, those, those opportunities you should always take the shot of talking to them about their secondary containments.

Just taking every shot you can, because I've seen planned, uh, symposiums, uh, get, you know, canceled because they didn't think this was an important subject, uh, and customers not wanting to listen. But being there and providing honest information, and not just simply from a Carboline perspective, but from a general overall purpose and the importance of it, and how keeping up with it can save you a lot of money down the road without having to completely rebuild the the entire containment or the entire floor, maintain it and teach them about how that can be a cost savings and how it can be an environmental savings and how it can be a regulatory savings for them.

The coating manufacturer's role

Toby: I would venture to say that's really the, the moral of the story, if you wanna put it that way, is from almost any angle you look at it, getting this taken care of, having an open mind, listening to the experts such as yourself, is gonna save you lots of money.

Chris: And can save your fanny down the road when a, when a disaster strikes or a minor incident occurs, 'cause they do happen.

And the other thing is, I don't think I mentioned this, is you have a lot of changeover in this world, a lot of, uh, managers getting moved around. So it's a constant education that has to take place from the contractor, from the vendor, and from the owner itself. There's so much, um, turnover in the world and, and in our industries, in all of industry, that it's just a continual process that has to be maintained.

You know, education's a constant thing throughout our lives, um, so we have to make sure that we're always in front of the customer, always in front of the owner, letting them know, especially when we get someone new, "Hey, this is some of the things," even when they don't wanna listen. Uh, sometimes you have to be persuasive.

Um, and having those resources there and leaning on each other, and it's kind of a teamwork, a mentality that has to take place. I would say one thing we did not discuss, and it's very important, is employee training, training of the craftsmen. Um, you can't just have specialty people. You've gotta get more out of one guy than you used to u- use two for, and it sounds redundant and kind of simple, but they've got... also gotta have the opportunity.

Um, and that's one of the big things that we work on, um, is continually to train our guys and get them the exposure, to get the younger guys in there and show them, and continue to train them and teach them about, uh, the importance of everything. And that, look, guys, all of this is an opportunity for you to have, to have work, to make a good wage.

You know, we're creating more work for you by cross-training you, but you've also gotta have the opportunities, and that's up to management to go out... You know, my job is to go out there and sell these projects so that I can get my guys those opportunities. Um, but training is a huge component to this, and not just being stuck in your world. That way, you've got guys constantly on hand that can handle these projects when they come up.

The four questions

Toby: That's all very well said. Now, we... I didn't tell you this, uh, when we arranged to have this recording, so I'm gonna apologize in advance, but we, we have a section or a segment on this little program called the four questions, where I ask you silly questions that don't relate whatsoever to what we've just been talking about.

So I've got four questions prepared. Are you ready to answer the four questions?

Chris: Sure.

Toby: Okay. Question number one, and this is, I guess, a bit of a two-parter. Part one: Am I correct in assuming you will cheer for the Crimson Tide?

Chris: Absolutely.

Toby: Okay. Part B, and I am sorry if this is painful for you, but w- can you think of something nice to say about someone else in the SEC?

Chris: Uh, LSU, um, they're gonna win the party every time, even if they lose the game. Best food and best tailgates I've ever seen. They are gonna win the party.

Toby: Which is a reputation that I know folks care a lot about, so good for, good for LSU.

All right, here's question number two. You, you are in Alabama. What is the top vacation destination in Alabama that no one knows about?

Chris: Dining in Birmingham, going out to eat.

This is a big going-out-to-eat town. We outkick our coverage in food and restaurants. Um, I would put us up against any city in the country. Um, we have a lot of people that do understand it. They come from Atlanta, they come from Nashville, they come from, uh, Texas just to come here and eat. We have absolutely amazing homegrown restaurants where young restaurateurs come here because of the availability of, of space, uh, labor, uh, inexpense of starting a restaurant here in town, and they move in and they start their own menus and their own restaurants, their own style. So if you're a foodie, this is a big foodie town. Um, I, I'm telling you, I'd put it against New York, I'd put it against Los Angeles, I'd put it against Chicago. Pound for pound, we will take them on.

Toby: It wouldn't be the four questions on The Red Bucket podcast if I wasn't asking about food and, and you led me into these next two questions perfectly.

What do you think is the worst Halloween candy?

Chris: Candy corn. I mean, that just screams Great Depression poverty if I've ever seen it. Candy corn's the worst, and Tootsie Rolls. Those are horrible. That's just, that's just cruel. That's just mean. But, uh, God bless the people that give away the whole Reese's cup. You know, when you get the two cups, not the single.

Toby: Sure, yeah.

Chris: Those are, those are the winners. Um, I, I... One of the best Halloween trick-or-treats I ever saw was a guy was giving away beer and hot dogs. He was making hot dogs in the front yard and handing those out to the kids, and, uh, that was a home run.

Every year, this one guy would make... He'd have beer for the adults and hot dogs for the kids, and that was, that was his candy, was hot dogs, and the kids loved it.

Toby: Depending on how the weather is in St. Louis, you'll see folks sitting out. Like, they'll bring their, their fire pits up to their driveway and, and sit around.

If it's cool enough, they'll have a little campfire and then do their, do their trick-or-treating that way. So I think the, the hot dogs would be a perfect complement to something like that.

Chris: Yes, absolutely. I love Halloween night, especially when it's on a weekend. It's perfect weather usually here in the fall.

I mean, uh, we're very fortunate that time of the year. I think October's probably the most ideal time to come here. Not only do you have football, but you have literally perfect weather with no humidity, and it's just magical.

Toby: Okay, last question: The best Thanksgiving side dish. What do you think?

Chris: Oyster dressing.

Toby: You're gonna have to enlighten us on that. I don't know if I've ever heard of that.

Chris: It is cornbread dressing, like you would have the turkey stuffed with, but it is made with what we call the liquor of the oyster, the juice, in other words, that it sits in, and the actual oysters themselves. It is, you make your cornmeal, I guess, dressing in your, with your onions in it, and then you will incorporate oysters and bake it.

Um, you don't bake it inside the turkey. You bake it separate in a, as a, in a pan. Um, and it's got an interesting history. My grandmother used to make it. They're from Mobile originally. Um, in the 1930s, it kind of appeared in a, in a recipe book. It was always considered, like, this really expensive thing to have, like, uh, something that only rich people would eat.

You know, oh, this is a fine dining experience, I guess you could say, for Thanksgiving, um, that people in, uh, wealthier parts of the country at the time, uh, were enjoying. And so being close to the water, uh, then, you know, the, the Depression's going on, but they had access to oysters. I mean, shoot, they could get oysters.

They could get a bushel for a dollar back then. And so it was a big thing for... All the women started to make this for their, uh, households because it was such a, I guess, popular dish, and it was so easy for them to access fresh oysters. And so it became a tradition in our family to have oyster dressing on Thanksgiving, and it is absolutely amazing. Um, e- even people that don't like oysters like it.

Toby: It sounds wonderful. I, I have never heard of it. Coming from the middle of the country, we don't have... If you can eat it if it came from the water, but it might not be any good.

Chris: Right. It may be s- may be stowed in a truck for too long. But, uh, yeah, it is a very popular dish on the Gulf Coast, um, and up here.

Toby: I think I might go hunting for that recipe and have to give it a shot.

Chris: Yeah, give it a shot. It's a different twist, and it is, it is decadent, to be honest with you, would be the proper word for it.

Toby: With all of that said, Chris, this was a great conversation. We're really glad that you could join us today and, and share what you know about concrete and secondary containment and also the delicacies of Thanksgiving side dishes from the Gulf Coast.

Chris: There you go. I appreciate the opportunity. Um, it's been wonderful talking with y'all, and, um, I appreciate the time.

Using ISO 12944 to guide railcar coating selection

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:19:56 -0400

ISO 12944 is one of the most widely recognized standards for evaluating atmospheric corrosion protection.

Because corrosion is one of the greatest threats to steel assets, testing that helps quantify coating performance makes it easier for owners to compare technologies.

These scientific comparisons are especially important in rail because rolling stock often moves through a wide range of service environments.

And yet, exterior coating selection for railcars is a bit of a free-for-all. No rules govern material selection. But when owners use ISO 12944 testing as a material selection starting point, they can answer a critical question right away:

Roughly how long will this coating last?

ISO 12944 in a railcar context

ISO 12944 organizes atmospheric service environments into corrosivity categories ranging from C1 and C2 for low-corrosivity rural and controlled interior environments to C5 and CX for highly aggressive industrial, coastal, and offshore exposures. Coating systems are tested against these environments and assigned durability classifications based on how they perform under the specified conditions.

Those durability classifications are not guarantees of service life. Rather, they serve as planning parameters that help owners estimate maintenance intervals and future recoating needs under a given corrosivity category.

Material costs, application methods, and production requirements are relatively easy to compare. Long-term atmospheric corrosion performance is not.

Referencing ISO 12944 categories helps close that gap. By assigning coating systems to recognized corrosivity categories with corresponding durability ranges, the standard gives owners another way to evaluate long-term performance before a railcar ever enters service.

So, the overall question is not whether an ISO 12944-qualified coating can protect a railcar, but rather which coating technology is best suited for the corrosivity categor and operational priorities of the asset.

It is then that ISO 12944 testing becomes another tool in the owner's decision-making process.

Different railcar coating technologies suit different priorities

For railcar owners, coating selection involves more than corrosion performance. Facility capabilities, production schedules, maintenance strategies, and lifecycle expectations all play a role.

Coating application requirements are often just as important as lifetime durability. Sometimes more so. Some coatings offer premium long-term protection but require specialized equipment, while others provide reliable performance with simpler application and lower upfront costs.

Consider Carboline’s Railplex EE- 2020^® and Carboguard 904^®. Each meets ISO 12944 requirements and are classified for C4 High durability. C4 High classification denotes an estimated 15-25 year service life in industrial areas and coastal areas with moderate salinity. The difference between these products is not whether they protect railcars, but how they compare in terms of application needs, cost, and long-term maintenance goals.

Railplex EE-2020 is a 1:1 batch-mix polyamide epoxy offering a practical balance of excellent corrosion protection, application simplicity, and cost efficiency. Carboguard 904 is a 100% solids epoxy technology with excellent barrier properties and resistance to chalking designed to maximize long-term resistance to moisture, chlorides, and atmospheric degradation. Both are formulated for direct-to-metal (DTM) application.

See how the solutions compare:

Product Details	Railplex EE-2020	Carboguard 904
Application method	Single-leg, batch mixed	Plural component
Solids by volume	72%	98%
VOCs	288 g/l	21 g/l
Recommended dry film thickness (DFT)	4-6 mils	4-8 mils
Theoretical coverage rate @ 4 mils DFT	289 ft² per gallon	393 ft² per gallon
Initial cost	Lower	Higher
Long-term durability	Very good	Excellent
Lifecycle value	Very good	Excellent
NOTE: Another common Carboline railcar coating, Carboxane^® 2000, is an ultra-durable siloxane finish suitable for ISO 12944 C3 High and C4 Medium corrosivity categories. It is not included in this comparison because it is not usually recommend for DTM application.

As the table above demonstrates, each material supports different operational and financial priorities. Railplex EE-2020 uses standard airless spray equipment and offers a lower applied cost. Carboguard 904 requires plural-component equipment and has a higher initial applied cost, but its coverage efficiency, higher solids content, reduced material waste, and extended performance all reduce overall life cycle cost.

Because both products are classified as ISO 12944 C4 High, owners can focus their specification decision on practical cost and application factors while expecting an impressive 15-25 years in service regardless of which they choose.

The value of choice

Rail may not rely on ISO 12944 as heavily as other atmospheric markets, but its value remains the same: it gives owners a choice.

And not simply a choice among higher- and lower-performing coatings, but also among qualified technologies designed to solve different problems.

In rail, long-term performance and lifecycle costs matter. ISO 12944 testing is an essential, objective decision-making benchmark that can be just as valuable as a high- performance coating itself.

Let it help you where it can.

Industrial coating systems for hazardous waste secondary containment

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:02:15 -0400

Secondary containment exists for a simple reason: spills happen.

And if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies the waste material as ignitable, corrosive, reactive, or toxic, the material is hazardous and facilities must prevent their release into the environment.

While stored commodities influence the primary protective system, they are only one consideration in secondary containment design. These systems must be developed within the broader context of the facility, the environments they could impact, and the consequences of a release.

The standard doesn't write the specification

Chemical resistance should always be the first consideration when selecting a hazardous waste secondary containment system. If the coating cannot withstand the released material, little else matters.

The EPA's 40 CFR Part 264 standards provide guidance for how owners and operators of hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities should respond to spills of a certain nature and size. In addition, it discusses the importance of secondary containment plans and procedures.

According to this standard secondary containment systems must be:

• Designed, installed and operated to prevent any migration of wastes or accumulated liquid out of the (primary containment) system to the soil, groundwater or surface water at any time during the use of the (tank) system; and
• Capable of detecting and collecting releases and accumulating liquids until the collected material is removed.

A properly engineered industrial coating system will address all these issues, maximizing the performance of secondary containment in any/all environments.

This, however, is a broad explanation for what can be a rather tedious process. While standards establish the need for secondary containment, how to protect every containment system is up to the asset owner in partnership with secondary containment technical experts.

What else matters beyond hazardous waste chemical properties?

Concrete is the most common secondary containment system substrate, and it never remains completely static. Movement of the substrate is inevitable due to fluctuations in temperature and migration of moisture. Left unaddressed, cracks, shifting, and moisture vapor transmission can shorten the service life of even the most chemically resistant coating system.

Secondary containment systems should be engineered within the context of the facility they protect. A containment floor designed for occasional splash-and-spill exposure presents a different challenge than a trench drain or sump pit, but neither exists in isolation.

The facility's broader footprint, its proximity to sensitive soil, groundwater, or waterways, and the potential consequences of an uncontained release must be considered in system design. As the environmental and operational risks increase, so does the need for more robust secondary containment.

And these containment failures rarely end with the spill itself. Equipment damage, operational disruptions, regulatory penalties, environmental remediation, public infrastructure repairs, reputational damage, and natural resource impacts often follow.

Those consequences reinforce a simple reality: every containment environment is unique. Engineering a secondary containment system is never one-size-fits-all.

The strongest specifications balance chemical resistance with substrate condition, constructability, and long-term performance rather than optimizing for a single property.

Dudick's Floor & Containment Site Tech Survey combines those variables into a single evaluation, helping engineers recommend systems aligned with the intended service environment.

Purpose-built Dudick technologies

Flexible technologies accommodate concrete movement before cracks compromise containment, while moisture mitigation systems manage vapor transmission that can weaken adhesion or create blistering.

No single technology solves every secondary containment challenge. Different service environments demand different engineering approaches, which is why secondary containment systems range from flexible epoxy technologies to high-performance vinyl esters.

Product series	Type	Technology
Protecto-flex^®	Flexible epoxy systems	Provides chemical resistance for splash-and-spill containment in environments where substrate movement is expected. Saves costs as compared to traditional mortar and glass systems.
Protecto-glass^®	Integrally chemical resistant lining systems	Maximizes chemical resistance in the most aggressive containment environments.
Steri-series^®	High-performance novolac epoxy flooring and wall systems	Provides seamless floor protection where chemical resistance, thermal stability, and long-term durability are critical.
Semstone^®	Industrial resinous flooring/containment systems	Delivers durable, seamless protection with options tailored to varying levels of traffic, chemical exposure, and cleanability.

No technology is designed to solve every containment challenge. Protecto-Flex^® performs well where concrete movement and intermittent chemical exposure must be accommodated, while Protecto-Glass^® is better suited for the most aggressive continuous chemical service.

Steri-Series^® and Semstone^® flooring systems expand those options further, allowing engineers to balance chemical resistance, traffic, aesthetics, and facility-specific operating requirements.

Remember, no product line replaces good engineering. The right technology is the one that best fits the environment it is expected to protect.

Design for the unexpected

The possibility that a secondary containment system never performs its intended function can create a false sense of security. After all, it's the backstop for primary containment. How much effort does this really deserve?

The consequences of neglect escalate quickly.

When a spill occurs, there is little opportunity to rethink the engineering decisions that came before it. A single failure can contaminate waterways, put surrounding communities at risk, and leave behind environmental and financial consequences that far outlast the spill itself.

Remember, "secondary" doesn't mean less important. It's the last line of defense before a spill graduates from a problem to a headline.

The Red Bucket - Episode 28. Is it time to replace traditional tank and pipe insulation? (feat. Michael Stelmach)

Tue, 26 May 2026 10:39:13 -0400

Summary

For decades, standard practice for insulating storage tanks and piping has been to wrap them in mineral wool, foam, or other low-conductivity materials before sealing them in cladding. This method works well-for a few years, anyway. But guest Michael Stelmach explains how liquid-applied insulative coatings are a longer-lived solution that achieve similar thermal efficiency, similar personnel protection, similar energy savings, and similar process stability while eliminating CUI and other risk factors.

Also, Michael pulls his hamstring and admits it is possible to have good barbecue outside of Texas.

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

00:00 - Introduction
00:43 - The evolution of insulative coatings
02:58 - Understanding traditional insulation methods
05:32 - The mechanics of insulation and moisture ingress
08:49 - Challenges with traditional insulation materials
11:20 - Weather damage and safety concerns
13:39 - Construction challenges with traditional insulation
16:41 - Performance analysis and thermal conductivity
22:36 - Corrosion under insulation: challenges and solutions
26:17 - The role of topcoating
29:06 - Liquid-applied vs. traditional insulation costs
31:58 - Limitations of liquid applied insulation
34:07 - The four questions

Transcript

Click to follow along with the transcript:

Introduction

Toby Wall: This is a Carboline production. The traditional method of insulating industrial storage tanks and transmission piping has been to wrap it in mineral wool or foam or the like and then cover it all up with metal or plastic cladding. It's been the industry standard for decades, but it doesn't need to be.

My guest today is Michael Stelmach, a strategic account manager here at Carboline, who will explain how lots of people could save lots of time, stress, and money by insulating their assets differently.

Michael, why are you the right guy to talk to about this topic?

The evolution of insulative coatings

Michael Stelmach: So, this year, October, will be 30 years that I've been in the industry, but I started off as an industrial insulator and fireproofer. So started off as an apprentice, worked my way up through the craft. Um, it was around the late 1990s that I started using insulative coatings within our other insulation methods.

But before there was a really big concern about corrosion under insulation, we really utilized it on geometry that was hard to insulate, so tank roofs, spheres. And then I migrated to a company that all they did was sell and manufacture thermal insulation coatings.

Toby: So, your introduction to the insulative coatings was from the viewpoint of this is one of the methods you can use to do this. Can you give just a quick synopsis of all the common methods?

Michael: So yes, traditionally, and, and we're speaking mostly in the oil and gas, I've never really done a lot of what we call commercial applications, be it hospitals and stadiums. So, in the oil and gas industry, you've got products like mineral fiber, cellular glass, calcium silicate, urethane foams, all with typically a metal cladding, sometimes with a PVC cladding.

Toby: Is it fair to say that the liquid applied insulative coatings is not in the same ballpark in terms of how the, you know, industry understands it, or is it sort of on the level with all the other ones? They do recognize it, but it's just not as common.

Michael: Uh, correct. So, it, it's a lot more common than it was back in the '90s.

Understanding traditional insulation methods

But your traditional insulations that I, I just talked about, they've been around for decades and decades and decades, and they've been used widely in, in specifications from the EPC level to the, the owner level. And, and this insulative coating being thin film, and when I say thin film, you're comparing inches of conventional insulation to 40, 60, 80, 100 mils of, of insulative coatings.

And so it's, it's a little harder to understand the concept. And so it is our job to get out and educate, and more importantly, not to over specify the insulative coatings. They are, there are people, there are companies that go and say that you'll have better energy retention day one with the thin film insulation coatings as you would with three or four inches of insulation. That's just not the case.

You really need to teach your customers, your potential customers, that you will, when you're trying to save energy, when you're trying to save BTUs, you will have a slightly decreased performance over brand new traditional insulation. But in the turn, five and 10 years down the road when you're starting to see corrosion under insulation, corrosion under insulation starts with having moisture in the insulation, which very degrades the insulation value.

So, 10 years from now, you could have a better insulation performance with an insulative coating than with a metal wool style conventional insulation.

Toby: Talk about the, the technology with those traditional methods. You were comparing the, the thickness of these traditional methods versus the much, much thinner coating.

But what's happening, you know, physically with these thicker applications? How are these actually working?

Michael: Well, they, they work solely off of, you know, thermal conductivity. So, they're, they're tested in a lab at various temperatures, depending on the, um, temperature withholdings of the insulation. They could be from cryogenic up to, you know, thousands of degrees and, and there's different levels of thermal conductivity.

And you'll see typically there's a decreased performance the, the hotter the temperature that you get. And the problem is you put the metal cladding on for protection of the insulation, mostly from weathering and, and rain. And every time there's a penetration, you're going to have to cut that metal cladding, and you put caulking on there to keep moisture from ingressing into the insulation.

The mechanics of insulation and moisture ingress

The problem is that caulking only is gonna last, depending on temperature, about five, seven years, and it becomes brittle, and then it just... it has no sealing properties at all, and then moisture can get in. That's, that's one of the most common mechanisms for moisture to get into the insulation, degrade the insulation value, and help create corrosion under insulation.

And in the 30 years I've been doing this, I have not run by very many companies at all that have a maintenance program that they say, "Five years after we insulate this tank, this tower, this piping, we're gonna go back and inspect the insulation, inspect the cladding, inspect the caulking." So that's where the corrosion under insulation really gets started.

Toby: And then as far as the chemistry or the physics behind the liquid applied coatings, if we were to compare those two, what is happening there? Again, how, how it's actually working? How is that stopping the movement of temperature away from where you want it?

Michael: What you have is you typically have an acrylic, an epoxy, maybe a silicone resin. That's, that's the paint or the, the binder that holds the insulation together. And the traditional insulative coatings have these hollow ceramic particles inside.

Uh, some people call them spheres, but really if you look underneath a, a microscope, they look like, uh, pieces of popcorn that have blown up in a, in a microwave. And so, the, the air that's in- entrapped in these particles is the number one method of insulation. Air is Mother Nature's best insulation method we, we have.

The ceramics are also highly reflective to heat, and combine that with the irregular shaped geometry, when heat is trying to escape out of the tank or the pipe, it hits this irregular shaped geometry, and it's going to go naturally to the path of least resistance. And many times, that is actually reflecting back into the substrate, into the tank, causing for a highly effective insulation material.

Toby: What has the evolution been of the liquid applied insulative coatings? Has it been pretty stable over the, the, the few decades that it's gained in popularity, or always getting better, or what's the, the status of all of that?

Michael: It's, it's getting better. When they originally came out, you had a choice of acrylic, acrylic, or acrylic. Um, great technologies. They, they work well. They work well as a actually support a little bit of the insulation value. Um, one of our newer products, Carbotherm 551, is an epoxy base. Uh, so it has advantages that it can go on, uh, double the thicknesses of, of most acrylics, and it's also a lot more rigid. So, it lends itself to new construction a lot better.

With the acrylic technology, it's very soft. So, if you applied, uh, the material on piping in a shop, and then you had to transport it and install it, you're gonna beat the technology up pretty easily. The epoxy version is a lot more robust and can withstand that impact much, much better.

Toby: I guess it's interesting to me how, how, how long these have been in specified, right?

Challenges with traditional insulation materials

The, the track record that these have had over, you know, longer than both yours and my lifetimes, and probably longer than our lifetimes combined. Uh, but they do have some serious, serious issues that we need to think about. Probably the most common and, and critical of them is the water will always get in.

It's not if the water gets in, it is always it will, it's just a matter of time. So, tell us more about what can happen once that infiltration occurs in a, in a traditional insulation material.

Michael: Yeah. So once water gets in, number one, you're creating a corrosion cell, but number two, your thermal conductivity goes through the roof.

And I like to give an example is if you were in Alaska in February and you had a choice of a thin but dry jacket, but a damp, big, thick, puffy jacket, which one are you gonna wear? I personally would wear the dry one, because as soon as you put on a jacket that's wet, you're actually pulling energy out of your body.

So, it's gonna do worse than not even wearing a jacket at all. And the same thing goes with traditional insulation. There's one inspection method for insulation using a thermal imaging camera and when you take that image, you wanna see a, a green or blue, which means it's cool. When you see areas that are red, and most of the time you see those red areas in areas like where you have a ladder and you have brackets that are going through the insulation, uh, and attaching to the, the metal, you'll see a lot of red, and the red means that it's super hot.

So that insulation, one, is, is not doing any good at all. Two, it might actually be drawing out more heat than not being insulated at all because it is wet.

Toby: The moisture that can infiltrate these traditional systems is brought to them by the weather, but the weather is responsible for other types of damage too, and this gets to some, in some cases, pretty frightening examples of damage due to weather. Tell us what you have seen happen before.

Michael: Times, in the Houston area especially, this is near and dear to my heart, uh, hurricane season is, is terrible for these plants and for the insulation. And it doesn't ha- necessarily have to be a hurricane, but a, a tropical storm, a tropical depression can produce enough wind to damage the insulation.

Weather damage and safety concerns

And what happens is, one; you have the aluminum cladding traditionally who is, through time and UV degradation, has oxidized and become, uh, not as strong as the day it was installed. The wind gets in between the gaps of the, the metal cladding and just rips it apart. Uh, we have one client close to our headquarters, they, they have 220-foot asphalt tanks, and wind in the St. Louis area will get strong enough, will... it'll get underneath that, and it actually blows the entire 220-foot insulation system off of the tank roof, and is blown typically on a public road right next to the, the facility.

Toby: So obviously, the danger to anything that's nearby, people or property, it's clear what could happen.

Michael: Yeah, and in a hurricane, there's typically not a lot of people working a refinery. But I was in the panhandle of Texas a long time ago, and before I finished the meeting, there was a safety meeting that was set up because a piece of aluminum cladding got blown off of a tank and actually went through a contractor's vehicle's windshield.

Toby: Yeah, it's not like a pop can flying around. It's aluminum. We think light and bendy, and it's not necessarily how these things are when they're the size that they are and the thickness they are for that, for that job that they're doing.

Michael: Yeah, the aluminum is a, a lot thicker than the aluminum can, and it's typically corrugated, which makes it more rigid, and it comes in sheets that are about three foot by eight to 12 feet long. So, it's, it's a serious, uh, hazard.

Toby: I wanna shift gears to before any of that happens during a construction project, the method that is used to construct these legacy systems, let's call them, create some challenges for the job site. And I know that primarily people are familiar with these, these applications in the oil and gas side, typically an exterior setting.

It's not the only place where you have this, and consequently, it's not the only place where we would say, "You know what? You should consider a liquid applied solution." But talk us through the, the space that's required and just the amount of stuff involved in installing one of these traditional systems.

Construction challenges with traditional insulation

Michael: There's a lot of storage that goes with this. Um, when you're insulating piping, uh, you have insulation that is molded to be fit directly around a piece of pipe. Uh, it's two half-moons that come together. And so, you store these, they're three-foot-long typically, and you store them in boxes and it, it takes a lot. You're storing a lot of air, so it does take a lot of space.

And I was just reading in an insulation, uh, publication that comes out every month through the National Insulation Association, and talking about a whole different industry with the, with the data centers. These data centers have 30, 32-inch piping that can run a mile long, and one of the biggest constraints they have in the construction of these data centers is just the storage of the insulation.

So, in a, in a three-foot-long box, you have room for one piece of this half-moon section. So, you literally have one and a half foot in a pretty big box. So, what we're telling our clients is, one, you can use an insulative coating and, and apply it in a shop environment and have pre-insulated piping come to your job site, where all you have to do is the, the welded connections and eliminate that storage concern.

And then also when you are insulating these large bore pipes that are elevated, it's gonna require scaffolding because it's hard to do traditional insulation off of a man lift, 'cause it's, on a 30-inch pipe it's gonna take one person on each side. So, you can have tens of millions of dollars of scaffolding that can now be eliminated by pre-insulative coating piping, and what is left, the welds, is, can be done easily off of a man lift.

Toby: Yeah, they're not inching down, you know, foot by foot. It's more like segment by segment. It, it is much faster, uh, much faster work.

Michael: Th- that is correct, and you can just imagine having a scaffold that is miles long in a, on a construction site, what that does to the other crafts, the mechanical crafts, the electrical crafts who have to navigate around the scaffold that's there just to support the insulation work.

Toby: I- if there's any, any industry or any segment where people are very interested in speed, I can't think of one that there's more pressure to go fast than that one.

Michael: There, there's no doubt about that. It is all about speed to market in that industry, for sure.

Toby: If we can go back to performance characteristics, what we use to, when we s- have these claims about, oh, the, the performance is, is very, very good, the thermal conductivity is low, the way we know this, we study this by doing thermal analyses, and it's something that obviously you have lots of experience with.

Performance analysis and thermal conductivity

So, walk through that part of this. Like, how, how does somebody- Take that leap from, okay, your argument about a liquid applied solution seems like it makes sense, but let's make that reality. How do you step through to, you know, here's the data, here's the proof, this will perform the way that I'm saying that it will? It's something, it's a knowable figure. These are knowable numbers after all.

Michael: Yeah. So, to start off, when you have an insulative coating or any insulation, you send it off to a third-party lab who tests the thermal conductivity. So, they are the ones that give you your, your K value, or sometimes you will call it R value. So that is not a manufactured number that we come up with at all.

The tool that I use to show clients how it will perform thermally is a program called 3E Plus, and that is, uh, provided by the National Insulation Association. So, y- you, Tobias, could download that program right now and, and use it yourself.

And so, it has pre-populated types of insulation that we talked about earlier in the podcast. Um, then it has specific ones to manufacturers. Being that insulative coatings are relatively new, um, we input the information ourselves.

So, you create a, a new data point for, say, Carbotherm 551, and you plug in... The thermal conductivity test that we ran was run at three different temperatures because that is the temperature limits of our, our resin system. We put those in by temperature and by thermal conductivity. And so, then you can perform a thermal analysis, which y- you pick the substrate, so it could be the sidewalls of a tank, the tank roof, a piping system, a tower, whatever it is. Uh, you put in your material at various thicknesses, and it comes back and tells you the BTU savings along with a, a percent savings.

So, we typically try to achieve an 80% efficiency with BTUs. Now, we're just talking energy retention and, and BTU savings, but you can also run these calculations and use this technology for process stability, personnel burn protection, anti-sweating, anti-condensation. There's, there's hundreds of different reasons for, uh, insulating something, which this program will help you calculate all those.

Toby: You, you showed me once an example of this. You gave me the actual, the printout that this developed. Can you talk through that example without, without naming names of course, but what, what were they trying to achieve in terms of the process parameters that they wanted to kind of stick close to? And then knowing that, what did that lead us to in terms of our specification?

Michael: Typical oil and gas company out, out of Oklahoma. Uh, lots of wind in Oklahoma so they had a lot of that wind damage, lots of rain as well. Um, when they originally, uh, insulated the tank, they used a traditional, I think mineral fiber insulation with the metal cladding. And as we already discussed, it, it started degrading through time.

So, we got on a meeting with their, with their tank department explaining the characteristics, the good and the bad. As, as we said earlier, you're not gonna have that exact same insulation value day one, and I try to ad- uh, address that upfront. So, we went through the technical process and they went out for bids, bidding both traditional insulation and insulative coatings, and solved it was, one, a cost savings, but they knew the reason they were talking to us is 'cause they had really, really bad CUI.

Before they could do anything with the insulation, they had to replace the top four feet of the tank because the CUI had eaten all the way through, and you had gaping three-foot holes in, in the ins- in the metal that was the tank itself. A fuel oil tank that operated around 150 degrees. I was pretty confident that 150 degrees in, in Oklahoma was gonna be a, an 80 mil or two coat application, but I always give at least three thicknesses.

So, we showed the thermal performance at 60 mils, 80 mils, and 100 mils. So at 60 mils we were 75, 77% efficiency. At 80 mils I wanna say we were around 82, and then at 100 mils it was around 84%, somewhere, somewhere close to there. And when you use any insulation system, it is not the requirement of the manufacturer, it's really the decision to the end user of how much money they want to spend on the insulation s- system versus how much they want to save.

And the neat thing with that specific tank, they were so happy with the application, they had an internal summit in Houston about two years ago that they asked me to speak at. And I told my boss the best thing I did when I presented was actually stop talking, 'cause as soon as I shut up, everybody at the plant was talking about how great the, the customer service was with us training the contractor.

And then what I really enjoyed, one guy had said that they were testing how much steam was going into the plant when it had traditional insulation on it. After the insulation was stripped and after we applied 80 mils of Carbotherm 551 in post-application, they were saving a lot of energy, a lot of steam, even compared to the traditional insulation.

And to be fair, that traditional insulation was, we know, wet because of the CUI that occurred.

Corrosion under insulation: challenges and solutions

Toby: Which leads me to wanna ask, because you've mentioned it one or two times already, uh, so far, that the insulative value on day one of the legacy systems probably or maybe even always is going to be better. How good is it on day one?

Michael: Oh, and it works, it works excellent on day one, but you get areas like in Houston where when you open the bucket, the amount of humidity we have, you're losing some insulation value. But you should, if you get a quality insulation company to do your installation, they do the, the metal cladding correctly and, and the caulking correctly, um, you're gonna have a good insulation for, for about five years.

And if the company, the owner would go above and beyond and create a maintenance program for that insulation, they can extend the life of it. But in my 30 years, I haven't seen that once. But that's the beauty of an insulative coating is really install it and forget about it. I have applications that I can go back over 20 years and see that it's still, still working and performing like it did at the install.

Toby: Which, as you said earlier, you wouldn't expect a legacy method to have similar performance. One thing I did also want you to cover, though, was since you've mentioned corrosion under insulation several different times, the, the way that you even know that that is happening, uh, is not easy to determine, right?

Michael: Well, it's, it's because it is, it has the metal cladding on, so it's impossible to know unless you dig into it. So, methods of evidence that you might have CUI is using that thermal imaging camera. Uh, it's not definitive, but it's gonna pretty much tell you you've got moisture in your insulation, and you should inspect it.

One major oil and gas company, their policy is that every three to five years, depending on the temperature of the, the piece of equipment, they remove 25% of the insulation. If they find corrosion, they basically have to strip it until they don't find corrosion anymore. But most of the time, if you find it at 25%, you're gonna find it at 100%.

So, they have to go through that every three to five years. And this is outdated numbers, but that particular oil and gas company globally has 6,000 pieces of equipment that they had to do this inspection for every three to five years, and only the inspection part was $2,500 a year. And that ranged from very small pieces of equipment to large pieces of equipment, and that was a... $2,500 was an average.

But just hundreds of millions of dollars over and over only to inspect for CUI. And of course, if they find it, then they have to spend millions of dollars to sand blast, re-coat, put CUI coatings on, and re-insulate those pieces of equipment.

Toby: Might be a bit of an understatement, but it's a quite a destructive test and quite a costly... you know, it's like doing a repair job even when a repair wasn't initially what you signed up for. It's just a fact of the inspection.

Michael: You're going in blind every time. There's critical parts, like on a piping system, you know, at a, at an elbow or a 90, it's more common to have CUI there than on a vertical run. So, there are areas that they can start off with. But yeah, it's very, very costly just to see if you do have corrosion.

The role of topcoating

Toby: Since so many of these applications are outdoors, I'm sure a lot of folks are listening to this and thinking, "Okay, what do we do about a top coat? Must I always top coat an insulative coating, or can I get away with, with not doing it?"

Michael: Well, let's talk about the whole system. First of all, most of these materials, including ours, are, are water-based. So, it is a very good idea, and we always recommend putting a, a primer on the substrate first. Not very picky of what type of primers, epoxy, modified epoxies. Just about anything can be used as long as it creates a barrier coat.

And if you apply the water-based coating directly to a standard water-based coating directly to carbon steel, you'll have what's called flash rusting, and it'll almost look like freckles that bleed through the coating. So, let's, let's get the prep done. Let's do the, um, the application.

Now, most of these materials are spray applied, and that scares a lot of people. And I can't speak for all materials, but I will speak for, uh, our two technologies that we have. You apply it with an airless, but they are what are called dry fall materials. So, in about 10 feet or less, that over-spray, if you would, becomes a dust that you do not have to worry about getting over-spray on other pieces of equipment.

And we'll talk, go back to that application in Oklahoma. I always, uh, suggest to the end user to install those black hunting targets downwind of, of the application. I think it protects the applicator, protects the owner, protects the manufacturer. So, they took my request and, and applied those downwind, and they actually took the airless and not even sprayed at the tank. They just sprayed open air about 30 feet from the target, and there was no over-spray at all on the target.

And now top coat. Um, you want a top coat for a variety of different things. Uh, acrylics typically don't require a top coat because they are UV resistance. Our epoxy is a modified epoxy, so it does not chalk as aggressively as a standard epoxy, but it will eventually chalk. So, if you want your tank to look good 5, 10 years from, uh, from the application, you'll want to top coat it for UV degradation. You also might wanna top coat it if you are downwind of a cooling tower that might- get constant moisture on the system, cause possible mo- mold growth, or have chemicals in it as well. So chemical resistance, um, weathering resistance are the two main reasons that you'd wanna consider a top coat.

Liquid-applied vs. traditional insulation costs

Toby: So how do these things pencil out in terms of cost? If you were gonna do a, an installed cost of a typical liquid applied system versus the typical mineral fiber and aluminum cladding system, how do those work out?

Michael: As a rule of thumb, generically speaking, there's about a 20% total installed cost of an insulative coating versus traditional insulation with metal cladding. Now, that can go either direction.

So, let's start on the negative side. If you have a half-inch line that just goes perfectly straight for a mile, we're gonna be more expensive because you're gonna have a lot of product loss due to over-spray. And I specifically said straight for, for a reason. The more complex the geometry, the more expensive it is to traditionally insulate. So, if you take that same half-inch line, but you put 150 elbows on it that require a lot more label, labor and different cladding materials, that drives the cost of traditional insulation up. And for us, as a coatings standpoint, it's just square foot, so it doesn't matter how many bends.

On the other side, one of the most expensive things to insulate in the oil and gas indus- industry is a sphere. So, you can imagine if you have a 80-foot giant sphere in a refinery, first you got to scaffold it, which is very expensive to scaffold because you're trying to scaffold around a 75-foot ball. So, the scaffolding could be $2 million on that. Versus with insulative coatings, that scaffold actually gets in your way, so you wanna actually work off of a articulating boom, which is a lot less expensive than, than the scaffold.

And then on a sphere, you have to have engineered segments that are almost like little triangles that are curved to go around the geometry of a sphere, and then you have to cut these long, what's called metal gores out. So, you'll have about 350 strips of metal that you have to install. And for us, again, it's just square footage. So, it doesn't matter if it's flat or if it's round, it's, it's very, very cost-effective on a geometry like that. And I wanna say apples to apples, traditional insulation with metal cladding, with scaffolding on a sphere, you're gonna be about 15%, so an 85% cost savings when you look at the total installed cost.

But again, those are few and far between, so I usually just say an average of a 20% cost savings.

Limitations of liquid applied insulation

Toby: So, with all of the discussion about how great the liquid applied is, in, like, a real-world scenario, when would you argue against one of those?

Michael: Great, great question. First is temperature. So, these technologies work pretty well to control sweating around 50 degrees in, in the Gulf Coast area, uh, and they're good to about 350 degrees. So, anything cryogenic, anything below freezing, it's just not a good fit for. And even with traditional insulation, there's insulation materials that are designed for cold, and there's insulation materials designed for hot. And insulative coatings are more a cool to hot application for an insulative coatings.

And then above 350 degrees, and there are some that have a little bit higher temperature threshold than that, what happens if you apply a traditional insulative coating that's good to 350 at 500 degrees, what's gonna happen is the inner layer is gonna char. The outside might look good, but the inner layer is gonna char. It's not gonna be bonded to the surface, and you have a mechanism that you can start corrosion again, because you're not bonded to the surface.

Those are the two main ones that I veer away from.

Toby: So, if you were gonna wrap it up and give maybe, you know, like, the two or three sentence elevator pitch for liquid applied insulative coatings to a receptive audience, what are you telling them in, in two or three sentences?

Michael: Yeah. So, it's a technology that, in many cases, but not all, can replace the need for traditional insulation with metal cladding in that it eliminates any risk of corrosion under insulation because unlike a traditional insulation system that the corrosion is hidden, you have total visual inspectability of the substrate at all time without removal.

Toby: Yeah, I, I think that's one of the most, I don't know, compelling secondary benefits of all of this, is that there is, there is no loss of visibility at all. There is no mystery of the condition of that asset. You can see it all the way around.

Michael: Absolutely. A very correct statement.

The four questions

Toby: I hope that you are ready to make very correct statements now with these four questions I have for you, Michael, because some of them might be, um, might be controversial. Maybe you might start making some people angry, so we'll see.

But my first of those four questions is a bit of a softball. If you could do any childhood activity as a grown man and knew you wouldn't be judged for it, what would you do?

Michael: Oh, that's a great question. Just pretty much anything now. I'm, I'm worried about tearing a ligament or something, so just any athletic sports that I don't have to worry about tearing a hamstring.

I have twin boys, and we were at baseball practice one time, and we decided to mix it up. And the last 20 minutes it was coaches versus kids, um, kickball. And I knew time was wrapping up, so it was my last kick and I, I tried to make it a doozy. And foot went up, then I was chewing grass in pain, and my child is laughing at me, calling me old 'cause I just tore my hamstring.

Toby: Bet you'll never do that again.

Michael: Not without stretching, and I did try to stretch, but every time I tried to do a stretch, I had a baseball coming at my face.

Toby: Question number two: What, what job did you dream of having when you were young?

Michael: It definitely was not in insulation or being in the corrosion industry. There's, there's no doubt about that. Oh, really? ... I think my number one goal was to be an astronaut or at least a, a naval pilot, but definitely did not see myself in, in the, in the corrosion industry. And I say the week I got the best sleep was the week in physics that they turn- talked about thermodynamics, 'cause, I mean, when am I gonna use thermodynamics in my career, right?

Toby: I hear that a lot from, from people around Carboline, is th- this isn't the sort of field you necessarily think you're gonna find yourself in, but you just sort of do.

Michael: Absolutely. No doubt about that.

Toby: Good to see that you're another example that proves the rule.

Time to start making some people mad. In your opinion, Michael, what Texas sports team has been the most disappointing recently?

Michael: Right now, it's the Houston Astros. Um, we, we need pitching so desperately. Um, I had a laugh very early in the season. My brother gave me a stat that we broke a, a world record in baseball, that we had the absolute worst record in baseball, but we had scored more runs than any other MLB team. Um-

Toby: Oh, my goodness.

Michael: Yes, and it, it's continuing down that path. Now, the Houston Texans are... um, they've disappointed me since the conception in 2002 of a new team, so I've just learned to realize that I will never see the Houston Texans in a Super Bowl. And, to be fair to the Astros, they have spoiled us for a very long time.

They have been an outstanding team for a very, very long time, with and without the controversies that I know you wanna talk about.

Toby: Oh, you know what? I, it's been beaten to death, so I guess we don't need to go... We don't need to contribute to it.

All right, here's a would you rather. Would you rather never eat barbecue again or never eat chocolate again?

Michael: For a guy that doesn't have, um, a sweet tooth, it would never eat chocolate again, and I think I would lose my title of Texan if I claimed never eat barbecue again. It'd have to be specific of Texas barbecue.

Toby: You know, I almost went there. I almost was gonna say, what is the barbecue that's better than Texas barbecue?

Michael: There, there isn't one. But I, I will say my, my wife, uh, when we were dating, uh, for her work she went to Manhattan quite a bit. And she made a comment that our relationship almost didn't get past, that she said there was a great barbecue place in Manhattan. And so, one of my travels, I was in New York the same time as her, and I think the comment that I said was, "Let's go to this barbecue place that I know I'm gonna hate just so I can prove you wrong," basically.

And I gotta admit, it was really good. When you sit down first, you get a, um, your place mat is a map of the continental US, and it is all the places that the owner learned to cook barbecue. And the menu's very eclectic that it had, uh, Texas brisket, it had St. Louis ribs and, and other ones. And, and brisket's really where the Texans, we take it seriously.

Don't put sauce on our, our brisket. Don't mess with it. It's just dry rub. But I can appreciate other types of barbecue as long as you don't mess with the brisket. So, I, I was proven wrong, and it was a really good barbecue place.

Toby: And if the owner's listening, as I'm sure he is, because who wouldn't listen to this?

Michael: Exactly.

Toby: I'm sure they'll be very happy to hear your rave review. And speaking of rave reviews, I'm sure that that's what we'll get after, uh, all the millions of people who listen to this hear this episode. So, Michael, thank you very much for sharing what you know with us.

Michael: You got it. Thank you for having me.

Harder intumescent coatings aren't always better

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:09:20 -0400

An assumption that harder intumescent coatings are better than pliable ones stops construction teams from optimizing material selection to save time and money.

The assumption stems from the 20th century emergence of Shore D durometer testing to assess epoxy protective coatings' level of cure.

The truth about hardness

Some stakeholders view hardness as the best marker of a coating's damage resistance. It's a good one, but not always the best, and should never be the only one.

For example, in colder conditions, high hardness is more a liability than a strength. Harder materials are more brittle, and impact damage to brittle materials spreads farther vs. the more localized damage that would occur in flexible coatings.

Prioritizing hardness over all other properties also prevents teams from optimizing material selection for fast-track projects.

If construction speed is the prevailing concern, then a combination of typical hard epoxy coatings as well as more weather-resistant solvent-based or hybrid materials give teams the best chance at rapid delivery under a wider range of conditions. But if specs are too rigid, that's not possible.

Hardness in the context of fireproofing performance

Hardness just doesn't matter.

Marketing fire-resistive materials is strictly regulated with many certifications and approvals required before products can be legally sold.

None of those certifications or approvals mentions hardness.

Learn even more about intumescent coating hardness in this article and this podcast episode.

The Red Bucket – Episode 27. Landmark projects in Canada (Feat. Pedro Escudero)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:48:07 -0400

Summary

Three mysterious binders once forgotten in a Carboline headquarters closet are opened for the first time in decades. In this episode of The Red Bucket, Toby and guest Pedro Escudero explore a small sample of their contents: four past projects involving high-profile locations across Canada.

And, Pedro reveals where tourists can get the best fish dinner in the country.

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction
01:40 – CN Tower staircase
05:52 – Point Tupper supertanker terminal
13:02 – SkyDome (now the Rogers Centre) retractable roof structural steel
18:35 – Peterborough Lift Lock
33:10 – The Four Questions

Ways to understand intumescent coating hardness

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:19:26 -0400

Language within some commercial intumescent coating specifications suggest that harder coatings are better.

That isn't true-read why here.

Truth aside, where one sits in the contract chain is a good indicator of how impactful they feel material hardness is to overall project success.

The owner/architect viewpoint

These stakeholders view a harder material as tougher and more durable, a sign that it will hold up for the lifetime of a building.

What they're missing: Hardness is neither the best nor the only way to judge fitness for purpose. They risk closing the door on intumescent technologies not formulated for high hardness.

The contractor viewpoint

One view is that hardness is almost meaningless. When a spec says a material needs to meet or exceed a certain hardness, you follow it.

Another is that hardness helps compare damage resistance. If contractors have a say in product specification, it's in their interest to choose one they won't have to go back and repair later.

What they're missing: Hardness is not the only way to assess damage resistance. In certain conditions, more pliable or flexible materials are more damage-resistant while harder ones are at higher risk.

The subject of intumescent material hardness is covered in depth in this article and this podcast episode.

Shore D hardness is not a performance indicator for intumescent coatings

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:58:32 -0400

For decades, many intumescent coating specifications have ruled out the use of materials that measure less than 70 in Shore D durometer testing.

Hardness is useful to know, but it has no influence at all on an intumescent coating's performance in the event of a fire.

What's it for, then?

It came from offshore oil and gas coating application best practices established in the 20th century.

The industry adopted durometer testing to judge if curing was complete. That mattered because most coating occurred onshore in shops prior to offshore installation. Loading, transportation, and unloading of platform components can be abusive and an incomplete cure was a recipe for damage that was very costly to repair.

Many other methods are available to test hardness, but Shore D durometer testing was most common because it was a good fit for the properties of typical hard epoxy coatings.

Copy-pasting for commercial intumescent specs

Language related to Shore D durometer testing entered intumescent coating specifications beginning in the 1990s.

The leading commercial intumescent materials of that era were based on epoxy resin technology, so there was no reason to reinvent the wheel in terms of assessing cure completion.

But while intumescent coatings today comprise a much wider range of technologies and properties, many specifications overlook this because they're holdovers from a prior generation.

Why that's a problem

Antique specifications exclude good materials to the detriment of construction project schedule and cost. Consider:

1. Some projects' schedules accelerate when non-epoxy intumescent coatings are selected, translating to substantial cost savings
2. Other hardness testing scales (for instance, Shore A) are better for assessing the cure of more pliable solvent-based, water-based, or hybrid intumescent coatings
3. Specs focusing too rigidly on Shore D hardness ignore the application and handling benefits that accompany other technologies

Cost and schedule savings are left on the table.

What should change?

Shore D durometer testing should be better contextualized in intumescent coating specifications.

It also shouldn't be the only testing method mentioned.

Specifications listing an array of suitable methods ensure the door stays open to all viable technologies. This maximizes opportunities to save during construction while achieving required fire ratings.

For more detail on this topic, read this article or listen to this episode of The Red Bucket podcast.

Shore D hardness doesn’t matter for intumescent coating performance

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 15:22:44 -0400

A common inclusion in many intumescent coating specifications causes more problems than it solves for construction projects.

Qualifying materials that meet certain Shore D hardness levels-and disqualifying those that do not-doesn't actually solve anything. It's a remnant of a best practice that first emerged in a different industry to evaluate a specific coating technology.

It doesn't influence the performance or fitness for service of intumescent materials. But unfortunately, most construction stakeholders don't know this.

To listen to this discussion instead of reading it, hear fireproofing industry expert Michael Hollman on The Red Bucket podcast.

A very brief history of Shore hardnes

The hardness of a material can contribute to its end-use performance, so a wide range of industrial and material science disciplines need a scientifically valid way to measure it.

The American metallurgist Albert Ferdinand Shore's contribution to the science was essential. His invention in 1915 of the Shore durometer gave us a fundamental tool still widely used today to record the hardness of polymers. It consists of an indenter that is pressed into a material and a spring connected to a gauge. The hardness of a material is based on the depth the indenter travels into the material when a standard load is applied.

Of course, different materials have different properties, so a range of measurement equipment and methods are available. Consider, for example, the hardness of an anvil versus a marshmallow. Shore durometer testing is conducted on 12 scales, with each scale featuring its own combination of indenter dimensions and spring force.

Many other hardness tests and associated equipment exist, and some are quite popular in coatings. Pencil hardness testing (ASTM D3363/ISO 15184) is very common. Knoop, Vickers, and Buchholz tests also have their uses.

The origin of Shore D hardness evaluations for coatings

Why does the hardness of a cured coating matter?

The coatings industry uses hardness testing as an easy way to judge whether a coating has cured completely and can be put into service. It goes like this: A series of tests of a newly applied coating would show progressively higher hardnesses as the coating cured. When the hardness begins to plateau, curing is judged complete.

The offshore oil & gas industry seized upon this evaluation method in the middle and latter parts of the last century as offshore exploration and resource extraction accelerated. As with every other aspect of building, installing, and operating offshore infrastructure, protective coatings are selected and applied in a highly regulated, standardized environment.

But why Shore D specifically?

It's because the Shore D durometer configuration (a 30" cone-shaped indenter under 44.45 newtons of force) is a good fit for evaluating hard epoxies, and hard epoxies have historically been the most common protective coatings for offshore oil & gas. They offered the right balance of initial damage resistance in transit from the shop to final installation followed by corrosion protection in service.

It was at this point in history that a reading of 70 on the Shore D hardness scale became meaningful, even if the reason why is elusive. A good guess might be that "good" hard epoxies of the latter 20th century typically topped out at Shore D 70 when fully cured. The repeated observation became the benchmark. And because the benchmark seemed to work, there was no reason to stop using it.

Shore D migrates into commercial intumescent specifications

It might at first seem logical why Shore D 70 was increasingly copy-pasted into intumescent coating specs starting in the 1990s. Whether you're shop-applying a coating for steel for a deep-sea oil rig or for a warehouse on land, you need to be confident it will hold up to the rigors of handling and transportation.

This much is true about construction specifications: If it's in there, it's in there for a reason. Doesn't really matter why. Just go with it.

Does that mean an intumescent material with a value less than Shore D 70 is unfit for service?

Carboline's Thermo-Lag E100 series coatings, long-established in the industry, measure at around Shore D 40 (a golf ball, at Shore D 50, is only slightly harder). That hasn't disqualified them, as its decades of proven performance clearly demonstrate. But Shore D 70 requirements have made specifying them or their peer competitors much harder. Specifications are not easy to change.

What's worse, innovations in intumescent technology have resulted in new materials that would appear even less qualified for service than older ones. Ductile elastomeric-type materials, such as Thermo-Sorb HB, score a 68 on the Shore A scale. That's about the same as the soles of some shoes.

Why Shore A? Because the Shore A configuration (a 35° cone but with a blunt end instead of a pointed one, and under 8.05 newtons of force) is more appropriate for ductile materials, including elastomeric intumescent coatings.

Rigid specs requiring Shore D 70 would instantly reject Thermo-Sorb HB as unsuitable.

Clearly, we have some problems.

One concerns the validity of assessing ductile elastomeric products with the same scale and equipment that our grandparents used on hard epoxies. These are completely different technologies.

Another is that the variety of fabrication shop best practices related to the handling of coated workpieces are well documented and suitably mitigate damage risk. The hardness of a material is not its only defense against damage.

Next, though high hardness might be nice in some circumstances, it's almost always accompanied by brittleness, especially at low temperatures. Brittle materials crack more easily, and the rigidity of a hard material means cracks can expand well beyond the immediate impact area. Conversely, a more ductile material like single-component Thermo-Sorb HB cures via solvent evaporation and tolerates severe conditions better. In the event a ductile product is damaged, the damage is much more localized for simpler, cheaper repairs.

Finally, and most critically, hardness has no influence on an intumescent coating's fire-resistive performance. If it had, it would be among the strict criteria any intumescent material must meet, as verified through third-party approval bodies, before manufacturers are allowed to sell it.

The bottom line is, if intumescent materials continue to be qualified or disqualified based on this magical figure of Shore D 70, construction teams close themselves off from considering other high-performing products and instead open themselves up to avoidable and costly risks.

What's the way forward?

An intumescent coating's hardness is useful information, so we don't think it should be eliminated from builders' consideration. But we do think the subject needs to be better understood and contextualized.

In our view, that means three things:

One, the construction industry should understand the original reason why Shore D 70 hardness was important. It was a marker of the curing progress of hard epoxies in the offshore oil & gas sector. It is unrelated to a coating's end-use performance.

Two, the hardnesses of competing coatings, regardless of the scale used to assess them, should never be the primary basis on which one is selected over another. Hardness is no more influential than the other metrics manufacturers publish as decision-making aids. The hardness of a coating could be used as a quality control measurement to determine when the coated structure is ready to be overcoated, moved or transported. But this should be done using the testing configuration that is appropriate for the specific product selected.

And third, knowledge of the other hardness scales and testing configurations-most importantly Shore A-will result in specifications qualifying a wider range of materials. This gives construction teams more flexibility in selecting products certified to perform while also offering constructability perks that save time and money.

After all, savings is the animating energy in construction today. Builders have never been under more pressure to put as much money back into their customers' pockets as they can.

Understanding the truth about intumescent coating hardness gives them another way to do it.

The Red Bucket – Episode 26. The problem with using Shore D hardness for intumescent coatings (Feat. Michael Hollman)

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:30:15 -0500

Summary

An intumescent coating can be qualified or disqualified for use simply because it falls above or below a certain magical hardness level, usually as measured on the Shore D scale. But hardness has no influence on performance, and the Shore D scale just doesn’t make sense when assessing softer intumescent technology types. Fireproofing industry veteran Michael Hollman explains the consequences of misusing Shore D hardness in intumescent coating specifications.

Also, Michael worries that his brother-in-law might soon beat him at snooker.

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

00:00 - Introduction
03:01 - How the industry's understanding of hardness has evolved
05:55 - Durometers' importance in measuring coating hardness
07:31 - Matching different Shore scales to different coating technologies
09:39 - When standards are "cut-and-pasted" without context
13:34 - Harder is not universally better
18:15 - Elasticity, damage resistance, and impact recovery
21:12 - Viewing Shore values as a reference point, not a product differentiator
22:40 - The four questions

Transcript

Introduction

Toby Wall: The cured hardness of an intumescent coating is important for a variety of reasons depending on where you sit in the contract chain. Rigid specifications often force construction teams into choosing among only a few materials based on their hardness, usually as determined using the Shore D scale. As we'll discuss in this episode that's a problem. My colleague Michael Hollman joins me to talk through how to solve it.

Well Michael, thanks for joining us on The Red Bucket today. If you wouldn't mind, before we get started, maybe give us the brief biography. How did you get to where you are today?

Michael Hollman: Good question. So, straight out of school, I joined the local paint company as a junior technician in R&D, and I was selected to work in the fire protection lab.

And actually, that's all I've ever done since then. So, I've had thirty-two years in the industry working in R&D developing intumescent fireproof coatings of all different types of different companies, as well most of the market-leading companies, testing and supporting those products into many different countries around the world through the local fire testing standards that are needed for each of those countries.

So yeah, it's been quite an interesting career. It's taken me to many different countries and continents and meet some interesting people. So that has brought me to RPM and Carboline, where my current position is global product manager, looking after the intumescent fireproofing range, responsible for developing a pipeline of products that meets our current and future needs for the different markets that we want to operate in.

Toby: Speaking of all these different countries and continents that you've been to, the country that you are in, if guests didn't already notice your accent, you are where sir?

Michael: I am English, and I am currently in the miserable north of England, very close to Manchester. It's a great place. It's just the weather is a bit miserable today.

Toby: We are recording in the middle of February, where the difference between the weather Michael's having today and the weather that I am supposed to have here in Saint Louis is, I don't know if you could, you couldn't draw it up any different than what we'll have.

How the industry's understanding of hardness has evolved

Toby: So, there's one big idea with this whole episode, Michael, regarding hardness of intumescent materials. What's the big idea?

Michael: So, the idea is the Shore D hardness of an intumescent material or coating has zero influence on its performance.

Toby: I guess we can stop right there. Thanks for joining The Red Bucket, and we'll be back next time with another great guest.

So, what do we mean by hardness, for those who might not be familiar with you know what it is or why, in this context, that it matters?

Michael: So, what we mean by this, the hardness, is typically the extent of cure or drying of a coating. So, it's a physical measure that we can look against and have an absolute number that will actually tell us when the coating is either chemically reacted or physically dried to the level that is not going to progress any further beyond that.

Toby: Has measuring its hardness always been the way that we understood how well cured or how finished a coating is?

Michael: No, it hasn't. So, this is where it is always been common practice in the hydrocarbon industry, where you've got thick epoxy coatings and its part A and part B are mixed, and you can measure the hardness as an indication of when it's fully reacted and then it's ready to be put into service.

But what we are seeing now is that it's actually going beyond that market and that technology, and it's just becoming a blanket term now for use with all intumescent coatings, regardless of the technology or the market, really.

Toby: So, you've seen that gradual adoption over your 32 years then, or does that pre-date your entry to the business?

Michael: Over the time that I've been in the industry, in the early years it was limited to one particular area, but then we have seen more and more where it has gotten adopted in other markets where it's not really relevant. So, as I said earlier that it has typically been used where these epoxies in part A and part B are mixed, and it indicates when the reaction is complete, or as complete as it's going to get.

But now what we are seeing is it's used in more architectural coatings, whereas a single-part coating that just lacquer dry. And because it is different technology, to use the same scale and the same expectations just aren't appropriate.

Durometers' importance in measuring coating hardness

Toby: Those numbers, those measures, need to come from somewhere, so there's of course specialty equipment that we use to find that out. Can you tell us what a durometer is? How would you describe that?

Michael: So, I would describe a durometer as a simple handheld tool that has got a needle of different types loaded onto a spring, and then the spring is connected to a dial.

So, that would be an analog one. Obviously we can get digital ones now in today's technology, but an analog is the simplest and most common one. And then you simply press the needle into the coating until the foot is flat. And then the resistance on the spring will force the dial around and give you a number.

This is because needles are very different dependent upon which type of durometer gauge that you're using, the needle will indent to different degrees. So, what we see with very hard coatings, then you use a needle that is extremely sharp. But then with softer coatings, and this is going to be all the materials as well but it is typically used with coatings, then the needle has got more of a rounded end to it, a bit more of a pinned finish rather than a sharp needle point.

Matching different Shore scales to different coating technologies

Toby: There are more than one hardness scales. You mentioned Shore D at the beginning. There are, at least from my reading, there are 12 different scales, and for this discussion we care about two of them, Shore A and Shore D. You mentioned the shape of the foot. Which hardness scale gets which shape of the foot? Which one is pointed and which one is blunted?

Michael: Okay so Shore D is the fine needle and Shore D is used for typically hard materials, very tough materials. And Shore A is a rounded needle, it's not really fair to say it's a needle, really, but it would be like the end of a knitting needle or something like that, so it's got quite a soft rounder tip, and this is used for softer coatings.

Well as you said, there are a lot of others as well, and if you look at the standard, which is ASTM D2240, it will describe the typical coatings that are used or typical materials that can be used and can be tested with each of the different durometers.

Toby: Does that standard, among the different coating examples that it states, does it state intumescents as one of the ones? And if it does, which scale does it tend to put it in?

Michael: No, it doesn't state intumescents. It will just give typical types of products. So, coatings would be in that, of which intumescent would be a subgroup of them. But then there are others where it will typically say foams for measuring the hardness of things, like foams for comparing one against another. Then that is a different particular grade of durometer.

When standards are "cut-and-pasted" without context

Toby: How well do you think this topic, the hardness scales, Shore D, Shore A, how well recognized are these in the minds of the folks interested in intumescents, realizing that you know depending on someone's job they're going to have a different level of awareness?

Michael: I don't think that they are very well understood - that there are differences in the scales. So, I think that we have seen some initial specifications that typically were for offshore for determining when a coating is ready to go into service that have been cut and pasted, essentially, into other markets, other projects, other construction types without the recognition or understanding that maybe that particular part of the specification just isn't relevant to the project or the coatings that are going to be used for the fire protection solution.

Toby: Which brings us back to the reason why the Shore D scale is the one that I guess is found the most often in this world and the world of intumescents because it was borrowed from somewhere else.

Michael: I think that's a perfect way of boiling that down, Toby. I think that it was done for an industry that is highly specified with the offshore Oil & Gas petrochemical industry, and then as the specifications have advanced for different markets, then it's been borrowed without actually checking if it's appropriate and modifying accordingly.

Harder is not universally better

Toby: Owners, architects, engineers understand Shore D and understand hardness a little bit differently than a contractor would in the shop or in the field.

Michael: The owners, architects, it's seen as a way of determining that that product is fit-for-purpose and would be okay in service. So, it is hard, it's tough, it's going to be okay for the lifetime of the building.

I think for the contractors and things like that, I think we could argue whether it's actually just a tick box exercise, that it's on the specification so it doesn't actually mean that much to them and you know they just got to comply with it.

It might be it's seen as a way to differentiate between different products, how good they will be in transporting so that they're not prone to damage. But ultimately, even if coatings are softer, then we can employ best practices for transporting as well.

Because I think that we have two sides to the coin. Generally, hard coatings can be quite brittle, and if there is any damage, then that damage is exacerbated around the area where if there's things like an impact. Whereas if there are softer more bland coatings, then actually these can absorb any damages more easily and readily and will be more suitable for transporting.

And it's trying to get this across to the contractors that actually: just because its higher number doesn't mean that it's actually better for any damage resistance or impact resistance.

Elasticity, damage resistance, and impact recovery

Toby: I want to talk about recovery. Does that refer to a material can bounce back and take its original shape after it's been compressed somehow, or like say it's been hoisted up by straps or on a forklift or something?

Michael: Yeah, that's exactly it. So, it's the elasticity in a coating rather than just simply being displaced in the example that you give about hoisted with straps on a forklift truck. With some coatings it might be that it simply squashed out from underneath those straps by the weight of whatever is being lifted. Recovery would be the elasticity to be able to jump back into the original shape or form.

Toby: Does that matter in terms of reaction to fire? Let's say if something is smushed down and doesn't recover, is that somehow limit its ability to do what it is supposed to do?

Michael: I think it can do if it's smushed down to an extent to where there is insufficient cover on that particular part, because the intumescent fire protection is tested and certified in a way that for that particular piece of steel, a certain thickness of coating is needed for a specific time of fire protection.

If the coating is deformed in any way, shape, or form, if you've got under coverage in that area, then you might not necessarily have the required and necessary amount of protection in place.

Toby: And so, we have the, you know material technology has advanced to the point where we have these, these products out there that do recover better than others. It makes me wonder if there's a level of forgiveness there. Not saying that you shouldn't take care when you're transporting your materials or transporting your steel but it's an extra level of assurance maybe?

Michael: Yeah I think so, and this is where we would highlight this as damage resistance, because what we do see with coatings that are very hard or that have a high number on the Shore D scale could be quite brittle.

So, if there is an impact, then it can spread wider than just the impact zone, so it might delaminate, for example. Whereas if we have coatings that are a bit more elastomeric and do give a little to the weight and the pressure, then any damages is minimized or even eliminated.

Viewing Shore values as a reference point, not a product differentiator

Toby: Let's say we have an opportunity to just wave a magic wand and change what specs say or maybe go beyond that and also change what people know or what people understand. But what is the, what do you think is the proper, at least as far as documentation goes? Are we saying Shore A and Shore D should exist side by side? Are we saying that these shouldn't be there at all? How do we, how do we reconcile?

Michael: I think they should exist side by side. I don't think that they should be used on specifications to differentiate between one product or another. I think that they should be used for quality purposes so that we know exactly when the coatings have reached ultimate hardness or cure level or drying, whatever we want to term that.

But then those numbers are specific to the product that has been selected. And I think the products should be selected on other things, as you mentioned earlier, like the ease of application, the fire certification that it has, all those other properties, but not necessarily hardness.

The four questions

Toby: We have 4 very important questions now that we get to ask Michael because it's The Red Bucket, and The Red Bucket always has 4 questions at the end. So, what is the most interesting job site you've ever visited? And in 32 years I'm sure you've seen quite a number of them.

Michael: Good question, I think the most interesting one, I think, was where we had a complaint actually that our coating was blistering on application. And we put several different possibilities to the customer, one being that they had applied to much thinner to the coating and it was skinning over the surface and the thinner was being trapped inside and blistering.

And they denied everything and insisted on a site visit. So, this involved a four-hour flight and then a three-hour drive to get there, and within the first five minutes we identified that they had just thrown in a huge amount of thinners into the coating and completely destroyed the product. So that was a really long day and trip to really fix something that could have been identified over a Zoom call or something.

Toby: That's like those meetings you have at work, and then you leave it thinking, "that could have been an email, this would have been fine if it was an email."

Michael: Yep, exactly.

Toby: Where's the best vacation destination that you've ever been to?

Michael: That's a very good question, Toby. I like the Greek island of Rhodes and also Istanbul in Turkey because there is just a lot of history to go and see there. But I also like Asia as well, and it's just excellent food, really friendly people, and lots to do and see.

Toby: So where do you recommend?

Michael: Istanbul. I would recommend there's just so much history to go and see.

Toby: How about in Asia?

Michael: In Asia there's no bad places, I think. I like Hong Kong, Singapore, if you've got plenty of money, Vietnam if you don't have plenty of money, but also Thailand is really nice and Malaysia as well.

Toby: You got a favorite hobby?

Michael: Snooker, I play snooker. So, me and my brother-in-law play quite regularly, and he's getting a bit better, so I'm running the risk of he might actually beat me at some point, so I need to up my game.

Toby: Go hit his hand with a hammer or something.

Michael: Exactly.

Toby: Tell us Americans what snooker is.

Michael: So, snooker is, I guess, a little bit like pool or billiards, but the table is a lot bigger. So, it's 12ft by 6ft and the balls are smaller and then you have 15 red balls and 6 colors, and you have to pot them in order.

So, it's a red color, red color, red color and then the colors keep coming back out until there's only the colors left on the table at the end. And you have to pot those in sequence.

So, the maximum that you can get is 147, and the most I've ever had is 57, so I'm nowhere near the maximum.

But the world championships is in May, and there's one guy that's been best in the world for a helluva long time, and he holds the record for clearing all those balls in under 6 minutes, and no one has ever come close to that again.

Toby: I was thinking, as you were describing how it goes, a game must take a long time.

Michael: It can be. It depends on who you're playing and also just how you playing as well. So, you know, I've played for a few teams, and I think I'm not a bad player, but when I've had a game, a match game against one guy in particular, I remember I was in good form, he was in excellent form, and we finished the whole game in less than 8 minutes.

Toby: Oh wow.

Michael: But then I have been involved in some real long ones where you're talking an hour and a half.

Toby: I was going to say, I've never played it, and I feel like if I did, I'd have to bring a sandwich with me because we'd be playing that long.

Final question, Michael. As an Englishman who has been to the States, it was nice to see you when you were here the last time, by the way, what is the best American food you've had and what's the worst American food you've had?

Michael: I think the best, I like gumbo and jambalaya, so those would be a couple of my favorites. And I think the worse one is deep fried pickles. I just don't understand that.

Toby: Oh, I had some for the, when the Superbowl was on just last week. We had some fried pickles. I don't know if I, I'm not going to go so far as to disagree with you and say that actually they're great, because I don't think they're great, but I think maybe that's just the yank in me. Like we'll throw it in some hot oil, and just no matter what it is, I guess in our minds we think that's okay because we'll do that to like ice cream and cookies too, which I don't get that.

Michael: Yeah, we have that in UK particularly, in Scotland as well, where they will deep fry anything. So, pizza, they will dip it in batter then deep fry it. Pizza, a Snickers bar, things like that, so it's quite famous, but then again the mortality rate is a lot lower in Scotland than it is anywhere else.

Toby: Hey, I guess they've got something figured out.

Michael: Yeah, I appreciate it, I enjoyed it.

Data Centers Brochure

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 08:24:28 -0500

Tank car protective lining strategies for emerging biofuel transportation

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 11:58:52 -0500

Emerging fuels are reshaping how energy commodities move from source to market. Renewable diesel, biodiesel, bioethanol, and other low-carbon fuels and feedstocks are no longer niche options; they will only become more essential to the future energy mix.

As these alternative fuels gain traction, traditional transport networks face increasing strain. Pipelines, designed for high-volume, single-commodity service, were never built to handle the variable chemistries and widely distributed sourcing of today’s renewable feedstocks.

Rail transport offers a proven and flexible solution. Already deeply embedded in energy logistics, rail moves emerging fuels safely and at scale when paired with the right protective linings.

Evolving existing networks for the new future of fuel

Feedstocks used to create renewable fuels – including animal fats, used cooking oils, and other plant-based materials – come from a vast network of small, scattered producers. This geographic dispersion makes pipeline transport impractical, and building new pipelines to reach so many rural sources is cost-prohibitive.

Even where pipelines exist, their design cannot handle the various chemistry of these products. Exposure to incompatible materials can cause delamination, corrosion, and substrate degradation, increasing maintenance costs and failure risk.

Rail transport offers a flexible and immediately deployable solution. Its established, intricate network already links small producers with key processing and distribution hubs, enabling timely movement of commodities that pipelines could not move efficiently. Fleets can adjust to changing volumes and chemistries by assigning specific commodities to cars with the appropriate linings. This approach allows shippers to safely move diverse feedstocks while maintaining fleet efficiency.

Geographic flexibility alone is not enough – it must be paired with strategies to address the variable chemical properties of recycled or bio-based fuels and feedstocks, ensuring consistent, reliable transport under all conditions.

How chemical variability influences protective lining compatibility

The chemical makeup of emerging fuel feedstocks can vary widely based on source materials, handling methods, and seasonal changes. These differences occur not only from shipment to shipment, but also from producer to producer and processing facility to processing facility.

Factors such as elevated water content, free fatty acids, or other corrosive components influence how aggressive these commodities are toward protective linings.

Fortunately, today’s tank car fleet is already positioned to meet a broad range of specific chemical resistance requirements.

Linings engineered for the broadest chemical resistance add an additional layer of assurance. They adequately protect steel, extend service life, and foster resilience even when commodities’ chemical properties shift unexpectedly.

By selecting the proper lining for each commodity — or choosing a lining built to handle all variabilities — rail shippers can be the dependable partners the market needs and achieve long-term performance of rolling stock at the same time.

Lining solutions for complex fuel requirements

Carboline's Plasite linings deliver reliable corrosion protection and optimized application properties across dynamic chemical exposures.

Epoxy linings – Designed for less aggressive biofuels such as biodiesel, providing reliable barrier protection and consistent performance.

• Products: Plasite 4550, Plasite 4550 FP, Plasite 4550 S *Plasite 4550 HT is rated for exposure to ethanol, a fuel generally more aggressive than most biofuels*
• Cure: Ambient cure, with turnaround ranging from several days (4550) to approximately 20 hours (4550 HT)
• Ideal application: High-throughput services requiring dependable performance with efficient maintenance cycles

Vinyl esters – Handles a wider range of chemical variability, including higher-risk feedstocks with smooth, easy-to-clean surfaces that reduce downtime.

• Products: Plasite 4300, Plasite 4310, Plasite 4301 HT
• Cure: Ambient or elevated temperature cure
• Ideal application: Versatile protection for fleets managing multiple alternative fuels of feedstocks at inconsistent temperatures

Phenolics – Engineered for highly aggressive or unpredictable chemical environments, delivering maximum chemical and thermal resistance.

• Products: Plasite 3070, Plasite 3070 L, Plasite 3073
• Cure: Air-dry followed by high-bake
• Ideal application: Select applications requiring exceptional corrosion performance under uncertain fuel chemistries.

Additional thin-film linings, including Phenoline 353 LT and Phenoline 1205, deliver robust protection against methanol, methane, and other aggressive commodities under elevated temperatures or extended immersion.

Together, this portfolio enables fleet owners to balance chemical resistance, application efficiency, turnaround time, and long-term durability, providing tailored solutions for the specific demands of each cargo.

Continued testing and trusted support

As renewable and recycled fuels evolve, so do the corrosion challenges protective linings must withstand.

A clear understanding of each fuel composition, combined with access to well-matched lining options, helps fleets control costs, reduce shipment gaps, prevent failures, and keep the economy moving.

Carboline’s expansive chemical resistance testing library has supported lining selection for bio-based, recycled, and other alternative fuels and fuel feedstocks for over 40 years. Proper technical guidance helps ensure reliable performance as commodity demands continue to evolve.

Rail transport of emerging fuels is not a temporary stopgap. It is a proven, safe, and scalable way to meet the future of fuel—and it’s ready today.

"Alpha" sculpture restoration preserves a bold artistic vision

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 11:59:08 -0500

At Laumeier Sculpture Park in Southwest St. Louis County, art meets endurance. The park's world-class outdoor collection includes iconic works that brave the elements year after year — and "Alpha," a celebrated piece by Beverly Pepper, is no exception.

Laumeier sculptures are no strangers to Carboline solutions. In 2022, a tailored Carboline system capped off total restoration of "The Way." That success inspired restoration efforts for "Alpha" after more than 45 years on display.

When presented with the opportunity to return to the park, we were more than eager to support another Laumeier icon with a specialized coating system.

A fresh chapter for a storied sculpture

Pepper was a pioneer sculptor famous for using weathering steel plates as the medium for many of her outdoor sculptures, as its high strength makes it ideal for her massive, gravity-defying pieces. Alpha is distinguished by its triangular geometric shape and its bright, construction orange color.

Completed in 1974 and placed on display in 1978, the sculpture became part of the park's permanent collection through a formal donation from Beverly Pepper Studio in 2023. Visible deterioration underscored the need for a new coating system, prompting restoration efforts in fall 2025.

Coating failure, surface rust, and weathering were visible across the structure after decades of exposure to hot, sunny Midwest summers; cold, wet winters; and storms in all seasons. Additionally, soil erosion beneath the sculpture's concrete pad led "Alpha" to gradually sink. Work halted until the subsidence was addressed and a new foundation was poured.

Laumeier's established presence within St. Louis County inspired collaboration among local partners including St. Louis County Parks and Recreation, Barnhart Crane and Rigging, St. Louis-based applicator Coatings Unlimited, and Carboline.

Balancing performance and aesthetics

Sound coating selection influences the length of time before next maintenance, and all parties were interested in keeping "Alpha" looking great decades into the future.

Because Pepper's complex design posed challenges for adequate surface preparation, a surface-tolerant primer was essential to the restoration. Carbomastic^® 15's proven adhesion over marginally prepped steel – and its successful performance on "The Way" – reinforced its selection for "Alpha."

This mainstay epoxy mastic delivers outstanding barrier protection through its lamellar aluminum flake pigmentation, and its excellent wetting properties allow for good penetration of corrosion pits that dramatically slows further degradation.

Carboline recommended an ultra-durable fluoropolymer for the sculpture's topcoat. Carboxane 960 features excellent gloss and color properties that will last many, many years owing to the strong carbon-fluorine bonds that withstand punishing exterior environments.

Altogether, the coating restoration required 50 gallons of the primer and 45 gallons of the topcoat. By October 2025, "Alpha" had regained its striking safety orange gleam.

Continued support for cultural preservation

Now protected by a durable, long-lasting coating system, "Alpha" once again stands as a centerpiece of Laumeier Sculpture Park—engineered to remain in place without major maintenance for decades.

Carboline is honored to support Laumeier Sculpture Park in appreciation for the beauty that this incredible public space provides to our community.

A legacy of protection in harsh mining conditions

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:49:15 -0500

Mining and metal processing operations expose assets and infrastructure to abrasive slurries, chemical immersion, thermal cycling, physical impacts, and other harsh conditions.

Aggressive exposures require durable coatings that withstand changing temperatures, UV and weathering exposures, and site pollutants.

Global firms processing multiple commodity types across the world's variable climates depend on high-performance protective systems with proven field performance.

Carboline coatings and linings have enhanced the durability and lifecycle performance of a range of mining collection and processing assets worldwide since the 1940s.

One company – multiple exposures

Projects in this section provide a glimpse into the range of exposure types a global aluminum producer experienced, which required heavy-duty protective solutions.

Fort Meade, Florida (1974):

During its operation, the producer's Fort Meade plant received hydrofluorosilicic acid and other process waste products from across its facilities in the region. This part of Florida is rich in phosphate, a vital feedstock for some aluminum products; hydrofluorosilicic acid is also necessary in aluminum refining.

The complex processes at the site exposed surrounding steel assets to persistent acid vapors that settled onto their surfaces, accelerating corrosion if those surfaces were unprotected.

Three storage tank exteriors at the plant were coated with Carbomastic^® 15, an epoxy mastic renowned for its excellent wetting properties, surface tolerance, and barrier protection. Though usually specified as part of a multi-coat system, Carbomastic 15 is an effective single-coat solution proven to perform against atmospheric and polluting exposures due to the properties imparted by its unique lamellar aluminum pigmentation. The long, flat geometry of the aluminum flakes impedes penetration of moisture better than pigments featuring a more rounded shape. That shape also contributes to improved resistance to degradation via UV light.

In short, it was a phenomenal no-fuss solution that saved the producers time and money when compared to a multi-coat alternative.

Badin, North Carolina (2004):

The function of penstocks creates a complex environment where their exteriors face frequent or constant moisture from condensation, weathering, and UV exposure, as well as occasional abrasion or impact depending on their surroundings. At Badin Lake, the penstock required a new, durable coating system to extend its service life under these difficult conditions.

Once again, Carbomastic 15 was specified, this time as the primer in a two-coat system. Its surface tolerance and wetting properties make it ideal for encasing the tightly adhered existing coatings; blasting back to bare steel was not necessary, so this created some savings. Carboxane 2000, a polysiloxane finish, provided long-term weathering resistance, low permeability, and superior UV durability.

Deschambault-Grondines, Québec (2022):

Molten aluminum casting pits experience extreme heat, thermal cycling, and mechanical impact. Protective linings in this service must resist adhesion of process metals, abrasion, and rapid and extreme temperature fluctuations.

Multi-Gard^® 955 CP was specified for this purpose, showcasing its verified performance in aluminum casting and quench pit environments. Third-party testing by the Aluminum Association confirms its ability to resist molten metal wetting while maintaining film integrity under repeated thermal stress.

Proven performance around the world

While the three above projects reflect a range of aluminum-industry exposures, other heavy industrial operators depend on Carboline systems for equally demanding conditions across the globe.

Saskatchewan, Canada (2012):

One of the world's most extensive potash operations in central Canada required coating systems that could withstand a severe industrial environment, featuring continuous exposure to brines and other chemicals, as well as a challenging climate with hot, sunny summers and punishing cold and snow in winter.

A high-performance system consisting of Carbozinc 859 and Carboguard^® 635 protected structural steel and exterior tanks against atmospheric conditions.

Carbozinc 859 provides galvanic protection through its zinc-rich epoxy formula, minimizing undercutting corrosion in harsh environments. Its unlimited recoat window allows for priming in the shop with topcoat application following in the field, even after extended periods, giving crews greater scheduling flexibility while maintaining long-term performance. Carboguard 635, an immersion-grade epoxy, enhanced corrosion protection in an atmosphere featuring chemical fallout and splash zones.

The high-performance epoxy novolac Phenoline 353 was applied to ferrous metal brine and process tanks under continuous immersion. Its highly crosslinked formula provides strong protection against aggressive cargos, including acidic and high-temperature caustic solutions.

Auckland, New Zealand (2012):

On the other side of the globe, one of New Zealand's largest rock quarries faced a tight holiday shutdown window to fully rebuild and restore an aggregate screen under constant impact and abrasion.

The specified coating system needed to be applied quickly, cured fast, and return to service in just seven days.

Following the rebuild and surface preparation, two coats of Carboguard 635 HAR were applied as a corrosion-resistant primer. Its rapid cure-to-handle times and abrasion-resistant epoxy film created a durable foundation ideal for high-wear areas.

By the next morning, crews applied Carboguard 690, a fast-curing, surface-tolerant phenalkamine epoxy. The system's quick return-to-service allowed the screen to be coated, cured, and ready for operation with time to spare before startup.

Monclova, Mexico (2021):

In northeast Mexico, a major steel producer required a two-coat protective system for a newly constructed coke conveyor, constantly subjected to exterior weathering, moderate industrial emissions, and chemical atmospheres. The coatings needed to comply with the facility's "AHMPC-001 Revisión A" specification while also avoiding unnecessary cost escalation.

A self-priming epoxy–polyurethane system met both needs.

Carboguard 890, applied at 6 mils, provided a durable, chemical-resistant epoxy base that eliminated the requirement for a separate primer. Carbothane 134 HG, applied at 4 mils, added long-term weathering, abrasion, and chemical resistance.

The high-performance two-coat system simplified application, provided robust protection, and supported longer maintenance intervals that reduce overall lifecycle costs.

Partners in mining asset performance

Chemical immersion, abrasion, weathering, and thermal shock comprise a potent recipe for premature and very costly asset failure.

Versatile, field-proven products, paired with informed technical support, strengthen an owner's ability to extend asset performance in any environment.

After all, in an industry built on strength, a reliable protective coating partner is among the most important assets an owner can have.

Selecting the ideal intumescent fire-resistive material

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 10:53:41 -0500

The reason it's "ideal" and not "best" is because "best" is subjective.

Relationships among each project's circumstances mean that no material type or application method is universally superior. And unfortunately, these circumstances do not march one after another neatly in time. They are simultaneous and often at odds.

So what material or combination of materials makes the most sense? The lazy answer is, it depends.

The real answer reframes the question: What information do I need so that I know my spec will result in a satisfactory and timely delivery?

This guide doesn't tell you what to choose, but it will help you think through how.

Required fire ratings

Matching intumescent materials to applicable required fire ratings has a way of being straightforward and prescriptive without being easy or fun.

Building codes state the fire rating or ratings a structure must meet, and then the normal push and pull of architecture and engineering results in a design for load-bearing members that both satisfies the aesthetic vision and is feasible to build.

Intumescent fireproofing selection falls within that push and pull, where a crucial detail risks being overlooked: testing.

Laboratory testing verifies the thermal performance of structural members in a huge range of shapes and sizes. Yet it does sometimes happen that a design includes a shape or size never used before. Architects don't go out of their way to include novel components in enclosed spaces where simpler, cheaper options will suffice. But it's a different story if the component is prominent and essential in an exposed location, or somehow vital to structural integrity regardless of its visibility. What then?

Adjacent circumstances like cost and schedule will dictate what happens next. Maybe making that architectural statement is not so crucial after all, and the design is changed. Or, maybe it is, or maybe the part plays a vital structural role. If either is the case, that's the beginning of the long, expensive process to validate intumescent material performance over the novel design for the very first time.

Architectural design

The reason intumescent products exist in the first place is to achieve fire ratings with lower-profile and nicer-looking materials vs. cementitious products.

But differences in intumescent chemistries and applied protection thicknesses lead to different finish characteristics. Whether these characteristics are regarded as appealing is a matter of shifting opinion.

The general rule is that solvent-based and two-component epoxy intumescents cure to form an orange peel texture. Some water-borne intumescents can achieve qualities almost indistinguishable from conventional high-gloss urethanes.

Sometimes that orange peel texture is desirable. Other times it's not, and so you either choose something else or adjust the budget, schedule, and specification accordingly to abrade away unwanted texture before applying a compatible decorative topcoat. If the latter path is chosen, it is essential that enough intumescent is initially applied so that the ensuring reduction in thickness does not bring it below the minimum required thickness. Project teams must weigh the aesthetic benefit of having their chosen color or other finish qualities against the cost and schedule impact of applying a topcoat that has no functional purpose.

A popular way architects get the best of both worlds is to specify water-based intumescents in inoffensive neutral colors. If you're good with the color, then no additional surface prep, material, or labor is required to achieve the great looking finish water-based materials provide.

Case in point: In Mountain View, California, Google's Bayview 1, Bayview 2, and Charleston East headquarters buildings include some structural steel protected by Firefilm III. It was applied to exposed, highly visible beams in the ceiling of work and common spaces. Firefilm III is bright white and contrasts pleasantly with the clean, warm tone of the blonde-colored wooden ceiling the beams support. Project architects needed a material with exceptional finish qualities because these components would be within just a few feet of people.

Note, however, that visual appeal never exists in a vacuum. The factors and material characteristics described below conflict with, and sometimes overrule, a choice made purely based on aesthetics.

Construction timeline

Project teams take great care to develop and stick to schedules. The dominance of the design-build or integrated project delivery construction method is proof that builders today see speed as the definitive pathway to the greatest profit.

The coatings industry has responded to builders' pervasive search for time savings by developing materials and application methods designed to accelerate construction schedules.

The problem is, which material or which method ends up saving time depends on far more than just what the stuff is made of or how you put it on. The debate over applying intumescents in the shop vs. in the field is the perfect example.

Some celebrate shop application of two-component epoxy intumescents (for example, Thermo-Lag E100) prior to steel erection as the ideal time saver. The premise is that the shop is always a safer, more controlled, and less crowded environment. The more systematic nature of shop production is faster per square foot of steel coated, and therefore cheaper. Epoxy materials are also generally hard but ductile upon curing, an important combination that is resistant to strain on steel members or damage that can occur during transit.

But what about all those blockouts at connection points? Those can't be fireproofed until after erection. Shop application always results in needing to do some field application anyway. And what about other components that need to be attached to the steel after it's installed? This often results in intentional destruction of some fireproofing that needs to be fixed later, adding to the time spent on-site.

On the other hand, proponents of field application note that the real savings comes when solvent-based intumescents (such as Thermo-Sorb VOC) are applied after steel is erected and before curtain walls go up. When the material goes on after erection, there's no blocking out. And solvent-based products require far simpler equipment vs. the complicated and very expensive equipment required for two-component application. Some are also weather-resistant and can cure just fine even during open-frame construction in cold weather.

But that's still a lot of equipment and material hauled to the site. What about the difficulty in coating irregular shapes or in areas difficult to access? What about bumping into all the other trades at work? And you can't argue that applying material from the height of a man lift will ever be safer than doing it on solid ground.

Truth is, materials and methods themselves don't save anyone anything. Savings comes from understanding them both well enough to know when each one shines, and matching that knowledge with the owner's or general contractor's schedule demands.

All the better when that knowledge is shared early. On one hand, it can help bring an unrealistic schedule back down to earth. On another, it could accelerate a schedule and put more profit in everyone's pocket.

Cases in point: In Cupertino, California, the team leading construction of Apple's new headquarters utilized a temporary "shop on the job site" setup to apply Thermo-Lag E100 to structural steel supporting a clerestory that rings the top of the famed circular building. Field application would have been extremely hard, slow work owing to the difficulty in reaching the clerestory's structural steel after erection. Applying the material on the ground to pre-assembled clerestory modules reduced the number of blockouts requiring touchups.

Down the road in Santa Clara, the project team building new Nvidia headquarters settled on field application of Thermo-Sorb VOC for primary columns and other structural supports because of the material's ability to withstand general construction conditions—including rather cold temperatures—when applied prior to curtain wall application. This feature empowers construction teams to establish work sequences untroubled by weather.

Environmental/sustainability concerns

The manufacture of construction materials and the construction process itself are both significant sources of harmful pollution.

Efforts by industry and government to curtail the ecological and human health impacts of construction projects have resulted in myriad "green" or sustainability criteria and a growing list of materials certified to meet them.

A sticky problem is that "sustainable" or "green" have many meanings. Some criteria approach these from the lens of composition of raw materials. Others from the lens of emissions during and after installation. Some overlap, and some do not. Some are mandatory, and some are not, and even that depends on the location of the project.

It gets confusing very quickly.

Generally, you have more flexibility in terms of material availability and cost when sustainability is not prioritized. You have less flexibility—and should expect to pay a bit more—if sustainability is an overriding priority.

Leaving cost aside, it's also critical to compare performance, application, and aesthetic attributes of candidate materials when making a sustainability-driven specification. Not every intumescent material can score an A+ on sustainability, achieve a four-hour fire rating, and look as good as a decorative urethane all in one package.

It's a world of tradeoffs. We've tried to simplify it with a product transparency page that lists products, including intumescent fireproofing, meeting various sustainability criteria.

Sometimes the answer is "all of the above"

Some projects are large or complex enough that the most ideal intumescent spec features a combination of material types each suited for different locations or stages in the timeline.

Case in point: Epoxy, solvent-based, and water-based intumescents all were specified for different elements of the Google Bayview 1, Bayview 2, and Charleston East headquarters mentioned above.

Thermo-Lag E100 two-component epoxy was chosen for exterior columns holding up the roof around the perimeter of the buildings. Shop application of the material made sense because the large columns have only two connection points each. Touchup of blockouts was rather quick and easy.

Thermo-Sorb VOC was specified for all interior columns and supports holding up the towering canopy roof. Its application properties allowed for field application when the building was only partially enclosed. And while the components are in an exposed interior environment, they are distant enough that no one can perceive a difference in the finish compared to Firefilm III.

As first described in the earlier section, Firefilm III was used for all interior exposed steel floor beams. These beams are in plain view of workers and visitors so a requirement for superior visual appeal led to its specification.

Importantly for Google, each of these materials was tested and verified to meet strict VOCs and emissions requirements under LEED v4.0—the latest version of that program at the time. This came at a significant effort and investment, but it was worthwhile to Google who has pledged to build the most sustainable buildings possible.

A clear path forward

Construction project circumstances inform intumescent material specifications. Intumescent specifications can inform project circumstances.

It's difficult to navigate an environment where both a statement and its inverse are true.

But a clear path is opened when stakeholders work to get on the same page early on. It's never too soon to consult with a Carboline technical expert to discuss an upcoming fireproofing project.

Navigating NSF ratings: Essential insight for welded steel potable water tank linings

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 12:56:28 -0400

Choosing a lining system for a welded steel tank in the drinking water industry is a team effort among owners, engineers, contractors, and manufacturers. Following the correct AWWA standard is crucial in protecting assets when specifying a lining system.

Understanding the various NSF 600/61-approved interior barrier coating types can mean the difference between a system that is compliant and performs versus one that fails to meet the established guidelines or owners’ life cycle expectations.

NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 [NSF 61] sets the standards for drinking water system components, while NSF 600 focuses closely on the extractable solvent levels in barrier coatings. Updates to NSF ratings have increased misconceptions about which systems are truly compliant, making the specification process more complex.

In January 2023, allowable extractable solvent levels changed, and solvents like toluene, xylene, and ethylbenzene were functionally removed from specified lining systems. Allowed parts per billion were drastically reduced from the previous specified criteria. This reduction in extractables forced some coatings manufacturers to alter the formulations of solvent-based barrier epoxies for interior potable water service. A shift was made to higher-volume solids epoxies that incorporated exempt solvents that fell under the revised extractable levels.

Solvent		Total allowable concentration (TAC)	Single product allowable concentration (SPAC)
Xylene	Previous	10,000 ppb	1,000 ppb
Xylene	Current	90 ppb	9 ppb
Toluene	Previous	1,000 ppb	100 ppb
Toluene	Current	60 ppb	6 ppb
Ethylbenzene	Previous	10,000 ppb	1,000 ppb
Ethylbenzene	Current	90 ppb	9 ppb

Understanding new AWWA D102-24 standards

Currently, six systems are listed in the AWWA D102-24 standards. These interior coating systems (ICS) dictate critical minimum performance criteria, including surface preparation, coatings type (epoxies, polyurethanes, zinc-rich primers), total number of coats, minimum film thickness, and associated standards they must comply with, for example, AWWA C210/C222 or SSPC Paint 20.

Final system selection is based on factors such as tank size, curing capabilities, applicator preference, and weather conditions to meet return to service requirements, life cycle expectations, budgets, or support applications in cold weather environments.

The six AWWA D102 Interior Coatings Systems are as follows:

• ICS #1 – 2-coat epoxy - 8 mils DFT
• ICS #2 – 3-coat epoxy - 12 mils DFT
• ICS #3 – 1-coat ultra-high solids epoxy - 20 mils DFT (Optional zinc-rich or epoxy primer)
• ICS #4 – 1-coat ultra-high solids elastomeric polyurethane - 25 mils DFT (Optional zinc-rich or epoxy primer)
• ICS #5 – 3-coat zinc-rich primer/epoxy/epoxy - 10.5 mils DFT
• ICS #6 – 2-coat zinc/epoxy - 12.5 mils DFT

The ICS designations are intended to simplify industry communication and decrease confusion over product application compliance. While terminology barriers have been reduced, many owners still face the challenge of selecting the optimal system given their specific project circumstances, service life requirements, and budget pressures. A more detailed explanation of each system is below.

AWWA ICS #1 is a thin-film interior lining system for potable water tanks, requiring a solvent-based epoxy liner suitable for immersion and contact in potable water environments. ICS #1 calls for minimum dry film thicknesses of between 3 and 5 mils. Thin-film epoxies like Carboguard 635 VOC, Hydroplate 1080, and Hydroplate 1086 are ideal choices for ICS#1. These solvent-based epoxies wet out the steel surface effectively, have long pot lives, and can be sprayed using conventional airless spray equipment.

AWWA ICS #2 is a three-coat solvent-based epoxy system with additional film build for improved barrier protection and longevity. The same products mentioned above remain the ideal choices for ICS #2, with the decision reliant on life cycle expectations, timeline restrictions, and ultimately project budget. While #2 offers greater durability as a 3-coat system, the added protection may not justify labor and material costs for every project, emphasizing the need for consultation between owners and contractors.

AWWA ICS #3 specifies a single-coat, high-film build lining system consisting of an ultra-high solids epoxy. The system achieves a minimum film build of 20 mils DFT and can be applied directly to abrasive blasted steel as a single coat or over an optional epoxy, organic, or inorganic zinc-rich primer. UHS epoxies in this specification provide high-performance qualities, like edge retention, no taste and odor issues, rapid cure times (often less than 24 hours), high abrasion resistance, and ultra-low VOC content.

Ultra-high solids epoxies historically have featured very little usable pot life; therefore, application with heated, plural-component spray equipment was necessary. This is where both components are conditioned and proportioned separately and sent to a remote mixing manifold, where they are rapidly mixed together and sent through a short whip hose to the spray gun to be applied.

Recent advancements in coatings technology allow for a more functional 30-45 minute pot life at 77°F (25°C), allowing applicators to hand-mix the material similarly to traditional solvent-based epoxies and spray through conventional airless spray equipment. This significantly reduces the complexity and expense of applying UHS epoxy systems. Specifying products exhibiting high film build and enhanced cure times, like Hydroplate 1100 or Hydroplate 6500, allows applicators to take advantage of long pot lives, high film build, zero taste and odor issues, and fast cure to service times (24-36 hours).

AWWA ICS #4 specifies an optional zinc or epoxy primer with 25+ mils of an elastomeric polyurethane that incorporates high-build, flexible films with chemical- and abrasion-resistant qualities. These properties are ideal for tanks subject to abrasive ice flows, potential movement, or in situations where the tank may be of bolted or riveted construction with problematic leaks. All these challenges are perfectly suited for a product like Reactamine 760.

The appeal of systems #3 and #4 lies in their use of ultra-high solids products that return assets to service quickly and perform for the long term. Both systems can provide over 18 years of service life.

AWWA ICS #5 specifies a zinc/epoxy/epoxy system with organic or inorganic zinc sprayed at 2.5 mils DFT minimum, followed by two coats of solvent-based epoxy at 4 mils DFT minimum. ICS #5 suits projects with complex roof structures where film build is challenging to achieve in a single spray pass. This allows applicators the flexibility to ensure proper coverage and thickness without film defects such as runs, sags, drips, or solvent entrapment.

AWWA ICS #6 specifies either an inorganic or organic zinc-rich primer at 2.5 mils DFT minimum, followed by one coat of epoxy at a minimum of 10 mils DFT. This system takes advantage of higher-volume solids epoxies to reach its total film build in one coat while still delivering the cathodic protection of a zinc primer in demanding environments, saving on labor costs and application times.

ICS #5 and ICS #6 both specify a zinc primer, such as Hydroplate MCZ, to hold the blast and also provide additional corrosion resistance through galvanic protection. Pairing this with a high-solids epoxy barrier coat, such as Hydroplate 1080 or Hydroplate 1086, delivers a high-performance, long-lasting corrosion protection system. The former consists of a phenalkamine formulation that exhibits low-temperature cure capabilities, making it ideal for cold-weather applications. The main difference between AWWA ICS #5 and AWWA ICS #6 is the additional labor required to apply two coats of epoxy versus one heavy coat, as both provide similar life cycle expectations to the owner.

Use budget and life cycle requirements to optimize system specification

Choosing between the six systems depends on performance qualities such as budgetary constraints, application methods, and life cycle expectations from the owner.

Municipal owners and engineers use modeling tools and research papers similar to AMPP Paper #17616 Expected Service Life and Cost Considerations for Maintenance and New Construction Protective Coatings work (Helsel & Lanterman) to extrapolate estimated variations in system cost and overall life cycle performance. Research such as this shows real-world data to compare the life cycle of a thin-film epoxy system, such as ICS #1 (approximately 10 years in potable water immersion), against a thick-film system such as ICS #3 or ICS #4 (both exceeding 18-20 years of service life before the first required practical maintenance). When owners compare the overall cost of installing a lining system (mobilization, containment, surface preparation, and application) with the life expectancy of the lining system, they can get a truer gauge of the exact value of a lining technology.

ICS systems #1, #2, #5, and #6 all rely on solvent-borne epoxies that require a minimum of seven days to fully cure in 77°F (25°C) with constant air movement. ICS systems #3 and #4 offer significant advantages in cure-to-service times, taste and odor, and lower life cycle costs. Though they require a higher film build (and thus more material), their ultra-high solids formulations contain no solvent to evaporate or be vented from the vessel, functionally eliminating taste and odor issues and increasing cure to service times. This is especially advantageous in VOC-restricted jurisdictions. Plus, their single-coat specification lowers the overall applied cost per square foot.

Balancing protection, performance, and budgets

NSF ratings continue to evolve, and selecting a compliant system greatly depends on each project's unique requirements. Manufacturers who keep pace with evolving industry standards are crucial partners in ensuring that the chosen system will adequately protect the asset while adhering to time constraints typical in maintenance and repair applications.

With qualities such as fast-cure, single-coat applications, and self-priming capabilities, each of Carboline’s UL-certified NSF 61/600-compliant products offers the potable water industry reliable protection. These can be successfully integrated into the appropriate AWWA D102-24 system to provide long-term asset protection to municipal water storage owners.

Explore all NSF 61/600-compliant linings here.

When manufacturers provide clear, accurate information on AWWA-compliant systems, owners can make more informed decisions about system specification. Access to a broad product portfolio gives them the flexibility they need when selecting system products.

Together, these factors strengthen collaboration among stakeholders committed to finding the right balance between performance, cost, and schedule.

Upgrades at Philadelphia-area water treatment plants deliver clean water to residents

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 11:41:26 -0400

In the northeast Philadelphia neighborhood of Torresdale, the Samuel L. Baxter Water Treatment Plant draws from the Delaware River to provide potable water for over half the city.

The intake water travels through a 52-inch diameter pipe located in a damp underground gallery. The pipe feeds dozens of water filters critical to the treatment process.

And after over 60 years in service, the pipe looked its age. Widespread peeling and cracking of the existing protective coating system exposed its surface to a highly corrosive environment. A recoat of the pipe was necessary to avoid advanced corrosion that would threaten the pipe's integrity.

Seems straightforward enough. But facts and circumstances surrounding the project made it anything but.

Uniquely challenging conditions and no paper trail

Moisture is inevitable in Baxter's underground pipe gallery. It hangs in the air, clings to surfaces, and pools on the floor. This, on its own, is a difficult environment for applying protective coatings, but there was far more than just that to contend with.

The water filtration equipment near the pipe contains sensitive components that would not work if infiltrated by blast media, so surface preparation via abrasive blasting was forbidden.

Additionally, it wasn't clear what prior coatings were used because there were no records. Worse, some sections of pipe contained traces of lead primer residue, adding a lead containment requirement to a project that already was complicated enough.

The combination of the observed conditions at Baxter provided PWD, Carboline, and the contractor—G.C. Zarnas—the following project premise:

Though there was no textbook answer for a job with such challenging conditions, Carboline's previous experience in another PWD treatment plant led to the specification of a high-performance system that all project partners were confident would perform.

Carbomastic – Carboguard system delivers in unruly environments

Conditions in Baxter's piping gallery were challenging, but they were even more adverse at the Queen Lane Water Treatment Plant across town. The system now in place at Baxter has its origins at Queen Lane:

Carbomastic 615 would be applied in two coats at a minimum of 4 mils (100 microns) each. Carbomastic 615 features outstanding moisture and surface tolerance during application, characteristics which were crucial in a damp service environment where the existing coating is unidentified. Its fast cure time aided in the timely application of the finish coat.

That finish coat was Carboguard 690, also featuring outstanding moisture tolerance during application, fast-cure capabilities, and low-temperature curing.

The surface preparation specified at Queen Lane—a pressure wash followed by SSPC SP-2/3 hand and power tool cleaning—was mimicked at Baxter.

All that remained before work began in earnest was to verify via testing that what worked at Queen Lane would also work at Baxter.

ASTM D3359 X-cut adhesion tests were performed on three test patches of Carbomastic 615 at different sections of the pipe, with the results confirming the system's performance.

By the end of August 2024, G.C. Zarnas crews had begun. They marched down the gallery section by section and remained at work as of July 2025.

The system flows on

The success of the Carbomastic-Carboguard system, first defined at Queen Lane and repeated at Baxter, could become the textbook answer to the question of how to recoat piping in similar environments.

These maintenance projects are a small part of PWD's greater water restoration efforts being implemented throughout the city. That effort continues with work scheduled at Philadelphia's third water treatment plant–Belmont–where Carboline and G.C. Zarnas have already completed initial surveys.

Though very few customers will ever see this critical underground infrastructure, they can take comfort in knowing its restoration represents the city's commitment to guaranteeing the quality of this most essential natural resource.

Hydroplate 6500: Application

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 10:24:27 -0400

Designed as a premium-grade, ultra-durable epoxy lining, Hydroplate 6500 is ideally suited for use on both concrete and steel surfaces in aggressive, hydrogen sulfide rich municipal and industrial wastewater environments.

This reinforced, high-build epoxy offers swift return-to-service times and the convenience of single leg application. Hydroplate 6500 ensures exceptional longevity with its remarkably low permeability and outstanding chemical resistance, guaranteeing long-term durability and performance.

The Red Bucket BONUS - Regulatory affairs in Europe

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 09:39:18 -0400

Resumen

Nel nuovo episodio del nostro podcast, parliamo di un tema spesso percepito come tecnico e complesso, ma in realtà sempre più strategico: il mondo del Regulatory nei rivestimenti industriali. Ne discutiamo con Alice Paiotta, Regulatory & Quality Assurance Manager Europe in Carboline, che ci guida in un viaggio tra REACH, sostenibilità, rischi normativi, competitività e innovazione.

00:53 – Introduzione
01:16 – Presentazione dell’ospite: Alice Paiotta
02:03 – Che cos’è il regulatory in un’azienda che produce rivestimenti e prodotti antincendio
02:40 – I principali regolamenti applicabili in Europa
03:34 – Focus sul Regolamento REACH
04:21 – Le autorità competenti in Europa per il settore dei rivestimenti
05:44 – Come è evoluta la regolamentazione negli ultimi decenni
08:22 – Codice UFI: di cosa si tratta e a cosa serve
08:53 – Il futuro del regulatory secondo Alice
10:46 – L’aggiornamento delle liste di sostanze: un processo continuo
11:14 – Regolamenti europei e sostenibilità: sempre più interconnessi
13:33 – Le conseguenze della non conformità normativa (legali, economiche, reputazionali)
16:20 – Come assicurarci di non commercializzare prodotti non conformi
19:25 – Regulatory come vantaggio competitivo: quando la conformità diventa strategia
22:50 – Le principali sfide da affrontare per restare conformi
24:48 – Il percorso di Alice: dalla chimica al regulatory
28:02 – Domande extra per chiudere in leggerezza

Floor and Wall Solutions Brochure

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:58:46 -0400

Shock-Crete Brochure

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:44:47 -0400

The Red Bucket – Episode 25. Renovating the iconic Santiago Bernabeu Stadium (Feat. Juan Pablo Ortega [again])

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 13:45:17 -0400

Summary

Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid, Spain, is the iconic home of legendary soccer club Real Madrid. A recent five-year renovation has transformed the stadium into a modern engineering marvel. Fireproofing and corrosion protection coating systems each played a role in the mega project, and in this episode, Carboline's Europe Director of Project Development, Juan Pablo Ortega, leads a tour of his favorite team's new digs.

Also, is it possible for another country to have larger portion sizes than America?

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

00:00 – Introduction
02:32 – Summarizing the renovation of Santiago Bernabeu Stadium
05:10 – Differing fire ratings for different uses of a structure
06:15 – Why both cementitious and intumescent fireproofing types were used
08:20 – Specifying heavy-duty Pyrocrete 40
10:52 – Nullifire SC902 intumescent fireproofing was uniquely qualified for this project
13:34 – Primer, fireproofing, and topcoat specification for the retractable trays
16:17 – Navigating an aggressive schedule during the COVID-19 pandemic
17:20 – Juan Pablo returns to the site
18:28 – The four questions

Transcript

Introduction

Toby Wall: Most of us who have favorite sports clubs end up loving the home stadium of that club almost as much as we do the club itself. And with a soccer team-- sorry, a football team-- as beloved as Real Madrid, there's much love for their home pitch, the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. It's just had a significant renovation that's turned it into an engineering marvel, a marvel that depends on passive fireproofing materials and corrosion protection coatings. Today on The Red Bucket, we see this iconic venue from a unique perspective. We first told this story in a Spanish language bonus episode back in February, so if you haven't already heard that and are more comfortable listening in Spanish, then that's the episode for you.

If you're not a Spanish speaker and you suffered a fear of missing out, then you are in the right place. Juan Pablo, welcome back to The Red Bucket. Perhaps you can introduce yourself once again?

Juan Pablo Ortega: Okay. My name is Juan Pablo Ortega. I am based in our office in Madrid, Spain, and I have been working for Carboline since, 2012, and currently hold the position of Director of Project Development for Europe and, I have a team of fantastic specifier across Europe with whom we work to provide to the, to the industry solution for passive fire protection, uh, coating and, and linings and, uh, working closely with, uh, with our clients, including properties owners, uh, infrastructure and industrial plants, as well as construction companies and engineer firms that, uh, provide service for, for this type of projects.

Toby: Well, thank you, Juan Pablo, for joining us, and especially since this is the second time that you've had to have this conversation. So we are very happy to have you again. The Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid is well known to any football fan in Europe. Certainly, others around the world, too. But I think, only really diehard fans in the US or in North America would know what that is. If we said those words to them, Santiago Bernabeu, most of us, I don't think would be very familiar, but it is the topic of our conversation today because this very famous stadium in Madrid was the recent site of a renovation project, which involved some passive fire protection and some corrosion protection coatings. And so before we get into those details, maybe you can explain very generally what was the scope of this renovation project.

Summarizing the renovation of Santiago Bernabeu Stadium

Juan Pablo: Well, this, as you mentioned, is a well-known mega project that has involved the complete, uh, refurbishment of the stadium, including the roof, the stands, the logistic ring that, uh, has been built around the stadium. The car park and also the pit in which the retractable trays that support the soccer pitch have been installed. The work began in the summer of 2019 and was completed in 2024 with an initial investment of 575 million euros, which finally increased the expense to over 1 billion euros. Huge project that, uh, up to 800 workers are working simultaneously on the various tasks that need to be carried out inside the stadium. At Carboline, as experts in passive fire protection and corrosion protection, we have contributed our grain of sand to the project, and we are proud to have been able to provide our solution for the project.

Toby: I like that grain of sand reference, that's very appropriate. I think it would help if listeners understood my comment about an engineering marvel. It's the fact that the pitch, the actual playing surface, is removable. And the way that that removal is accomplished is completely innovative. And if you understand how that works, then you'll understand why providing combined fire protection and corrosion protection for that part of this project was a really unique undertaking. Instead of trying to tell you how it works, I think you should just pause this and go over to YouTube and watch a time-lapse video published by Real Madrid. The title of the video is "The amazing pitch retraction at the new Santiago Bernabeu Stadium." Plug that into the search bar. Take two minutes and watch that. Where I wanted to start, though, Juan Pablo, was with the fireproofing, and what is the normal fire rating for a stadium in Spain?

Differing fire ratings for different uses of a structure

Juan Pablo: In a large project like this, there are different fire rating scenarios, yeah? There is no single scenario. Fireproofing or passive fire protection that must be applied to the roof is not the same as that applied to the emergency exit or the main institute of the building, yeah? These different scenarios are governed by the technical building code in accordance with European standards, yeah? The engineering firm that has worked on and collaborated on the project has defined the fire rating based on the area of the building. And most of the structure has been protected for 180 and 120 minutes, but there are also areas with 90 and 60 minutes of protection, and some roofs with 30 minutes of protection.

Yeah. It's a combination.

Why both cementitious and intumescent fireproofing types were used

Toby: And it is pretty common for large structures like this that they would have both types, a cementitious type and an intumescent type fireproofing. The reason why there's both types is that there's highly visible areas where you want it to look nice, and there's areas that are not very highly visible and it doesn't need to look so appealing. At this stadium, there were both types, but as I understand it, the aesthetics of cement versus paint, how those look, was not really the reason why different types were specified. So, can you explain why we have both cementitious and intumescent in the stadium?

Juan Pablo: Yeah, at the, at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, both the engineer team and, and the, the owner requested, that the, main institute to be fireproofed with a cement-based mortar, which come, uh, with a standard exposure to the, to the elements including water and, and humidity. And also, cement-based mortar provides greater mechanical strength and resistance to possible impacts. In other areas such as, roof and, emergency stairways, intumescent pain, were chosen. Yeah. And also in the retractable trays, where the weight of the protection system was key. Intumescent paint, were were chosen.

Toby: Okay, so the, the, the weight of the material mattered and you don't want to overload those trays or overload that steel with something very, very heavy. Which, of course, the mortar, the cementitious product is a yes, is heavier compared to the paint.

Juan Pablo: This is one of the reasons to use the intumescent paint in these trays, yeah? Less weight than the cement base.

Toby: And we'll talk about this later, but that, that's one of those examples where the intumescent product, it does look nicer, but in this case, when it's applied to the tray, it's covered up by another layer of coating anyway, so no one would see it. The fireproofing products that we used here were Pyrocrete 40, which is a heavy-duty cement-based material, and the Nullifire SC902, a fast-curing, solvent-based intumescent paint. With regard to the Pyrocrete 40, this is not typically what you might use in a structure like this, but it ended up being specified. So why was Pyrocrete 40 specified?

Specifying heavy-duty Pyrocrete 40

Juan Pablo: Yeah. With Pyrocrete 40, we have tested for both cellulosic and hydrocarbon fire scenarios. It is mainly used to protect refineries and chemical plants. For cellulosic fire, gypsum-based mortar, such as our Perlifoc HP, is more widely used. However, as I mentioned earlier, the owner of the stadium was only considered a cement-based solution due to the weather and the impact on performance.

Toby: And we were familiar with the applicator for this project, and they were familiar with Pyrocrete 40, right? They had previously used it successfully.

Juan Pablo: Yeah, the main contractor that carried out the part of the project using Pyrocrete 40 had already used it previously to protect various refineries and industrial plants in Spain. Pyrocrete 40 is a benchmark mortar in the sector for protecting against hydrocarbon fires. And they have plenty of experience to use it.

Toby: And there's a feature of the design of the stadium following this renovation that can help explain why Pyrocrete 40 was appropriate, because it's only partially enclosed. You mentioned a moment ago that there is some exposure to the exterior environment. Maybe you can just say more about what that exterior exposure means or how that influences the specification.

Juan Pablo: This was one of the main reasons why we chose cementitious mortar instead of the usual gypsum-based mortar. Our Pyrocrete 40 mortar has been extensively tested for outdoor use in an environment with aggressive chemical components. This is one of the main reasons because the fireproofing mortar is affected by humidity and could be a problem in the long-term service, yeah?

Nullifire SC902 intumescent fireproofing was uniquely qualified for this project

Toby: And onto the intumescent product, the Nullifire SC902, where was this applied and why was that the choice for those locations?

Juan Pablo: Nullifire SC902 has been used to protect the retractable trays against fire. The challenge that we faced when we were asked to fireproof the trays was significant, yeah? We had to provide a durable intumescent solution that could withstand the elements and also weekly movements. This was something that had never been done before. We proposed our Nullifire SC902 solution, which we have used to fireproof many projects where the structure has been protected in the workshop before being moved to its final location. It had been used in other stadiums such as the Copenhagen Arena in Denmark and in large industrial plant infrastructure, car park, and other building without any incident during transport and assembly process, performing fantastically without suffering any major damage. This product is a hybrid solvent-based intumescent paint with high solid content, which provides a certain flexibility and is hard enough to be transported. Thanks to this combination of properties, we saw that it was the ideal solution for the project, and it was accepted by the engineer, the project manager, and the management team.

Toby: And you told me, when we first talked about this, that it was important for the SC902 to be applied to its full specified thickness in a single coat. Why was that important?

Juan Pablo: You know, this type of, uh, mega project have a, a very strict, schedule in in the production, yeah, of the steel, and with all the protection and in this case, the applicator and the, and the manufacturer of the steel structure need to do a, a big effort to, follow the, the schedule for the project and thanks to our solution that you can apply all the thickness that, uh, was required in a single coat, and then, uh, one day later you can apply the topcoat and, and then one day later you can move the, the, the steel, uh, was one of the critical point to, to select our material.

Toby: And so on the subject of the other coatings, the SC902 is just part of a system for what is protecting the steel on these retractable trays. So what else is in the system? What was the primer, and what was the topcoat?

Primer, fireproofing, and topcoat specification for the retractable trays

Juan Pablo: Regarding intumescent paint, we need to test the primer compatibility product and also the topcoat compatibility with intumescent paint. And in this case, with the Nullifire SC902, we have tested a complete coating system that provide not only the fire protection also, uh, have the protection against, the weather and the conditions, okay, and can cover external atmosphere for the steel protection. And in this case, we follow our system tested that is apply 150 microns of Carbomastic 18 FC. It's an epoxy primer, also high solid and fast curing, and also then we apply in the same day we can apply the Nullifire SC902, and then on the top of the intumescent paint, we apply our Carbothane 134.

Toby: And how many microns of the 134?

Juan Pablo: Yeah. We apply 75 micron.

Toby: So like three mils, if you're in imperial units, and three, what, five mils, maybe of the Carbomastic 18 FC.

Juan Pablo: Yes. Five, six. Yes.

Toby: Those retractable trays, that's not a normal exposure, right? They're, they're covered in earth. There's turf, there's grass over top of the earth, and then that's being watered and it's being fertilized.

So, what does all of that activity do? Like, how does it impact the fire protection or the corrosion protection?

Juan Pablo: Yeah, that is the point that the system that we recommend is cover the, the external atmosphere of the external exposure of the steel in combination with the, with intumescent paint. And, obviously, this is something that has its own, you know, ambient. Okay. Because this is like a cove that you introduce this tray and have all the weather conditions controlled, okay, for the growth of the pitch. And this is something that they give all the treatment that they need for the pitch, also.

And with the different chemical components and also the lights, for the growth of the pitch. Also, all these conditions are unique conditions, but we use the best coating system that we can justify with external exposure.

Navigating an aggressive schedule during the COVID-19 pandemic

Toby: Earlier, you said that the project ultimately went from 2019 up until last year. Obviously, we had a pandemic in the middle of that, which really slowed things down. But it was an aggressive schedule. So, in terms of applying the coatings, our little part of it, our grain of sand, how much time did we have, and how did the applicators navigate such a strict timeline?

Juan Pablo: In the case of the trays, we need to do all the, all the trays in approximately four months. It was a really, really aggressive application schedule because was a big area to apply and was a big effort for the applicator company also for our side to provide all the material that they need in a very short period. And also give all the technical assistance during the project and all the meetings that we need to attend for inspection and to check that everything goes in the correct way, yeah? With a very, very aggressive schedule.

Juan Pablo returns to the site

Toby: Have you been back to the stadium?

Juan Pablo: Yes, uh, I was with my son. I am a big fan of Real Madrid and is the team that plays in the stadium and was a couple of time with my son. For me, it was amazing, yeah? To be in this new stadium. And I'm really proud to be part of the construction of this amazing project, yeah?

Toby: Just a really great experience to have, and if you're a big fan of the team now, you like, you have seen more of their home maybe than anybody else-- most other people have ever seen. It just feels significant to me.

Juan Pablo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a fantastic experience during the work process, yeah? You can see, you know, all the stadium for the different, uh, areas without any limit, okay, because we are moving into the project like in our house after some months working on the project. Yeah. And it was a really wonderful experience. Yeah.

The four questions

Toby: Okay. We will move on then to the four questions. These are four fun questions that don't have anything to do with the project or the work that we were just discussing. So I hope you're ready, Juan Pablo, this will be a little silly. I have a question about siestas. This is not something we do. Yeah. We do not do this in the United States. But if you are traveling and you go someplace where siesta is not a part of that culture, do you still try to take a siesta for yourself, or do you not do it?

Juan Pablo: I never do a siesta. Yeah. I know, I think this is typical that everybody thinks that in Spain, everybody takes a nap, something like that, in the middle of the day. But this is not true. Yeah.

Toby: So, so that's not actually very common.

Juan Pablo: No. This is not actually very common. And, I have some people who are lucky and can do it, but in my case, I never do. Okay. And during the weekend also we have some, some problem with the children and with the family is also really challenged. It's complicated for my side, but I have some friends who are really fond of the siesta and they never tried jumping, the siesta time. Yeah.

Toby: I feel like I would enjoy it, and I have two small children, so I would need it. It would be nice if I could do it, but you and I have that in common. We have to work for a living, so we can't really just stop and take a nap.

Juan Pablo: Yes.

Toby: All right. Question number two. If I came to visit you in Spain, would you introduce me to Spanish cuisine? What would you start with first?

Juan Pablo: Yeah, my recommendation regarding Spanish cuisines is more focused on the local cuisine because it's not the same cuisine that we have in the north of Spain or in the Mediterranean Sea sites, or in the south of Spain, yeah? In each area, we have a special plate. Yeah, yeah. For example, the handmade paella. That is fantastic. Yeah. That you can, you are on the Mediterranean side. This is like the famous plate in this region. Yeah. But, if you go to the north of Spain, areas like Asturias, you have a fabada or you have different special plates in the local area.

And then this is my recommendation that you taste the local cuisine. Yeah.

Toby: Which local cuisine is your favorite?

Juan Pablo: You know, I am really lucky, thanks to the job, I visit more or less all the areas in Spain, and it's really complicated to find a place that has bad cuisine, yeah? In all the places, north, south, Madrid, and Barcelona, all the places have very good cuisines, and are okay. If you tell me something, maybe in the north of Spain, because the food is really good, has very good quality of food, and also the quantities are really big. Yeah.

Toby: I see.

Juan Pablo: Yeah.

Toby: Like in the United States, where the portions are too big.

Juan Pablo: Crazy, crazy big. Yeah. For me, it is impossible. I never finish all the food and put it on the plate. Yeah.

Toby: Number three. What sounds better to you? A vacation where you are hiking through the mountains, or a vacation where you just lie around on the beach.

Juan Pablo: You know, I normally spend my holidays on vacation in the north of Spain. Okay. And we are really lucky because we can combine both. Yeah. Wow. Because we have a mountain very close to the beach, depending on the day.

You go to the mountain or you go to the beach. Yeah. And that is the best, in my case, I am really lucky. Yeah. Because we have very good weather and uh, and if it's really hot day, I go to the beach, but then if some days it's a little bit cloudy or it's raining a little bit, something like that, I, I go to the hike in the mountain and enjoy also in the mountain. Yeah.

Toby: Maybe I should delete that because you make it sound so great, everybody's gonna want to come do that. Yeah. And then it'll be crowded.

Juan Pablo: This is close to paradise.

Toby: Alright, final question. This reminds me of paradise, too. What would you do if you had a surprise day off?

Juan Pablo: Hmm. I am a really simple man. Just for me, spend time with the family and maybe do a special plan. Okay. A special thing with the children and with my wife. That is enough for me, yeah?

Toby: Well, Juan Pablo, thank you very, very much for joining us for this episode and for sharing your work at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. It's a fantastic project, and it's fantastic to have you join The Red Bucket not once but twice to repeat yourself, basically. So, thank you very much for being here.

Juan Pablo: You are welcome.

Biofuel producer achieves multi-modal protection for ethanol storage tanks

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 14:41:13 -0400

On the eastern edge of the Nebraska Sandhills and nestled in the scenic Loup Valley, agribusiness meets energy.

Here, near the small town of Ord, Green America Biofuels takes in truckload after truckload of corn, processing it into ethanol. The facility produces 65 million gallons (246 million liters) of ethanol each year.

Integral to that production are five storage and process tanks.

The tanks are coated to protect against corrosion. But plant management has more to worry about than just this electrochemical phenomenon. A biological process thrives at the site, too. You know it when you see it—dark black streaks on the sides of tanks or buildings—and it must be stopped.

Ethanol plants create a unique environment

Pilot Travel Centers owns Green America Biofuels and is its sole customer. The ethanol produced here leaves the facility in trains destined for fuel blending facilities before delivery to fuel stations across North America.

If you've ever bought gas at a Pilot, Flying J, ONE9, or Mr. Fuel station, you can brag about your connection to Green America Biofuels.

The facility's geographical context usually bodes well for the performance of protective coatings.

For one thing, it is generally less humid here than in other parts of the United States. For another, air pollution in this sparse area is minuscule compared to dense urban or highly industrialized areas.

A high-performance coating, properly applied, should last a long time here.

But ethanol plants are a paradise for a particular variety of fungi that consume ethanol vapors as food. This fungal growth is visible in the form of unpleasant-looking black stains. These can be removed with a pressure washer, but that's only temporary at best. Where ethanol vapors are present, the fungi return.

As a result, facilities must choose between equally unappetizing options. They could frequently clean the surfaces impacted by the growth, or simply do nothing.

Annual or biannual cleanings would at least provide a short period of time where a tank or building exterior would appear neat and clean. But that cost adds up fast: It takes almost as long to pressure wash a tank as it does to coat one. What’s more, pressure washing is abusive, and too much of it can wear down a coating system.

This is why doing nothing is an attractive choice for those who can tolerate it. The stuff looks nasty, but there is no evidence that ethanol-eating fungi are harmful to people or products.

Even so, in spring 2025, it was time for something new at Green America Biofuels.

Ideal circumstances for Rustbond^® and Carboxane^® 2100 BR

Five storage tanks comprise Green America Biofuels’ tank farm: The two larger tanks are each 54 feet in diameter by 48 feet tall (16.5 meters by 14.6 meters). The three smaller tanks are each 25 feet in diameter by 30 feet tall (7.6 meters by 9.1 meters).

According to plant personnel, the tanks were built from 2007 to 2008, and were most recently painted around 2015 to 2017. The tanks had not been cleaned at any point after that, and fungal growth on their surfaces was extensive.

Carboline representatives first suggested a finish coat that inhibits fungal growth in 2022. A tank painting project was not in the plant’s budget at the time, but personnel agreed that when the time came, Carboline’s Carboxane 2100 BR would be a part of any new coating system.

Carboxane 2100 BR is an ultra-durable, fast-curing siloxane finish coat that includes a proprietary biocide proven to dramatically inhibit the growth of a range of fungi, including the variety that often plagues ethanol facilities. When applied direct-to-metal (DTM), it meets ISO 12944-6 C3 High and C4 Medium corrosion protection criteria. Its performance improves when applied over approved primer coats, as was the case here.

All parties moved swiftly when funds to recoat the tanks were released in 2025. XL Industrial Services, based in La Porte, Indiana, was selected to complete the work.

First, all tanks were pressure washed to remove fungal growth as well as any other dirt and debris. Then, they were hand-tool cleaned to SSPC SP-2.

With the surfaces properly prepared, XL crews then applied Carboguard 635 as a spot primer on areas of rust. Carboguard 635 is a versatile epoxy primer or intermediate coat suitable for atmospheric or immersion service. In this case, it was chosen because of its excellent surface wetting properties and fast cure speed that would accelerate the project schedule.

Next, the tanks received a full coat of Rustbond. Rustbond is renowned in the industry for its phenomenal wetting properties. It is typically specified for application over tightly bound rust or, as in this case, over tightly adherent existing coatings. Its ability to penetrate and negate the impacts of surface discontinuities provides an ideal surface for the adhesion of intermediate or finish coats.

The Carboxane 2100 BR finish coat followed.

Additionally, ladder cages, spiral stair handrails, and top handrails were coated in Carboxane 2000 (red), which is also an ultra-durable topcoat that exhibits excellent UV resistance and very strong weathering properties.

A bright future for five bright white tanks

In selecting a coating system including Rustbond and Carboxane 2100 BR, Green America Biofuels got the best of both worlds.

On one hand, they secured many years of phenomenal corrosion protection and weathering resistance in a high-performance system without the need for extensive surface preparation via abrasive blasting.

And on the other, the bright white shine on those tanks won’t be darkened any time soon by unsightly black fungi searching for a meal.

That’s only fitting for a part of the world this pretty.

Inorganic zinc-rich coatings: How they work, and how they can work better

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 20:11:10 -0400

Stakeholders interested in corrosion prevention are broadly aware that zinc is an excellent material for protecting assets in harsh environments.

Many also know why it works—anodes, cathodes, and the galvanic series—so we won't summarize that here.

But in the world of liquid-applied protective coatings, the interactions among zinc, other constituents in a coating formula, and the environment are rarely described in any detail. And it's a crucial description because it sends us two important messages:

One is that, for the most part, the coatings industry hasn't gotten all that it can out of zinc-rich coatings. That's been to the detriment of customers, their assets, and the environment.

And two, the recipe to do better is no mystery. The industry has what it needs—and has had it for decades.

The behavior of zinc in inorganic and organic systems

In zinc-rich coatings, the reaction between zinc and the atmosphere is key to the extended corrosion protection we're all familiar with.

Immediately on its exposure to the environment, zinc reacts with oxygen, moisture, and carbon dioxide in the air to form numerous reaction products. These reaction products fill in microscopic pockets in the coating film over time, a process which continually reinforces the structure of the coating and is essential to its overall protective properties.

But the coating's resin type is also instrumental to its performance. Inorganic zinc-rich coatings are typically based on silicate resins, which are made of the same chemical tool kit as rocks or sand. Silicate-resin-based coating films are relatively permeable compared to epoxy resins. That allows moisture to move through the film for continued curing of the silicate resins, as well as reacting with zinc to continually reinforce the coating.

The zinc compounds fill the pores in the silicate resin matrix, creating a physical barrier between the substrate and its environment. The zinc also reacts with the silicate resin and the iron in steel to form a chemically bound complex. When moisture is present, the circuit is completed and cathodic protection is activated. This corrosion-resisting barrier lasts a long time because inorganic resins do not degrade under UV exposure.

So unlike their organic counterparts, which weaken over time, inorganic zinc-rich coatings strengthen as they age.

However, a problem emerges. A widely used corrosion protection system involves an inorganic zinc-rich primer under one or two organic epoxy or urethane coats. But organic-resin-based coatings are less permeable, and applying them over an inorganic zinc-rich primer insulates a portion of the zinc. That impedes its interaction with the atmosphere, and fewer zinc compounds are formed as a result.

Compounding the problem is that all organic resins eventually break down under exposure to UV radiation. The corrosion-protective performance of an inorganic zinc-rich primer is handicapped by the introduction of an organic resin on top of it.

The image below, captured by Carboline at NASA's beachside corrosion test site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, illustrates the point. The panels marked 312 and 320 are coated in an inorganic zinc-rich primer. The two panels to their right are coated in organic-resin-based materials. Both sets of panels were set out for testing at the same time.

Inorganic zinc-rich coatings vs. galvanizing vs. metalizing

No discussion of galvanic corrosion protection should exclude the other common ways to achieve it.

Galvanizing, in one form or another, has been around for centuries. It's well understood and well regarded as arguably the premier method for achieving long-lived corrosion protection.

Metalizing, a more recent invention, has gained traction for its apparent very strong performance, too.

How do liquid-applied coatings compare? It's hard to offer a definitive and scientifically valid performance comparison for two reasons:

Neither galvanizing nor metalizing are subject to the same rigorous performance testing as paint; paint is held to a different and higher standard
Variability in assets, surface preparation, application techniques, formulas, environmental exposures, and other influences mean control conditions are difficult to achieve

With that said, our stance is that a premium inorganic zinc-rich primer, when applied in one coat to a properly prepared surface, is equal or superior in performance to galvanizing. Galvanizing is usually marketed as a 50-year corrosion protection solution.

It's worth noting that the structural steel in NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building in coastal Florida was coated in a single layer of Carbozinc 11 in 1966. It was observed in excellent condition as recently as February 2025, 59 years later.

Metalizing is a new enough process that we'd need to see a 50-year performance history before agreeing that it was on par with inorganic zinc-rich coatings or galvanizing. Time will tell.

Cost, application properties, and health and safety matters are easier to compare:

Galvanizing is slower, and metalizing much slower, than applying paint; paint application equipment is far more portable
Galvanizing and metalizing involve exposure to high heat and dangerous chemicals; the health exposures associated with using zinc-rich coatings and application equipment are quite mild by comparison
Galvanizing is markedly more costly than painting—sometimes twice the cost per square foot for large steel members—while metalizing is monstrously expensive at three to four times the cost to paint

Listen to this episode of The Red Bucket podcast for a more detailed discussion on performance comparisons of galvanizing, metalizing, and inorganic zinc-rich coatings.

Could two-coat inorganic systems maximize corrosion protection potential?

If inorganic zinc-rich coatings are such phenomenal performers when left alone, then why would we introduce the question of a two-coat system?

From a performance perspective, testing has shown that the additional inorganic coating layer may increase the system's durability and resistance to impact damage while still offering excellent galvanic protection. Test panels coated in Carboline's Armorlast two-coat inorganic system have shown virtually no degradation following exposure in back-to-back-to-back ISO 12944-9 cyclic aging tests. A single test cycle simulates 25 years in the harshest, most corrosive conditions.

Indeed, compelling test data along with extensive past experience with inorganic systems led NASA to choose the Armorlast system for the structural steel of its new ML-2 launcher.

The Armorlast two-coat inorganic coating system protects the structural steel of NASA's ML-2 launcher. Designed to support NASA's Artemis program, the launcher is currently under construction at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Image courtesy of Bechtel.

Beyond performance, another benefit that emerges is color options.

That's because with single-coat inorganic zinc-rich coatings, all you get is zinc dust gray. But an added inorganic finish coat means more colors are available, and the days of giving up on performance for visual appeal, or vice versa, are finally over.

Owners of highly visible assets in harsh environments—offshore energy platforms or wind turbines, bridges, commodity storage terminals, and more—are already taking notice.

The performance benefits and cost savings speak for themselves, and they're too loud to ignore.

Red Bull's transformation in Madrid

Wed, 21 May 2025 16:02:03 -0400

Photo courtesy of yyplusplus + IDC STUDIO.

Red Bull Spain's chosen location for a new headquarters makes perfect sense.

The vibrant Malasaña neighborhood of Madrid blends cafes, restaurants, and nightlife. Its narrow streets and old-city architecture are a haven for students and young professionals. A globally recognized energy drink brand would fit right in.

But before they could do so, there was work to do: the complete renovation of an existing five-story building.

yyplusplus reshapes an empty shell

Photo courtesy of yyplusplus + BELVIL ESTUDIO.

At street level, 13 Calle Hernan Cortes deceives passersby. The building is as narrow as its neighbors, but it stretches the depth of its block and contains 2,600 square meters (28,000 square feet) of occupied space.

Formerly housing the Madrid College of Industrial Engineers, the structure was vacant and essentially hollow when architecture firm yyplusplus got to work.

The firm's objective was to utilize the building's abundance of open spaces while also providing furnishings and partitions that would make the building suitable for the work of 150 employees.

But yyplusplus could not stop at a renovated floor plan and new furnishings. The space would look like an office, but it wouldn't feel or sound like one.

That's because the structure's prior use as an engineering college did not emphasize acoustic insulation. If that wasn't included in this renovation, the offices would be noisy. yyplusplus knew an insulative material was essential, and they insisted that it looked as good as it performed.

Farbocustic^® provides insulation and ambience

yyplusplus had initially favored a vermiculite-based insulation for the Red Bull Spain offices, but none featured the right combination of acoustic performance, visual appeal, and cost.

When a contractor suggested they consider Farbocustic from Carboline, the architects recognized a name they had heard before.

On a prior project, yyplusplus had studied Farbocustic gypsum-based mortar. They decided against it at the time because the project was in a small space, and manufactured acoustic panels would provide the needed acoustic dampening more economically.

But Farbocustic was right for Red Bull Spain for a variety of reasons.

From a cost perspective, spray-applied insulation is more economical in large, open spaces. Farbocustic's sound absorption properties match that of conventional materials, and architects across Europe recognize its finished texture and wide range of colors.

And importantly, the material is made with natural fibers and contains no silica. This eliminates an application hazard and helps architects and builders achieve sustainability objectives for construction or renovation projects.

Photo courtesy of yyplusplus + IDC STUDIO.

"Everyone is happy"

The renovation concluded in September 2024. And as of early 2025, Red Bull Spain's Madrid staff had fully occupied their new headquarters.

There's a lot to love about going to work every day in the heart of Malasaña. And because of yyplusplus, the environment inside 13 Calle Hernan Cortes matches the streets around it.

"This is what we wanted," said Cesar Cañadas, co-lead architect of yyplusplus. "It was an empty box, and there was nothing. Now, everyone is happy with the design and implementation."