Gap / Air bubbles in Tank silicon

[RD.]

I concur with jjohnwm

Good luck

 

[Lepisosteus]

Take the tank apart and redo it.

 

[fishdance]

I repair this type of situation all the time. Just need to remove the outside edge of bubble and use firm finger pressure to squeeze silicon in. You may have to push from various angles to expel trapped air. Under pressure it will visibly fill almost all the air bubbles including interconnected areas and your done. Even if you filled all the large easy holes that's an improvement.

If you paid for someone to make the tank, ask them to repair or replace it. It's clear your not satisfied (and I wouldn't be either).

 

[..puSkar..]

Yeah very true, even filling up of the large holes is an improvement. It need not be a 100% silicone seam , some air bubbles here and there doesn't matter.

I repair this type of situation all the time. Just need to remove the outside edge of bubble and use firm finger pressure to squeeze silicon in. You may have to push from various angles to expel trapped air. Under pressure it will visibly fill almost all the air bubbles including interconnected areas and your done. Even if you filled all the large easy holes that's an improvement.

If you paid for someone to make the tank, ask them to repair or replace it. It's clear your not satisfied (and I wouldn't be either).

 

[WARCRAFT]

Trying to clean out the existing silicone layer from between the two panes and then re-injecting new silicone doesn't seem very feasible to me. The only way it would work is if you were able to perfectly clean every iota of old silicone out of that thin gap before putting in the new stuff...and this would be very difficult or impossible. If you just poke around in there but don't get it all, you would be worse off than before. The new silicone won't stick to the old, but you will have damaged the already-marginal seal and lost even more of the structural integrity of the tank.

I think the addition of the glass strip as suggested by ..puSkar.. is your only hope, short of complete disassembly and reassembly. If the surface of the side glass and the edge of the front are perfectly flush, adding the strip to the outside would be easiest, but would look like...well, like a home-grown DIY bandage, which of course it is. But doing it this way, using thick enough glass, should in theory be just as strong as the original seam should have been. All you would need to do is scrupulously those exterior surfaces of glass before carefully applying the strip.

Applying the strip to the inside would necessitate removing the interior bead of silicone from that entire seam before you added the strip. This is more work, but the real problem is that you will still have old silicone meeting new at both ends of the new strip, and a leak is very likely. The only way to be safe is to remove the entire interior bead, all the way around all the interior seams. Then you add the reinforcing strip, then you re-seal the entire tank by applying a new bead all the way around. This is obviously a lot more work, but it will give you a continuous water-tight bead and should not leak if done carefully.

The guy who said that he would remove, replace and re-seal just one panel of glass? His "workmanship" already speaks for itself; how he can accept money to produce a mess such as he has done here boggles the mind. I wouldn't trust a word out of his mouth.

True scene , he initially told to all water after 24-48hrs and now telling to wait 72hrs but now it's 60hrs and I'm thinking of adding water to check what happens to this thing.

 

[WARCRAFT]

I repair this type of situation all the time. Just need to remove the outside edge of bubble and use firm finger pressure to squeeze silicon in. You may have to push from various angles to expel trapped air. Under pressure it will visibly fill almost all the air bubbles including interconnected areas and your done. Even if you filled all the large easy holes that's an improvement.

If you paid for someone to make the tank, ask them to repair or replace it. It's clear your not satisfied (and I wouldn't be either).

Yes, he said try water testing after 72hrs and if it leaks (he said it won't don't worry) will remove the side panel and re fix it again but re-fixing it will remove the inner siliconing and I need to do the entire inner siliconing right not only the inside part of that removed panel

 

[jjohnwm]

I repair this type of situation all the time. Just need to remove the outside edge of bubble and use firm finger pressure to squeeze silicon in. You may have to push from various angles to expel trapped air. Under pressure it will visibly fill almost all the air bubbles including interconnected areas and your done. Even if you filled all the large easy holes that's an improvement.

If you paid for someone to make the tank, ask them to repair or replace it. It's clear your not satisfied (and I wouldn't be either).

Yeah very true, even filling up of the large holes is an improvement. It need not be a 100% silicone seam , some air bubbles here and there doesn't matter.

Is filling up the holes an improvement if you aren't sure that the new silicone is adhering to anything? I think that pattern of bubbles is a result of pressing the two panes together during construction, but then pulling them apart or moving them slightly causing the formation of the bubbles. If so, then the glass surfaces inside the bubbles are contaminated with the original silicone...to which the new silicone won't adhere. The tank manufacturer I worked for years ago considered this an inviolate rule: if you, during initial construction, move or separate two panes of glass and get these weird bubble patterns, you must either press them together again and force the air out immediately...or else you clean up and start from scratch. If you had one or multiple roundish, regular bubbles, that was caused by insufficient silicone during the placement of the panels, and could be "back-filled" later; but I don't think that's what you have here.

True scene , he initially told to all water after 24-48hrs and now telling to wait 72hrs but now it's 60hrs and I'm thinking of adding water to check what happens to this thing.

We've all got different suggestions about how to fix this...but I think we all agree that you got royally shafted by this "professional". Whichever step you take next, you probably need to stop listening to him. Try to get your money back from him, and then stay far, far away.

 

[WARCRAFT]

Is filling up the holes an improvement if you aren't sure that the new silicone is adhering to anything? I think that pattern of bubbles is a result of pressing the two panes together during construction, but then pulling them apart or moving them slightly causing the formation of the bubbles. If so, then the glass surfaces inside the bubbles are contaminated with the original silicone...to which the new silicone won't adhere. The tank manufacturer I worked for years ago considered this an inviolate rule: if you, during initial construction, move or separate two panes of glass and get these weird bubble patterns, you must either press them together again and force the air out immediately...or else you clean up and start from scratch. If you had one or multiple roundish, regular bubbles, that was caused by insufficient silicone during the placement of the panels, and could be "back-filled" later; but I don't think that's what you have here.





We've all got different suggestions about how to fix this...but I think we all agree that you got royally shafted by this "professional". Whichever step you take next, you probably need to stop listening to him. Try to get your money back from him, and then stay far, far away.

Yeah, I contacted a new guy to build it from scratch (taking all apart and do it again) I don't think that scu## will refund he will dodge for sure will try to get it but I will re-do this definitely.