Water sealing with drylock?
- Thread starter wheatgerm
- Start date
Kinda sloppy since it was my first plywood build, but you can see the standard white drylok on the outside, w/the blue tinted stuff on the inside.
thats sweet man!! and great proof that you can seal your tank with local lowes product for reasonably cheap, how many gallons did it take to seal it and how thick did you go with? you didnt even use anything before putting the prylock into place?
Nothing underneath, just straight on the plywood. Really can't remember exactly what I used. It was either two gallons or a gallon and additional quart. The gallon was tinted for sure, and perhaps the quart was left white. Did a base coat of everything in the white, then probably alternated between the white and blue on the inside until it was all used up. Want to say at least five or more coats on the inside. In any case, yes a tank can be sealed w/this stuff, however it's longevity has still not been proven. TheFishGuy built sumps and smaller tanks around the same time as I and had them running for longer and he said his started failing around the two year mark so that's something to think about. I may build a small tank just to see exactly how long drylok can go, but my next decent sized tank will most likely be done in sweetwater or some epoxy for more peace of mind.
wheatgerm;4797599; said:
By "poly based fiberglass" do you mean you wetted out regular fiberglass with polyester resin? If so, understand that plywood tanks have been sealed with many different types of polyester resin and held water for years with no additional topcoat. That doesn't mean that there isn't some type of polyester that wouldn't benefit from some sort of topcaot.
As far as Drylok, I've tested it on both cured epoxy, vinyl film and also melamine. It stuck well to all three but I never used them in a submerged application. But based on what I saw with melamine I suspect that it will stick just fine to polyester.
I think if I do another build ill go with zavlar or sweetwater I was just curious and hadn't seen many builds with drylock.. An by poly based fiberglass I meant it's made with polyurethane... I was under the impression that if it was poly based it wouldn't be 100% watersealed. As for my sump I found about a gallon of zavlar left over and I will be usin this instead of the drylock. I already have 2 coats of fiberglass on the sump then I'll start my few coats of liquid rubber just to make sure I have everything coated
wheatgerm;4803844; said:
Can you tell us exactly what products you used when you say polyurethane based fiberglass?
Did you use a thick, liquid that you added drops of hardener to?
And was there some sort of glass cloth or mat that the liquid was applied to?
With that information we can give you a better idea if you need an additional coat of something else.
Haha yes it's regular fiberglass resin with hardener I web to lowes and picked up a gallon of "fiberglass resin" but in the ingredients it says made with polyurethane. It did come with the matting but I didn't use any... My plywood will be plenty strong
wheatgerm;4805358; said:
Interesting. It's possible that manufacturers are starting to put some polyurethane solids into polyester resin to meet stricter VOC regulations that are supposed to go into effect this year. I need to go to Lowes this week so maybe I'll take a look and read the labels. On that note, I'd still be interested to know exactly what product you purchased.
So why did you use this resin if you didn't reinforce it and were thinking about top coating it with something else anyways?
I do know of plywood tanks that were sealed with nothing but polyester resin (no matting or cloth) but they were always 20" tall or less and used more expensive polyester that wasn't made with any polyurethane that I know of.
