One Sioux Falls official says residents have up to 10 weeks to watch paint dry as crews work to restore the inside and outside of a water tower. The Menlo water tower stands 159 feet tall in the central part of the city.
Splotches of rust seep through the light blue paint on a huge water tower in central Sioux Falls. Water superintendent Greg Anderson says rust spots dot the tower because the protective coating failed between the steel structure and the primer.
“It’s taken a little bit longer for us to get here than we wanted to, because we really wanted to see just how bad it was going to get and where the bad spots were so we knew exactly what type of recoating system we needed – whether we could just recoat it or we would have to sandblast it. Well, in our case here, we’re going to have to do a complete blasting inside and outside and it’ll receive three coats of different styles of paint,” Anderson says.
That means a primer, intermediate layer and top coat – not different colors; officials are keeping the water tower’s pale blue hue.
The sandblasting doesn't happen with sand. Crews use small metal pieces to blast the old paint off of the tower’s interior and outside surface.
They use a giant machine to vacuum the particles. A large magnet separates the metal shards to reuse for more blasting, and the paint chips are waste.
The resurfacing is an eight- to 10-week process that costs $733,000.
Right now thick wires drape from the top of the tower to the ground. City engineer Terry Van Dyke says the water tower’s close proximity to homes, a hospital, and parking lots means crews must use a massive curtain.
“They have the vertical containment which is hooked to all those cables out there, and it will be raised and lowered each and every day. When the wind is over 20 miles an hour, they will leave it up and possibly be working indoors. It’s a little too strong a wind for that,” Van Dyke says. “We also are requiring a halo on top of this tower, and again it will prevent paint drift and so forth. We don’t want to speckle all the cars around here.”
Sioux Falls officials built the Menlo water tower in 1999. It holds 1.5 million gallons of water.
