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Several tanks on Westway Terminals' property in Baltimore, Md., received updates this past fall. As neighbors to the Under Armour (UA) campus, their new facelifts also included a few famous figures and a special coating. needed to be properly prepped and primed because, as you might suspect, no matter how well the wraps go on, without a properly prepared surface, the façade might fail. To help, AB pulled painting contractor O. T. Neighoff & Sons, Inc. (OTN) off the bench. With the scope of the project determined and the work contracted out, the crews needed to get the game plan started, for although Maryland winters aren't as bad as, say, New England, the winter could still cause trouble on this jobsite. And, as OTN explained, the wraps wouldn't be able to be applied below 60° F (16° C)! Tat meant that all work on the tanks needed to be fnished by the end of the fall of 2013; there would be no going into overtime for this project. However, working in the Mid-Atlantic summer and fall also meant dealing with a few other weather-related red fags. "Te biggest thing is watching the dew point," explained Raymond E. Frater, industrial sales, estimator, and project manager for OTN. All coatings needed to be applied at 5 degrees above the dew point, and because they didn't cover the tanks in a tent or tarp, the crew also had to work around the rain. Although there weren't any repercussions for wetting any already-cured coatings, the crew couldn't apply anything in inclement weather, which meant they just had to wait any out. When Mother Nature did play fair, the fve-to-seven man coatings crew was able to get to work. Tey started the application process by preparing the steel tanks. Excluding the one foam-covered tank, which merely received a light power wash and two coats of paint, all of the tanks received a citrus cleaning, power washing, spot prime, full prime, and topcoat. Because of the extra time that would be needed to install the wraps once the coatings were done, the crew's frst game 52 JANUARY 2014 COATINGSPROMAG.COM play was on the three tanks that were to showcase Ripken, Jr., Phelps, and Lewis. Just like all of the coated tanks, the crew frst cleaned these with Corotech's biodegradable Citrus Cleaner V610. Tey let the cleaning agent sit for 10–15 minutes on the surfaces before using 3,500 psi (24 MPa) to power-wash of any dirt, contaminants, and loose paints. Ten, with everything clean and dry, the crew took four-inch (10.2 cm) wire wheel grinders from DeWalt to any surfaces that were still covered in rust or that had been recently welded. Since the tanks were built in the '80s, Frater believes that there was about a 15 percent failure of coatings per tank that needed to be removed. Tey defnitely needed a strong ofense! The tanks were built in the '80s and had ~15 percent coatings failure, according to Raymond E. Frater, industrial sales, estimator, and project manager for the contractor on this project, O.T. Neighoff & Sons, Inc. (OTN).