MY 300+ GALLON BUILD

[pengu13]

john73738 How many coats?? I applied 6 coats of Sweetwater to my tank.

i did two full coats, three on the bottom, then patch work
i would of done more but i just wasn't getting the coverage and it was all the product i had. i would of got more but it took long to get this shipped to me and it cost allot .

the_deeb I wonder if over-thinning the pond shield might be compromising its sealing ability. You might want to check with Butch at pond armor. He's pretty good about answering emails.

That could be a possibility, and they are good about getting back to you.
my only issue was getting the coverage, it says 1.5 kit dose 60 sq ft. my build was less then 3 sheets of 4x8 wood around 96 sq ft, so i got two kits.

I would of used more of this product if it was easier for me to get. from the few builds i have read it seams to be a issue but if you get enough of it i'm sure it works fine.

 

[pengu13]

another test failed.
so i order two 1 gallon cans of zavlar, hoping this will hold the water.
zavlar was a reasonable price hope it works for me

 

[Clay]

it says 1.5 kit dose 60 sq ft. my build was less then 3 sheets of 4x8 wood around 96 sq ft, so i got two kits.

1.5=60, so .5 = 20, so 1=40. 2 kits = 80, and you needed at least 2.5 to minimally cover the area you mentioned (96sqft). I think 3 kits would have been the proper number (120) to include 10% loss (108) and miscalculations.

Edit, ah, I see, I misunderstood. You used less than the 3 sheets. 3 sheets=96. But I still think that unless you had 72 or fewer sqft, you would have been better served by using 2.5 or 3 units.

 

[the_deeb]

Clay - when he said "1.5" I think he meant a 1.5qt kit, not 1 and a half kits. One 1.5qt kit is supposed to give you 60sq ft of coverage so 2 should give you 120 sq ft.

 

[Clay]

Oh. Then disregard! But if you meant the other, the math is right

 

[Zfishies]

AHHH MATH IS EVERYWHERE!!!!!! good luck man cant wait to see it up and running

 

[pengu13]

A small update this has taken way longer then planned between having to wait two months for my pond shield to have that fail and now the rest of my zavlar is still 2 weeks away and i have already waited two weeks. i called and found out they didn't have anymore in the warehouse so its a week more till they get it then another week before i see it.I did get 2 gallons in but have decided i'm going to put on 5 gallons after the problems i have had i just want it to work.

So here is what i have done i taped off the window and bulk heads sanded the whole tank inside with 60 grit (that sucked) cleaned it well and started to paint on the zavlar. it paints on easy no real fumes but waiting almost a day between coats means it takes a while to get a few gallons on. my big problem is the weather its a race against time, zavlar is not suppose to be applied in temps less then 5 c which it has gotten close to a few times over night now and it takes so long to dry when it is only 10 -15 c out and it has been raining off and on for weeks.
So here some pics sanding and the tank with 2 gallons applied

 

[pengu13]

I want to add sanding off that pond shield really, really sucked. one because i paid for it to get that nice black finish then i had to ruin it but i would of had to do that if i wanted to do more coats of pond shield. another was that this stuff was hard when fully cured and the dust went everywhere.

I also found another leak i didn't see, i was sanding on the filter divide and found it had soften up a fair sized spot. didn't think that would happen between all the resin and pond shield but it did right in the middle not by any side

 

[the_deeb]

Yeah, sanding the PS can be annoying. I know you're done with the sanding phase now but for future reference I found that wet sanding with a 60 grit sanding sponge and frequently wiping with a damp sponge and clean water was a lot better than dry sanding. Minimized the free dust and gave me a more uniform sanded surface.

That's weird that you had a leak in the middle of the filter divide. Do you think it was a pinhole/fisheye that you missed? Hope the zavlar fixes things for you.

 

[pengu13]

wet sanding is a good idea i wouldn't of thought of that i only think wet for fine finish sanding. i also use a palm sander with 60 grit disks it would of been a lot more work to do it all by hand.
The soft spot must of been a pin hole i missed didn't think there would be any after so many coats but i was wrong. i would of easily missed it if i wasn't sanding the whole tank, it looked fine just felt soft.