Pond Armor vs. Liquid Rubber

[spiff44]

When building your own wood ponds or tanks you end up with alot bigger bang for your buck. When it comes to waterproofing that bigger bang could also mean bigger damage. What your take on DIY Waterproofing.

IMO- most DIY are huge to be cost effective... this puts most of them in either the basement or outside where a possible leak isn't so catastrophic.

So yeah, I think most DIY builds are inherently risky... I personally wouldn't do one on the first floor of the house. When you compare a DIY plywood tank against a store bought aquarium... the DIY is probably thousands of times more susceptible to a leak. An acrylic tank has no real seams at all... and a glass tank, the only real weakness is the edges that are silicon'd. On a DIY build you can pretty much say that the entire inside surface is a possible leak point.

 

[fuzzlebug]

I'm sorry but everything you say keeps proving otherwise.. as either someone who has actually used these products or knows anything about them. Its bad enough that you're posting this information that can cost someone thousands of dollars not to mention the wasted effort, but you're going to argue about it too?

The Pond Armor pinholes is caused by the epoxy drying and leaving pinholes.... no other reason.

POnd Armor pushed into the wood? What, are you filling it while its still wet?

What are you arguing with? Using fiberglass to reinforce a tank or that pond armour is ok to make a plywood tank watertight by itself?
Fiberglass as far as I know is cheap, and adds strength and reduces the possibility of a leak, so how would my info cost someone thousands of dollars? Are you suggesting that fiberglass cost thousands or that applying it, and adding strength, will make a tank more susceptible to rupturing? And the pinhole fractures are caused by the water pressure pushing the dried resin into the air gaps in the wood. That's what causes the leaks. I know what dried cured pond armour is like, it creates a solid piece, so when under pressure and pushed against an air gap it will crack. So that's why i would use layered fiberglass in the seams and multiple levels of pond armour.
I may not be an expert on plywood builds or waterproofing a tank but iv built large tanks and helped build larger tanks using resins so I know what works...so I know something about them.


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[stempy]

VLdesign went with Max ACR because Pond Armor is rediculous to work with (and insanely expensive after you end up needing 5 times the amount you thought you would). NO you do NOT use silicone in the seams...just wow. Fiberglass is used to Reinforce seams, fiberglass in conjunction with epoxy makes a very steel like rigid waterproof structure. Also you don't NEED fiberglass to make it waterproof, epoxy will do that on it's own. Fiberglass is just extra security to help protect against stress fractures that would over time leak (though you really should use it in the seams for that very reason). Please do not spread false information.....You can cause someone to do something that winds up costing them THOUSANDS in damage when hundreds of gallons of water pours into their home.

 

[fuzzlebug]

If you find pond armour that difficult to work with then your not doing it right? It took me 3 coats and about half an hour each coat to do a 400g tank, not difficult at all. You say you don't NEED fiberglass, but you recommend you should? You say it will keep the structure solid and leak free longer than a tank without it, so how will my advice cost anyone thousands? What you are saying is that it will SAVE some one from a bust tank. Using a product called gold label silicone between the joining pieces of wood instead of wood glue, then screwed together, created a water tight seal. And when multiple layers of fiberglass where put over the seams it creates a solid, leak free seam. So wow...my end result was a sturdy, leak free tank. So why are you arguing with me about my methods when it works, and you actually recommend using fiberglass aswell? This was intended to be a discussion on DIY tank methods, yet you lot want to argue with me because you got different results...so maybe it's not me in the wrong?


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[spiff44]

Your rebuttals never account for the false statements that you’re making. And no one said that fiberglass doesn’t help.. but you said that you can’t waterproof without it… false.

And its easy to work with.. false. It’s supposed to be thinned… false.. the company suggests against this because it causes more pin holes… and pin holes is a vernacular that has only ever been used to describe the cured pin holes… if you leave voids behind it that causes a leak, those are cracks. Pinholes never spontaneously appear, ever… they’re a product of the curing epoxy. Unless you’re poking pins through it… once cured it only fails one way, it cracks.

Siliconing seams under other products, bad idea.

 

[coolkeith]

There are thickened Epoxy Resins that work excellent for bonding, sealing, and filleting the plywood seams. I've used Max Bond Thixotropic for this purpose. One of the main advantages of epoxy resins, such as Max Bond Thixotropic, is that it has a long tooling or work time, which is about 90 minutes before it starts to cure.

The main problem with silicone is that the outer layer skins over after 5 - 10 minutes after you apply it, which greatly affects it's tooling and adhesion ability. When plywood tanks with silicone seams leak or fail, the 1st problem I think of is that they probably tried to work too much of an area at once before adhering or smoothing the silicone. They may have caulked multiple tubes of silicone, which took them 10+ minutes, so the silicone skinned over, and didn't adhere well. Or they they used more than one continuous bead of silicone, so when they attached the panel, the air pocket between the beads caused much of the silicone to squeeze out, leaving multiple air gaps. You need to work quickly with silicone to achieve it's maximum adhesion ability. With large complex plywood builds, sometimes one person just can't work fast enough to use silicone. It may take multiple people to do the job properly in such a small time frame.

Silicone seams could work fine in a plywood build, but you just need to know it's limitations. You may not want to epoxy over silicone fillets in the corners because silicone is a very soft and weak to use as a substrate. In a small tank it probably won't matter, but in a large tank it might. If you fiberglass the seams, it probably won't matter either way. You certainly can silicone over the epoxy though, which is needed for adding the glass panels.

To get an idea of just how soft and weak silicone is compared to Epoxy resin:

Hardness of Silicone: 17 Shore A Scale
Hardness of Epoxy : 75 - 85 Shore D Scale



Tensile Strength of Silicone: 195 PSI
Tensile Strength of Epoxy: 3,440 - 7,846 PSI

For attaching glass panels, silicone is still the best product to use because it is UV resistant, moisture resistant, and very flexible. Epoxy resin is not UV resistant or flexible.


Sources:
http://www.smooth-on.com/Durometer-Shore-Ha/c1370/index.html
http://www.siliconeconcepts.com/pdf/WeatherSealants/GP.pdf
http://www.westsystem.com/ss/typical-physical-properties/
http://www.glassonweb.com/articles/article/769/

 

[rodger]

Where does the company say you shouldn't thin? Not in any printed literature. Not on their website. When I have talked to Butch on the phone he didn't tell me it was a bad idea. I don't remember reading anything about pin holes being an issue. Where do you get your information from? Certainly not from Pond Armor.

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[spiff44]

don't be putting words in my mouth.. I said they suggested against it.. they being Butch at Pond Armor... he said "if you have to thin its okay but makes you prone to more pin holes"... went on to say " I suggest against it if you can warm it up instead"

a far cry from "supposed to thin"

I thoroughly picked his mind on this back in 09

 

[stempy]

The fact is pond armor does do a fantastic job at what it is supposed to do, but it is a well known fact the coverage you get from it is not whats advertised and it IS difficult to work with. So why would you want to use it versus a product that is very easy to work with and you get the documented coverage it is supposed to get? Also putting silicone under epoxy is just bad......Never ever have I read that epoxy will adhere to silicone. As coolkeith stated using epoxy to fillet the seams is the best idea as it waterproofs the seams as well as allowing the above layer of epoxy to adhere to it properly (this is what I used). Any idea may work short term, but who wants to build a tank that may only last 4 or 5 years? To the OP look into Max ACR, my 500 gallon cost me $85 for the 1.5 gallon kit that was more than enough to waterproof my tank. If I had used pond armor I would have spent Hundreds.....Liquid rubber if you research it people have had hit or miss success with it and it also turns an ugly brown once submersed. Max acr like pond armor can be colored to whatever color under the sun you want it to be.