Here's How They Repaint Water Towers In Davenport

If you've driven across Davenport in the past week, something out of the ordinary caught your eye as you approached the mall.

The Iowa American Water Tower that's been just off of Kimberly Road is being worked on, with a giant paint cover. It seems like a new paint job would be quite the job, and that's because it is!

Since being built in 1978, the tower near Kimberly Road and Northwest Boulevard has been fully repainted a total of twice in the past, this being the third time.

The tower holds 500,000 gallons of water.

Somewhere around the 12-14 year mark of the tower's existence, the very first painting maintenance cycle came about. It would've been around the end of the 80s, start of the 90s.

You may think you remember seeing it painted recently, and that's partly true. 2009 was the last time it received a whole repaint, which is when it received the paint job you've been seeing on your commute.

When it comes to these paint jobs, 8-15 years is when they do some touch-up work, but it's the 15-18 year mark that requires the crazy full repaint.

It's a 40 day process from start to finish, and costs roughly $1.28 million.

How Do They Do It?

The whole tower has to be stripped and repainted for it to be considered done, and it's quite the process.

In Phase 1, they drain the entirety of the tank of all its water. This process takes about a week to do.

And before you ask, no, this isn't the correct way to drain a water tower:

Phase 2 is when they rig up all the cabling and raise the containment shroud. Another week just for this phase.

The type of fabric used for the shroud is a flame-retardent heavy-duty woven polypropylene mesh that captures 95% of the fine dust particles that come from the sand blasting, but it still allows wind to pass through in case there are any high winds that blow throught the area.

The shroud is somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 square feet of fabric. That's a big blanket! They use nearly 1.5 miles of steel cabling to support the shroud.

Phase 3 is the messy part. They have to sand blast the entire thing down to raw steel, and when that's done, they can start applying the 3-coat paint system.

The first primer coat will use somewhere around 300 gallons of a zinc-rich primer, which will help protect against rust. Then, they use an epoxy-based paint which acts as a moisture barrier and provides some structural thickness. This is also roughly 300 gallons.

Then, in step 3 of Phase 3, they add a UV resistant topcoat and sealer, another 300 gallons, which also provides the glossy color we're all used to seeing. This is also the step where they paint the logo on the side.

When it comes to painting the logo, they use a giant stencil system. It's either a massive sticker stencil, or they even project the logo onto the tower.

The final phase takes around five days to complete, and that's to let everything cure, refill the tank, and do all of the bacteriological water testing they have to do. It takes around 12 hours of constant running water to fill the tower, and it actually takes between 3-5 days before that water actually makes it to the faucet in your kitchen.