Pipe and conduit coatings

Overview

Protecting the piping

Piping is easy to forget until it leaks. Pipe runs sit in the sun on rooftops, pass through chemical areas, and stay damp, and rust starts at the joints, hangers, and supports. The right coating system on your piping helps prevent corrosion as you move materials through the facility.

What we coat

Process piping inside plants, piping at pump stations and wellheads, rooftop pipes on cooling towers and air handlers, exhaust pipes, and the racks, hangers, and supports around them. Piping is usually part of a bigger job on the same steel and equipment, so we scope it together.

How we coat pipe

Most existing pipe is prepped with hand and power tools to SSPC-SP 2 and SP 3: loose rust and mill scale ground, chipped, and descaled off. Where the spec calls for blasting, we coordinate it as part of the job. Then a rust-inhibiting epoxy primer and, outdoors, a UV protective polyurethane topcoat. At the Half Moon Bay well heads, the pumps were de-energized and locked out first. Then the piping, racks, and pumps got two coats of rust-inhibiting epoxy primer and a UV protective urethane topcoat. On rooftop cooling towers at JC Penney stores across California, the pipes and support beams got an epoxy base coat and a high-solids polyurethane topcoat.

Heat, chemicals, and fire

Hot pipe needs a high temperature coating. Pipe in a chemical area needs a chemical resistant system. Where pipes and conduits need fire protection, hard char intumescent coatings are made for them.