Curious Iowa: How do you paint a water tower?

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids water tower along Boyson Road got a makeover this month, with painters adding the city’s name and logo to the white tank for the first time.

“It is a huge expense to construct and maintain water towers, and we want people to know that it's the city's, and we're taking great pride in that,” said Cedar Rapids Utilities Director Roy Hesemann.

At least one Gazette reader noticed the paint job and sent a suggestion to Curious Iowa: “The process of painting a water tower, such as the one being painted along Boyson Road, would be an interesting article.”

Curious Iowa is a series from The Gazette that seeks to answer Iowans’ questions about the state, its culture and the people who live here.

Water towers functional, sometimes fun

Visible from miles away, a water tower is often the first thing visitors to a community see and a landmark for locals. Some communities have fun with their tower design. Adair’s yellow water tower has a smiley face. Stanton has a Swedish coffee cup. Monticello’s bold red-and-white striped tank is a beacon along Highway 151 in Eastern Iowa.

“It’s always interesting to see what people dream up,” Hesemann said. “We've seen the salt-and-pepper shakers, flowers, hot and cold.”

Adding the city name and logo to the Cedar Rapids towers is “pretty much as wild and crazy as we get,” he said.

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Usually built on a hill, water towers take advantage of gravity, which creates pressure to serve as an indirect pumping system to distribute drinking water over a wide distance.

Cedar Rapids, a city of 136,500, has eight elevated water towers that are on a schedule to be painted every 15 to 20 years, Hesemann said.

The city contracted for maintenance and painting of two water towers at a cost of about $1.6 million together. Dixon Engineering, based in Michigan, but with an office in Des Moines, is managing the projects.

“A lot of times, they will start with an inspection,” Hesemann said of those projects.

Historically, this was done by a person in an inflatable boat. As the water in the tank is drained, they would inspect the inside of the tank as they go down. Now, it’s more common for firms to deploy a robot — like a mini submarine — to inspect the full tank, Hesemann said.

“You don't have to take it out of service or drain the tank,” he said. “We've done both, depending on the conditions and type of tank.”

Painting the tank

When it’s time to repaint the steel tanks, the crews first must remove the old paint.

Cedar Rapids and Hiawatha residents might have seen what looked like a crown on top of the Boyson Road water tower at C Avenue NE, with long wires hanging down. Crews use those wires to raise a shroud that cocoons the tower while the old paint is sandblasted off.

“The curtain’s primary purpose is to contain that dust,” said Tim Wilson, project manager for Dixon.

But the curtain usually stays in place — as crews spray on primer, epoxy and one layer of urethane paint — so neighbors’ houses and cars don’t catch overspray.

A final layer of urethane is applied with a roller.

“Every one of those layers has a specific mil (1/1,000 of an inch) thickness it needs to be applied,” Wilson said. “Everybody likes the top coat because that's where you get your gloss. But all of those layers of paint are there to protect the steel.”

Cedar Rapids hired O & J Coatings, of Hurst, Texas, to paint the Boyson Road water tower. The company uses steel cables attached near the top to raise motorized scaffolds where painters stand, Wilson said. The painters are harnessed to the cables or scaffolds for safety, and equipment also is attached.

“It's a bummer if you drop something and have to go down and get it,” Wilson said.

Dixon makes a paper stencil from a rendering of the city name and logo. Painters trace the stencil and fill it in with paint, which also is measured for thickness.

“At year 20, you still want to clearly be able to see Cedar Rapids,” Wilson said.

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Water tower maintenance and painting often takes more than a month. Towers are taken out of service during that time, which can mean a slight loss of pressure for nearby residents.

“It has some seasonal restrictions,” Hesemann said of the projects. “We don't want to do it in the heat of the summer because we need the tanks for capacity. And not in winter because that's not good for painting.”

The Boyson Road tower is considered a fluted column because of the corrugated surface of the base. Many other smaller towns have a spherical tank with a bulb at the top.

The Runnells’ tower

Central Tank Coatings, of Elgin, last month painted the water tower for Runnells, a town of 450 in Polk County. The city won a state contest to have Laura Palmer, a Des Moines artist, create a custom design for their water tower.

Joe Koehn, a sales representative and former painter for Central Tank Coatings, told The Gazette that Runnells’ design, which includes a whimsical tractor, small barn, flowers, water and railroad tracks, was more detailed and colorful than other designs the firm paints on water towers.

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“Most logos are just the city name so it's just one to two colors,” he said.

The most challenging part of the job is working at heights of more than 130 feet, Koehn said. Winds of 20, 30 or 40 miles per hour can cause crews to come down for the day.

The best part of the job, he said, is seeing your work on a water tower, “getting to drive by it and see what they did up there.”

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Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com