5000 Gallon Plastic Vertical Water Storage Tank in Green

What the ground under a 102 inch base has to do before a gallon arrives

Two numbers decide this installation and both of them are about the site rather than the tank. The first is 41,700 pounds, which is what a full tank weighs and what the ground has to carry on an eight foot six inch circle, carried through a rotationally molded floor that bears on the whole surface it is resting on and on nothing else. A slab that is level, continuous, in full contact and poured wider than the tank does that job; gravel raked flat by eye does not, and the failure is not cosmetic, because the hollow becomes the bearing point and the wall above it carries a load it was never molded for. The framework for getting it right is in the concrete pad sizing guide, and on a farm pad it is the step most often replaced with optimism. Grade the surround so the overflow leaves the pad instead of washing along the edge of it, because a tall tank undercutting one side of its own base is the classic way a good tank ends up leaning. The second number is 155 inches. Twelve feet eleven inches will clear a great many open-sided sheds and stand below a mature tree line, but it also means the shell is in the wind from the hour it lands until the hour it is full, and at 675 pounds empty the wind wins. Band or cable it to structure or to anchors set with the pad, tight before the fill, checked after the first storm and again at the end of the first summer, since polyethylene grows in sunlight and tension bleeds off. The 18 inch manway sits twelve feet eleven inches up, so decide now whether anyone is ever going to open it and build fixed access with a rail if the answer is yes. Then test the volume against the duty rather than the shape: put your draw and your refill interval through the tank sizing calculator, and take the reserve and the headspace figures from the tank sizing guide.

The 5,000 gallon shells, and the case for a threaded bulkhead

The reason to take this one is at the base of it. Every other 5,000 in this group that shares the slim 102 inch footprint is listed at 876 lb, and the two wide shells at 119 x 116 in are listed at 805 lb; this tank is listed at 675 lb empty with 900 lb as its shipping weight, and it carries a 2 inch threaded polypropylene bulkhead outlet rather than a bolted one. That matters to whoever maintains it. A threaded bulkhead is made up once, correctly, and then left alone, with a union or a flange set a short way downstream so every later valve change happens on the pipe instead of on the tank fitting. A crew that owns pipe wrenches and no torque discipline is usually better off with the thread. On silhouette, the choice is the ordinary one: the 119 inch shells give up three feet of height for a base a foot and a half wider in every direction, which is right when a roof or an ordinance caps the height; the 4,100 gallon SII-32327 drops to 130 in on this same slim base; and the 5,100 gallon SII-32384 goes to 159 in and 876 lb if the extra volume is worth the weight and the height. Green is the wall for a tank that has to sit quietly in a farmyard and keep light off the water, black for the ones sold that way. Also worth putting beside this page, though not on its own sheet: the green slim 5,000 molded in California, which carries a larger vented manway and a bolted outlet, with the dimensions and weight its own sheet publishes and none asserted here.

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A 2 inch threaded bulkhead outlet, an 18 inch manway, and the fill point

• Outlet: a 2 inch polypropylene female NPT bulkhead fitting at the base, as the sheet lists it. Make the thread up once with a sealant suited to the water and the plastic, put a union or a flange downstream of it, and never break the tank fitting to service a valve. Leave clear space around it so a wrench can be swung without fouling the wall.
• Head at that outlet: 155 inches of shell puts twelve feet eleven inches of water over the fitting when the tank is full, which is generous suction head for a transfer or booster pump. Mount the pump below the outlet on its own base, with a short falling run into the suction port, and the column primes it and keeps it flooded down to the last inches of level.
• Prime and protection: a strainer that can be cleaned without breaking the line, a check valve where the line lifts, and a float, probe or run-dry cut-out that stops the pump with water still over the fitting. Where an operator is filling a rig against the clock, that stop is what protects the pump from the schedule.
• Inlet: a 1-1/2 inch polypropylene female NPT bulkhead fitting. On a tank this tall it is the difference between a delivery hose coupling at working height and a driver trying to reach a manway twelve feet eleven inches up.
• Access: an 18 inch threaded vented manway on the crown. It is the smaller of the two manway sizes used across this family, so plan cleaning around it rather than assuming a person and a hose can both work through it, and keep the vent clear; a pump drawing against a blocked vent will pull the wall in.

The pipework around a threaded outlet wants the same discipline a bolted one does: a flexible first joint so thermal movement and pump starts do not land on the bulkhead, the first valve carried on its own support off the pad, and no rigid line cast into concrete against the wall. On a pad where machinery turns, set a kerb or a bollard between the traffic and the fitting, because the outlet is the only fragile thing on the tank and a trailer tongue finds it. Where the site freezes, trace or insulate the valve and the exposed run and let the body ice from the surface down. Fit a level reading where the operator stands, and once the first fill is done, mark the full line on the outside of the shell in permanent marker; every later reading gets checked against that mark rather than against a memory.

Hauled water, stock supply and wash-down on a farm yard

The duties this 5,000 gallon shell is bought for are the working ones: hauled water taken off a tanker at a property with no well or a well that cannot keep pace, livestock and trough supply on a farm or ranch, irrigation and drip fill for a small block, wash-down and equipment rinse water at a yard or a shop, construction water for dust control and compaction, and plain bulk storage where a slow source has to meet a fast demand. The Arkansas plant puts the short lane into the Mid-South and the lower Mississippi valley, which is also where the flat, open, wind-exposed yards are, so the strapping advice above is not boilerplate. Before you settle on 5,000 gallons, put the arithmetic where it belongs: the draw, the refill interval and the reserve go through the tank sizing calculator and the tank sizing guide rather than through a guess about how big a tank looks in a photograph.

Arkansas freight: 675 pounds on the sheet, 900 pounds on the bill of lading

This tank is molded at Marked Tree, Arkansas, ships at class 500 as the sheet lists it, and moves as an oversize load shipping at 102 inches by 102 inches by 155 inches. The freight cost estimator prices the lane to your ZIP, and the listed price is before freight. Plan the approach rather than the rate: eight feet six inches of width needs a gate wider than the tank, a place for the truck to stand, and an entrance firm enough that a loaded trailer does not sink into it after rain. Unload with slings under the body and a forklift or telehandler, never a hook through the manway, and set the tank straight onto the finished pad instead of parking it on the dirt beside the pad, because 675 pounds is easy to move today and impossible once there is water in it. Then prove the installation before it goes to work: fill it with clean water, hold it, and watch the base, the pad edge and the outlet thread through the hold, using the method and the hold times in the hydrostatic test methodology guide. Photograph the outlet from below while the pipe is still off; a weep is far easier to compare against a photograph than against a description. Keep the delivery paperwork with the tank; the serial number on the shell is what a warranty claim starts from.