Snyder Industries 16500 Gallon Black Heavy Duty Vertical Storage Tank

Lincoln, Nebraska, and a 257 inch shell on the highway

Lincoln, Nebraska is where this one is molded, and a central plant is the best thing that can happen to a freight bill on a tank this size, because the lane to a Midwest, Plains or Mountain dock is short and even the coasts are one long haul rather than two. What the lane is not is ordinary. At 142 inches across and 257 inches long the shell travels on an open deck as an over-dimensional load at class 300, routed and permitted, so the bill depends on the road as much as the mileage. Walk the route in before you order: the gate, the turn into the yard, the overhead lines, and where a crane can stand with 11 feet 10 inches of tank swinging. Price it to your ZIP in the freight cost estimator and treat the listed price as before freight. The pad is the next decision and on a 1.9 wall it is the big one, because this tank is bought to hold something heavy: the rating allows 261,459 pounds of contents where plain water would be 137,610, and every pound of it bears on a 142 inch circle, since a rotationally molded floor carries on its whole floor. That slab is engineered to the concrete pad sizing framework rather than poured by rule of thumb, level and in full contact, inside containment sized to the tank, and on a dense regulated liquid the containment is usually the local requirement and not a preference. Twenty-one feet of empty shell on an eleven foot circle wants banding to structure or to slab anchors before the first fill. Check the volume against the draw in the tank sizing calculator, and take the reserve and the thermal freeboard from the tank sizing guide.

The 1.9 wall in the 142 by 257 inch shell

Four walls share this 142 by 257 inch shell and they fit the same pad, take the same 18 inch manway and ride the same lane, so the choice between them is a chemistry and density question rather than a fit question. Buy this one when the liquid is dense: it is the tank in the shell that the sheet rates at 1.9, and the 261,459 pounds of contents it allows is what you are paying for. The 5380000C37-BLACK is the same shell at the same 5,100 pounds empty with a lighter rating on its own sheet, which is the better buy on a liquid no heavier than water, and the 5380000N40 is the other wall listed in this footprint, rated as its own sheet says. The 5380000C126 is listed at 3,000 pounds empty against this tank's 5,100 in the same dimensions; the sheet gives both figures and we print what it says. If the roof is the binding constraint rather than the floor, the 3030100C26 lays 15,000 gallons down to 184 inches on a 165 inch base; if you need more inventory and have the height, the 3030000N49 goes to 18,800.

Comparing across brands too? Call 866-418-1777; we carry Norwesco, Snyder, Chem-Tainer, Enduraplas and Bushman and will say which one fits, or price the freight first.

Twenty-one feet five inches to the lid, and the field that reads 26

• The manway is the access and the height is the work: an 18 inch threaded, vented manway sits at 257 inches, twenty-one feet five inches above the pad. Reaching it is a fixed platform with a rail and a gate or a caged ladder to a landing, never a leaned ladder, and the fill line is landed permanently at the manway so a driver is not hauling a hose overhead in the dark. Eighteen inches admits a cleaning wand, a level probe and a vent comfortably; it does not admit a person, so interior work is done from outside the shell.
• Outlet: the sheet's outlet field reads "26" and no pipe size appears anywhere on the sheet. A bare number is not a diameter, so we print it as it stands: the sheet lists the outlet as 26. Tell us the liquid, the density you are actually storing and the draw-off you want at order, and we confirm what this molding accepts and in what material before anything is drilled.
• Fill and vent: a dip tube to the floor, because a dense liquid dropped twenty-one feet into a headspace splashes the gasket seat and the wall above the liquid line; the vent run outdoors on anything that fumes and sized to the delivery pump.
• Service limit: 120 F / 48 C. Warranty: 3 year. Rating: specific gravity 1.9 as the sheet gives it.

On a 1.9 wall the discipline below the tank matters more than on any lighter one. Whatever draw-off is fitted gets its own support off the pad with a flexible connector between the shell and hard pipe, never rigid pipe bolted to the tank, because 257 inches of dense standing liquid puts more static pressure on a base fitting than the same fitting ever sees on a squat tank. Above the liquid the headspace band is what to inspect, with a light, every time the manway is open, and a black wall gives you no level to read from the ground, so a sender and a local readout are part of the install rather than an upgrade. Label the wall with the one liquid inside in letters a driver reads from the cab, and where winters freeze, protect the base piping and the first valve rather than the body, which takes ice from the top down without harm.

Dense liquid, and a 261,459 pound allowance

The buyers for a 1.9 wall at this volume are the ones storing something heavier than water by the truckload: a mineral or brine concentrate at a mine or a drilling yard, a dense agricultural solution at a retailer that turns its inventory once a season, a plating or process chemical at an industrial plant, and a municipal plant whose bulk feed chemical is well above the density of water. In every case the tank is the cheap part of the installation and the pad and the containment are not, which is why the density gets confirmed before the slab is designed and not after. Where a second wall is required, the freeboard sizing article shows what a contained vessel really returns in usable volume once thermal expansion and density are accounted for. Water at 8.34 pounds per gallon is far inside this rating, but a private fire reserve is a separate specification in a water-rated vessel, which the fire-water reservoir design guide explains, and where a reuse system needs a bulk stage between treatment steps the industrial water reuse tank topology article places a vessel of this size in the train.

Freight class 300 on a 5,100 pound empty shell

Class 300 and 5,100 pounds shipping weight from Lincoln, Nebraska is what the sheet gives, shipping at 142 inches by 142 inches by 257 inches. Unloading wants a crane or a heavy forklift with long forks, straps under the body and never a sling through the manway, and the tank goes straight onto the cured pad inside its containment rather than onto gravel it will later be dragged off. Fill it with water to the manway before anything dense ever goes in, hold it there long enough to walk the base and the containment floor twice, then drain it and let it dry; a cold water hold is the cheap way to find a pad problem and a full load of dense liquid is the expensive way. Then put the density you are actually storing on the wall next to the liquid's name, because the rating on the sheet is what the next operator needs to know and will not otherwise find. Write the commissioning date on the manway rim with a paint marker, because that is the one fact people lose first. Write the fill date on the manway with a paint marker; it answers the first question anyone asks about a tank.