Corrosive Resistant Water Treatment SheltersCase Study
32 Shelter Works Fiberglass Shelters Used By Sacramento County Water Agency
Water treatment can be a corrosive business. In order to have clean water, treatment facilities in Sacramento County use sodium hydrochloride to disinfect water once it’s drawn from the well and then they fluoridate using hydroflourosylicic acid. Both are hazardous chemicals that need to be confined, but hydroflourosylicic acid, and particularly the fumes emitted during the fluoridation process, eats away at nearly any surface it comes in contact with. Since both chemical processes happen at the well site, the equipment needs to be contained separately.
Sacramento County Water Agency made the decision to upgrade 32 old Redwood buildings and turned to Shelter Works for its field equipment protection needs. Tracy Switzer, President of Shelter Works, explains, “You can’t mess around with this stuff. This was a big project, and it was important to them that they work with a high-quality company that had specific QC procedures in place. The interior partition wall created an airtight environment that met their needs perfectly.”
There were nine fiberglass shelters to be placed at water treatment plants and 23 shelters at individual well sites throughout Sacramento County. Because those individual well sites are situated within residential neighborhoods, they needed to be visually appealing as well as corrosive resistant. In order to contain the fumes and keep the equipment from corroding, Shelter Works supplied a series of multi-room fiberglass buildings to contain the fumes in one room and allow other equipment to be protected in another room. Airtight partitions separate the equipment and protect each from harmful effects of the other, as well as protecting from the elements.