Do you have a trench drain or floor sink on your Chicago property that is nearing the end of its useful life? If you do, you’re probably thinking about having it replaced. However, epoxy coating can restore your trench drain or floor sink without the cost or excavation needed with a traditional replacement.
What is a Trench Drain?
A trench drain is a drainage system that is set into the ground and contains slats or grates over the pipe. They are used to funnel excess stormwater away from the property. If the trench drain just handles rainwater, it’s usually connected to the city’s stormwater management system. However, if it contains chemicals, it’s usually pumped into a holding tank. Trench drains can be found outdoors around parking lots, in parking garages, and around driveways. Trench drains are also used around pools, at airports, and even inside places like car washes, loading docks, and breweries.
What is a Floor Sink?
A floor sink is a lot like a trench drain in that they are set into the floor or ground and allow water, soap, and chemicals to leave the area. Restaurants, carpet cleaning companies, laundromats, and dog grooming establishments typically have floor drains to help manage excess water on the floors. They also tend to have mop sinks or doggy bathing sinks that are on the floor.
These should be inspected and cleaned regularly in order to ensure they are in good condition and functioning properly. If you have a floor sink or drain that is slow or backs up after a few seconds, it may have a clog or crack that needs to be repaired. The good news is that epoxy coating can be used to restore all of these different drain types.
Understanding When It’s Time to Rehabilitate Trench Drains and Floor Sinks
Trench drains, garage drainage systems, floor sinks, and mop sink drains can last between 20 and 30 years or longer, depending on the material of the drain and what types of liquids are sent down them. The most common reason metal drains fail is due to corrosion and getting cracks and holes in the pipes. Once a crack or hole forms, solid particles can get stuck in those spaces and attract more debris. This can lead to clogs. For drains that are constructed out of PVC or CPVC, corrosive chemicals, like road salt and harsh soaps and cleaning liquids, can eat holes through the pipe, or shifting soil around the pipe can crack it. If your trench drain is more than 20 years old, or you are noticing that the drain is slow or backing up, it’s probably time to have it inspected and repaired.
How Epoxy Lining Restores Trench Drains and Floor Sinks
Epoxy lining coats and seals existing drain pipes in order to restore their functionality and increase their expected useful life. This can be done with an epoxy coating, which is a type of resin that cures into a solid, or it can be done with an epoxy-soaked pipe liner, which creates a pipe within a pipe.
When most business owners and property managers think about restoring floor sinks and trench drains, they usually envision jackhammers tearing up concrete and ruining the flooring. Once the pipes have been replaced, the traditional method often means hiring additional contractors to repair the concrete and install new flooring.
The good news is that epoxy lining doesn’t involve tearing up concrete and flooring in order to reach the drain. Instead, existing access points and even the opening of the drain itself can be used to install epoxy pipe liners and coatings. This makes the process fast and clean. It’s also much less noisy than a traditional pipe replacement.
Timeframes
This process doesn’t take days or weeks. In fact, most sink drains, parking lot drains and trench drains can be lined in a day. If the trench drain is extremely large, the process may take an additional day or two, but once it’s finished, there’s no mess to clean up or extra contractors to hire.
Get Your Floor Sink or Trench Drains Lined with Help From NuFlow, Serving Chicago
If you have garage drains, trench drains, or floor sinks in your commercial or industrial building, consider using pipelining to rehabilitate those drains so that you do not have to incur the cost and hassle of a traditional pipe replacement. Pipelining is fast, environmentally friendly, and cost-effective, and it can be used to restore many different types of drain lines.
To learn more about pipelining for trench drains and floor sinks and to schedule a building pipe assessment, give us a call at 815-790-9000.