Safety of epoxy resins in direct and constant contact with ...

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So I live in a flat on a six-flats building and thus it has a tank of water in the basement to provide pressure to the tap water of all the taps in the building. Recently the administrator of the building decided to do something with the tank without asking the neighbours. He called a construction company and asked them to waterproof the tank using epoxy resin. They worked on it without saying something to the neighbours and painted with that epoxy all the walls of the tank. (Meanwhile the used another tank, as the building has two.)

Now, on Thursday they reconnected the water to the tank after the curation period was supposed to be passed completely and all the neighbours began to feel a very bad and unpleasant smell to paint, glue or dissolvent coming out of the taps when using the water. That was so much like this that another neighbour came to my house saying that we should not drink the water. I repeat that we didn&#;t know what was done.

To shorten out, I talked with the administrator about this and told me what he had done. But the only solution that he gave to me is to let the epoxy resin cure for longer! But I and other neighbours want it out of our water tank. The experience made us feel unsafe on our own house. We do not know to what amount of dissolvent we were exposed.

That cannot be solved, but now my question is how safe is to have that water tank coated (in the inside, so direct contact with the water!) with epoxy in general? I heard that long exposition to epoxy resins (even cured) might be mutagenic and carcinogenic because of the presence of epichlorohydrin on it.

And now the solution is not clear at all for me. Is it possible to just put that resin out of the tank or the process would be worse that just letting it there, as I suppose it would require absurd amounts of solvents?

Since all the epoxy marketing experts seems to be in this forum I thought I might throw this out.

I need to stabilized some punky/wormy soft wiliwili (hawaiian balsa wood) bits and pieces inorder to drill them out and turn them on a high speed lathe into pen barrels. Its the remains of the dozen or so iolani palace wiliwili tree branches we saved from several years ago so I'm trying to save and use what ever I don't put on the surface of an EPS blank. Most stabilization processes involve an autoclave, high pressure or vacuums and sometype of penetrating acrylic or epoxy solution. Some folks even use a solution of plexiglass chips dissolved in acetone to harden or petrifi spalted soft woods.

Anyway is there a calculation out there as to the effects on kicking of lets say a 70% xylene diluted epoxy mix?

And should you add in the xylene after mixing parts a and b or all togethor?

Also does anyone know who makes the lowest viscosity epoxy on the market before having to add in solvents?

There is some application of this to composite board building as I previously used some low viscosity ResinX epoxies to help with Greenlight bamboo jersey glassing as well as in getting the epoxy or poly finish coats to fall down flat to eliminate brush strokes and bubbles over the cure time but its always a tricky matter of timing so you don't those avalances of resin sliding off the railbands because of miscalculations. 

 

Goto HumenChem to know more.

So this led me to this other question that been bugging me for years.

Who's sealing their wood skins before the apply them and how?

there was some talk awhile back (bert rumors I guess) about using some type of penetrating solution (epoxy/acrylic) and an autoclave setup to prebuild the skins ahead of time to reduce the amount of resin absorbtion you normally get doing hand layups over dry balsa.

Silly suggested squeeging a thickened paste onto the outside of a skin prior or applying it on or lamming it after to reduce unneeded resin absorbtion and keeping the weight down on boards with 5mm wood skins and solid wood rails.

when I lift the 2 boards i have from Jarrod (Shwuz) i can do it pretty much with 2 fingers.

Its been ages since I've been able to achieve that kind of weight on any of my compsands,

 

so again, to seal wood skins do you use

1. a standard wood sanding sealer(lacquer/water based),

2. a ultra thinned out penetrating epoxy solution or,

3. thickened epoxy paste?

 

Its funny, that in the small object wood turning world, turners defer from epoxy because they can't get the same brilliant polished finish you can get from the application of 6 or more layers of CA glue. I would never envision CA glue as a finish coat on anything, but the pen folks swear by it.  Maybe this carries over to other applications of epoxy as well.

 Its weird not being able to find application for any of my laminating experience in the finishing of a turned item.

Its also weird and at times frightening to have your work spinning around at RPM at you while you engage it holding on to a razor sharp blade with your bare hands.

Cutting your planer cord is nothing compared to have your work disintegrate and explode inches from your face.  thank goodness for my full face 3m respirator

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