Product: Rub-R-Kote^TM
Client: Department of National Defence

The Department of National Defence's oil containment dykes couldn't hold water, let alone the fuel oil they were designed to contain in the event a leak from the 3,000-gallon (13,650-litre) tanks they surrounded.

The concrete dykes are supposed to be pumped out after a heavy rain fall, but DND staff found it wasn't necessary; the dykes emptied themselves quite efficiently despite the fact that they were built to be waterproof. Two dykes, about 640 square feet (57.6 square metres) located at the Osborne Head Gunnery Range near Halifax, NS, were only eight years old and had been patched wherever cracks could be seen, according to Contract Insp. Don MacLennan, but they continued to leak.

If oil from a ruptured tank had leaked out as quickly as rainwater, DND would have been looking at a hefty bill for site excavation and polluted soil treatment, MacLennan said. Instead he called PERMA-DRY to treat one of the two dykes on site.

PERMA-DRY's solution was to apply a protective lining of PERMA-DRY Rub-R-Kote to the base and eight inches (20.5centimetres) up the sides of the concrete dyke.

"I was down there after a heavy rain we'd had," MacLennan says. "The dyke that had been treated had three inches of water in it and the sumps were all full. The other one had not a drop of water in it. We're so pleased with the job PERMA-DRY did on the dykes that we've asked them to do the others.