By Garret Leiva
Herald editor
With two hands firmly griping his long handle roller brush, John Page applies another millage of clear sky blue paint beneath the letters 'w' and 'n'. Back and forth he rolls out the urethane top coat seemingly unfazed that at this very moment he is dangling more than 100 feet off the ground.
Photo by Garret Leiva
John Page paints the Blair Township water tower.
Balancing in an aerial bucket suspended along the side of a water tower is not a job for everyone. After all, 14 years ago the very notion made Page's stomach turn.
"I started out painting oil tanks and a fellow I was working with asked me if I wanted to try water towers. I told him no way, I was afraid of heights. You couldn't get me 10 feet off the ground," said Page, foreman of a three man crew painting the towering foot water tank recently erected off M-37 in Blair Township.
These days, however, Page and his crew spend the better part of the year brushing, rolling and sandblasting at elevations far exceeding 10 feet. It is a job without a cushy corner office window, but the view provides a perspective on the world few will ever see.
While the Grand Rapids based Dave Cole Decorators crew travels from Michigan to Maine and South Carolina to Minnesota, sight-seeing is merely a fringe benefit of working several stories up. Instead, the precise process of painting a water tower takes a deft sense of touch and around 110 gallons of industrial grade paint.
Page noted that the Blair Township water tower was already "shop primed" but still required sandblasting on each welded section or where abrasions occurred while erecting the tank. After the dust settled, the crew spot primed both the exterior and the interior of the tower before applying 50 gallons of a light blue intermediate coat several millimeters thick. The last step is an exterior urethane top coat paint, in this case 50 gallons clear sky blue. Mural work and stenciled letters are left to an in-house artist.
While many people are surprised that the crew sprays the interior of a water tower - aided by a compressor spray gun and a respirator suit supplying fresh air - equally amazing is the amount of hands-on exterior work.
Unable to tape over nearby towering trees and mask rolling meadows with newspaper, the paint crew "builds up the millage" using rollers and brushes. "The first job or two in the spring you get pretty sore," said Page, who noted that between a dozen hand brushes and two dozen rollers are typically used on an average size water tower.
While it takes a fair amount of muscular brawn to paint a water tower, it also requires a calculating mind.
First and foremost the square footage must be added up to determined the correct amount of paint for the job. If the millage is layered too thick then a shortage is created and an idle crew waits for the specialty paint to arrive. All of which doesn't make for a happy foreman, noted Page.
"A lot of people think you go up there and throw a coat of paint on and you're done but it is actually pretty technical work. When you need to put paint on a certain thickness it takes awhile to get the hang of it," said Page, who spent Thursday morning harnessed to an aerial "spider" as he rolled top coat paint near the 'Blair Township' letters adorning the bowl area of the water tank.
On the job for only three months, Scott Miller is still picking up these intricacies. Trimming in the hand rails and vents high atop the water tower, the Ohio resident admits there is one thing he hasn't bothered to learn - the number of steps leading up and down the tower.
"It's better to not count them," said Miller, as he dusted away debris gathered around the base of a ventilation shaft.
Repetitive stair climbing and solid weeks of rain aside, water tower paint crews are able to perceive a city in a way life-long residents may never witness. Sometimes, however, it is simply about enjoying the view.
"I'm not just saying it because we're here right now, but I really like it here. You can see the whole lay of the land, including the two bays. It really looks pretty from up here," Page said.
