Photo: Erik Redman, left, and company owner Curtis Crerar take a break from sandblasting the Three Hills water reservoir August 20. James Crozier, the town's director of operations and infrastructure, said the weatherproof coating will prevent degradation and extend the tank's life. Rural Alberta Report / David Nadeau

Seeing a man kneeling on the grass with a whining vacuum cleaner was the last thing I expected on an industrial work site.

But there he was, carefully vacuuming grit embedded in the grass at the Three Hills in-town water reservoir exterior coating project.  

His boss, Curtis Crerar, owner of Calgary's Concrete Solutions, told him he wanted a clean work site; there's a vacuum in the truck.

Crerar's competitive bid of $95,000 won him the contract to sandblast the 45-year-old 2,955 cubic meter capacity facility.

A much-needed facelift.

Goodbye graffiti. Goodbye peeling concrete flakes. Goodbye looking strained, stained, forlorn, and old. If huge concrete water tanks can be pretty, this one could win a southern Alberta beautiful tank of the year contest. Crerar and team could snag an award for leaving a clean and grit free work site.

The six-person team is nearing the finish line of the three weeks needed to prepare the structure for an external coating that will protect the tank for, as Crerar puts it "many more years of service." When asked about a nice color, perhaps with polka dots, Crerar smiled and shrugged: "Concrete color!"

Wearing ear protection, breathing equipment, and hazmat suits, Crerar and team endure high summer temperatures while using the blaster with its jet-engine whine and billowing dust fog. "Gets so hot," said Crerar, "we don't last much more than thirty to forty minutes per shift." 

It's a busy workplace.

A team member operates the sandblaster; the grit-from-grass vacuuming fellow inches his way around the tank, and others grind out surface cracks that will fill when the external coat is applied.