How To Paint Your Stock Tank Pool

When we first got our stock tank pool last year, I immediately painted the outside. I did a little bit of research and found that I should use paint that works well with metal and that was about it. Well let’s just say it was a major fail. The blue paint I used immediately chipped off of the tank. I ended up having to scrape the whole thing and start again. It was a huge pain. What I learned is that you need to prime the stock tank pool before doing any kind of painting. After I had primed the outside I painted the blue on top and it stuck really well and didn’t chip.

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For the inside we used flex seal. It recommended in one of the videos we watched. DO NOT USE FLEX SEAL. It immediately chipped on the inside. We left it for the remainder of the summer last year and it was constantly peeling off and getting stuck in the pool pump. This year we scrapped off all of the flex seal and it took hours. I never in my life want to do that again. At this point all of the galvanized parts of the metal are basically gone from all of the sanding we had to do to get up the flex seal.

I put a picture up on Instagram about having to sand the flex seal and I had some people send me messages that I should use High Performance Epoxy from Sherwin Williams. Determined to never sand a stock tank pool again, we did a ton of research. This epoxy is used on the outside of oil rigs and is basically as tough and resilient as you can get. It is a bit more pricey but was so worth it.

The epoxy comes in two parts. You have to mix them together to get the right combination for the epoxy to work. I bought a separate bucket to mix everything in. This stuff is heavy duty and you will for sure want to wear a mask and gloves. The rollers, brushes, and paint holders were all thrown away when we were done. We mixed the full gallon and it was enough to do two coats on the outside and inside of the tank. I wish we would have mixed only part of part A with part B, painted two coats and let it dry and then painted another coat. Ours looks great now and has no chipping but we did end up throwing some of the paint away. You have a small window to actually paint it all once you have mixed it together because it does dry pretty quickly.

We let our tank cure for seven days before doing anything else. I did paint a small amount of the blue paint on the side to see if it would stick. It did stick pretty well but I can tell if I were to roll it around (which we won’t be doing) it will chip just a little bit. I really love the blue color and wanted to use it because we still had a lot left from last year. If it does chip a little bit I will just paint over the top of it again next season with the blue and it will be fine. The inside should never had to painted again. I saw someone on instagram use this epoxy and has had his tank painted for three years with no chips.

Emily Wehner