The volume of sand in that 200-foot storge tank was another reason Mike Birney began to look for alternatives. Each nozzle used five tons of abrasives, for a total of 20 tons of spent abrasive and paint chips piled up by the end of the day. With a surface area of 35,000 square feet, it was estimated that 175 tons of lead-contaminated sand would be produced by conventional blasting enough to send 18 filled container trucks off to a hazardous waste disposal site. Using recyclables, eight partially filled 55-gallon drums of paint chips and dust were the end result. But it's right here that cost needs to be examined.
Steel grit is many times more expensive per ton than sand or black beauty.
That initial cost difference turns off some potential customers, but recyclable abrasives can really only be viewed as a long-term deal. He gave an example of a cost study his firm recently did for the Coast Guard. It's hard to argue with numbers like that, but then one must look at the equipment cost. But you can afford it if the job dictates it, because everybody's going to be looking at it the same way. Hitzrot doesn't deny the big upfront money, but said that the industry is now looking at downsizing the equipment to make it more compatible with smaller-size jobs.