A project underway at Catalyst Paper Corporation’s Powell River division requires skills with roots in the industry’s earlier days. Jeff Wells, owner of Wells Consultants Inc., is replacing a 52-year-old wood stave tank. A stave is a board in a wooden barrel or keg.
The new tank is replacing one built in 1959 that was deteriorating. Recently the roof started to cave in, Wells said, which contaminated the pulp in it. It’s used for pulp storage for the TMP (thermo-mechanical pulp) building.
The inside diameter of the tank is 54 feet and the stave height is 57 feet, four inches. It sits on top of a six-foot concrete base. It’s being made from four-inch-by-six-inch yellow cedar, cut in British Columbia and Oregon. The staves were supplied by an eastern-based company, called Canbar. “They are the only Canadian suppliers of wood staves,” said Wells. “It was cut out here, shipped to Ontario, milled there and shipped back here.”
The tank is held together by one-inch diameter steel rods, which are known as bands. “If you can picture a wooden barrel, you realize that it has steel bands around it. If you take the steel bands off, the barrel falls to pieces. It’s the same with a wooden tank.”
It will take Wells three months to demolish the old tank and build the new one. He started in March and expects to be finished by the end of June.
Back in the 1950s, wood was inexpensive. While it costs more now, replacing the tank with wood is the least expensive option. “At the present moment, the concrete base that it sits on is designed to hold a wooden tank,” Wells explained. “If they were to change it to a tile-lined concrete tank or a steel tank, it would need a whole new base and new footings and the cost would be astronomical. This is the cheapest thing that they could do, take this tank down and simply put new walls and a roof on it. That’s basically what we’re doing.”
Wells has been in the business for 46 years and has had his own company for 30 years. He started it in Chilliwack, then moved to Chemainus on Vancouver Island, then to Shawnigan Lake and from there to Black Creek. “I moved to the island because the majority of pulp mills are on the island. It’s also closer to get to Powell River than it is from Vancouver.”
The number of tanks Wells builds varies from year to year. The wooden tank in Powell River is the first he has built in British Columbia for three years. In a busy year, he can build seven or eight tanks.
Wells also builds wood stave pipelines, which are used to carry water to a pulp mill or for hydro electricity. There are many wood stave pipelines in the province, said Wells, and they can be anywhere from four feet to 12 feet in diameter. “There are lots of them around, but people don’t know it. They drive up and down the island on the highway and they’re crossing them quite often.”
In Campbell River, there are three 12-foot diameter pipes running from the John Hart Dam. Those pipelines are going to be replaced with a tunnel in the near future, said Wells. “It will be the end of those ones.”
Wells said he became involved in wood stave tanks accidentally. “Just out of school, I was looking for work. I came over to Vancouver Island because somebody said there was a lot of work over there. I ended up at the Harmac pulp mill, which was being built at the time. They were adding new pipelines and I got on with a company called Pacific Coast Pipe. I found it interesting.”
Wells was asked if he wanted to build a tank in Gold River. “They were building the Gold River town and pulp mill at that time. I thought, that will be different, so I went and built the tank and just went on from there.”
Wells sometimes works for an American company, called International Tank and Pipe, because sometimes he’s not that busy. “They’ve sent me to Australia twice and I’ve just got back from Louisiana. I was down there for six weeks.
“I manage to keep busy that way because there just isn’t enough work around. It’s a dying industry. It was a dying industry when I started in 1981. I had no idea that I would keep going this long.”
For new pulp mills, tanks are either tile-lined concrete or stainless steel. Wood isn’t used anymore. “We also don’t use wood for residential water tanks anymore. At one time, all little towns had wooden water tanks.“
For example, Lund has a wooden water tank, Wells said, and the municipal water supply in Port Alice uses a wooden tank. “But when it gets replaced, it will get replaced with bolted steel. They’re cheaper and they go up quicker. Wood is expensive now.”
It will cost Catalyst about $1.25 million to replace the wood stave tank, Wells said. His contract is for $500,000 and it cost the company $750,000 to buy the tank, he added. “They put that tank up in 1959 for $36,000—the whole tank, supervision, labour, materials, everything. So you can see they were very, very cheap. In those days, we were building like crazy. Not anymore.”
The yellow cedar is not only hard to find, but a select grade is used, said Wells. “It has very few knots in it. The knots that are in it are tight and don’t travel right through. It’s all end-grain cut. It’s very expensive wood. But it lasts and does an excellent job.”
Wood tanks last 35 to 40 years, normally with no maintenance at all. Either yellow cedar or Douglas fir can be used, but tanks with yellow cedar usually last 10 years longer, Wells said. “If they want to pay the premium, they don’t have to worry about it for another 10 years. When they build these things, they never know how long the pulp mill is going to be there. They’re now putting up a tank that is designed to last 35 to 40 years, but they have no idea whether there will be a pulp mill there 40 years from now.”
The wood from the old tank will be chipped and used as hog fuel. The roof, which is creosoted, will be taken away by Augusta Recyclers Inc. and all the steel will be recycled.
Wells has worked a number of times in Powell River over the years and he enjoys coming here, he said. “I’ve replaced every tank in the mill, except for the ones they don’t require anymore. They’ve just been demolished and never used again.”
Wells said there are only two tanks left at the mill that could be replaced and one of them is empty right now and may or may not ever be used. “I don’t think there’s a lot of work for me in Powell River coming up.”
But Wells also inspects tanks. “They get me in on an annual basis. If it’s a new tank, it’s every five years. As it gets older, we shorten it up, just to make sure that we’re not going to have any surprises. We don’t want a tank coming down.”
As well as inspections, Wells makes repairs and changes roofs. “Whatever comes along. It’s pretty good. I like it.”
