Industrial Sandblasting in The Woodlands, TX

The Woodlands and North Houston sit in the heart of the region's energy, oilfield and industrial corridor, with plenty of heavy equipment, work trucks and fleets along I-45 and the highway corridors. Humid air holds moisture against bare and chipped steel most of the year and speeds up corrosion; heavy rain, tropical storms and hurricanes — including the flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 — leave equipment, trailers and structural steel sitting in water and rusting. Steel left outdoors in this climate rusts fast, and a coating over rust and mill scale fails fast because it bonds to the rust, not the steel.

Blasting to a clean, profiled surface first is what makes an industrial coating or powder coat hold up. Practical care helps: keep up with a coating maintenance plan on steel and equipment, touch up chips before rust spreads, re-coat rust spots early, and don't let storm water sit on stored steel. General guidance only — we'll tailor it to your equipment.

Is this the right fit? The right method is decided after we see the equipment or steel. Some items — thin sheet metal, plastic, fiberglass, certain cast parts — may warp, pit or outgas, and tanks may need special handling. Paint on steel from before 1978 may contain lead and may need to be tested and handled under the rules that apply; we never blast lead paint without precautions. Send photos or specs and we'll tell you straight.

Structural steel has to be blast-cleaned before a coating or intumescent paint bonds. We blast beams, columns and fabricated steel to a clean, profiled surface — to SA 2.5 or the spec on the job — so the coating grips the steel instead of the mill scale and rust that come on it from the mill. Whether it's a building frame, a skid, or a platform, the prep is what sets the coating up to last.

Old, peeling paint and rust on heavy equipment comes off with abrasive blasting, leaving clean metal ready to re-coat. We blast machinery, skids and equipment frames — in the yard or on your site when it can be contained — and leave the surface ready for an industrial coating. We'll tell you what we can do on-site and what has to come to us.

Fleet trucks and equipment rust fast in this climate, and a maintenance blast-and-coat plan keeps them in service longer than waiting until the frame is eaten. We blast truck frames, bodies and equipment on a schedule — monthly, quarterly, whatever your fleet needs — and coat them so the rust doesn't come straight back. Tell us your fleet size and the cadence you want and we'll quote a plan.

For heavy paint stripping and rust removal, abrasive blasting is the fastest way to clean steel. It cuts paint, rust and old coatings down to bare metal in one pass and leaves a profiled surface that a new coating bonds to. We do this on equipment, skids, tanks and fabricated steel — anything that needs to be stripped down and re-coated.

Blast-cleaning grades describe how clean the surface has to be before coating. The grades run from a brush-off (loose stuff only) up to near-white and white metal. SA 2.5 — from the ISO 8501-1 standard — means very thorough blast cleaning: at least 95% of the surface is free of visible mill scale, rust, paint and foreign matter, with only light staining left. It's often called near-white metal and is roughly equivalent to SSPC-SP 10 / NACE No. 2. We blast to the grade your spec or coating calls for.

What drives the cost? The size and number of items, how much paint and rust has to come off, the blast-cleaning grade (SA 2.5 costs more than a brush-off), the coating or prep that follows, and whether the work is in our yard or on your site (travel and containment). We give you a real number after we see the job or the spec.