Field Erected Tanks Fabrication Experts

T BAILEY LLC builds field erected tanks for water, fuel, and oil storage projects where the finished tank is too large to ship in one piece. We fabricate and coat the steel at our Anacortes, Washington facility, then send our own crews to the job site to assemble the tank where it will spend its working life.

Field erection is how the largest storage tanks get built, and it rewards a contractor who can carry every phase without handing work to outside vendors. We self-perform fabrication, surface preparation, coatings, quality control, and on-site construction, so a single accountable team takes your project from raw plate to a commissioned tank.

For decades, our field erected storage tanks have served municipalities, military installations, refineries, ports, and private developers across the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Hawaii.

What Field Erected Tank Construction Involves

A field erected tank is fabricated in sections at a shop, shipped to the project site, and welded together in place. The approach exists because of a hard transport limit. A shop-built tank tops out at roughly a 12-foot diameter, the widest load a standard highway trailer can carry, which corresponds to capacities up to about 50,000 gallons. Anything larger has to be assembled where it stands.

Field erected tank construction methods start with the same precision fabrication as shop work. Plate is cut, rolled, and prepped under controlled conditions, then staged for shipment as shell courses, roof sections, and accessories. New field erected tank construction then shifts to the site, where certified field welders build the tank course by course. The result is a vessel of nearly any practical size, built to the same code requirements as its shop-built counterpart.

Codes, Standards, and Applications

Our field fabricated tanks fall into two families that cover most of the market.

• AWWA D100 water storage. We have a long record of building large welded steel reservoirs and standpipes for municipalities, private developers, and water treatment facilities, including structures well over 100 feet tall and reservoirs holding millions of gallons.
• API 650 fuel and oil storage. We have constructed API 650 tank farms for military installations, refineries, seaports, and energy facilities, including tanks 120 feet in diameter, along with UL 142 vessels where the project calls for them.

Field erected storage tanks in fuel service are also subject to federal oversight, and we build to the requirements that apply, including the EPA’s regulations for field-constructed tanks. For upright tanks that fit within shop-transportable dimensions, our vertical storage tanks page covers that side of our work. Between the two services, we can match the build method to the capacity your project actually needs.

Fabrication and Field Erected Steel Tank Capabilities

Field erected steel tanks demand fabrication equipment sized for heavy plate, and our 120,000-square-foot facility was built for exactly that. Our plate rollers cold-form steel up to 10 feet wide and 2.75 inches thick, our CNC plasma and water-table cutting machines hold tight dimensional tolerances on shell and roof plate, and 20-ton overhead bridge cranes move sections through the shop without bottlenecks.

That capacity matters on a field-erected job because every course that arrives on site dimensionally correct is a course your schedule never waits on. Our full range of steel fabrication services also covers nozzles, stairways, ladders, platforms, and other tank accessories.

Surface Preparation and Coatings

Corrosion protection applied in a controlled shop outperforms protection applied in the open, so we blast and coat tank components before they ever leave our property. Our 14,000-square-foot coatings facility sits alongside the fabrication shop, and our Wheelabrator system blasts both sides of a plate simultaneously to a uniform profile before priming.

Shipping pre-primed steel plate to the site protects the steel during transport and staging, and it cuts the field coating scope down to weld seams and touch-up. For owners, that means a tighter site schedule and a coating system whose critical layers went on under shop conditions rather than at the mercy of the weather.

On-Site Tank Construction

Site work is where a field erected tank project succeeds or stalls, and it is the phase we staff with our own people. As a general contractor, we can perform site preparation, foundations, and utility installation along with the tank itself, so the scope does not get split across firms that have never worked together.

Our field steel construction operation assembles the tank using AWS D1.1 certified welders, cranes with capacities up to 60 tons, and automated vertical seam welding equipment that delivers consistent, code-quality shell welds at production speed. Our crews have erected tanks in coastal wind, mountain snow, and remote terrain, and that experience shows up as a build that keeps moving when conditions turn against it.

Quality Control and Certifications

Every field erected tank we build runs under our Quality Management System, overseen by our Director of Quality Assurance, who holds credentials as both a CWB Certified Welding Supervisor and an AWS Certified Welding Inspector. He qualifies our welders and welding procedures to code and to your specifications, in the shop and in the field, and inspection is documented as the work happens rather than reconstructed afterward.

Our certifications include AISC Certified Fabricator status with Sophisticated Paint Endorsements and SSPC QP3 certification for shop-applied coatings, credentials that few regional tank builders hold together. That oversight is why owners in regulated water and fuel sectors return to us for repeat work.

Why Choose T BAILEY LLC for Field Erected Tanks

Many field erected tank companies are either fabricators who subcontract the site work or erectors who buy their steel elsewhere. We are both halves of that equation. The crew setting shell courses on your site works for the same company that rolled the plate, which means accountability has nowhere to hide when conditions change.

Add fabrication capacity sized for oversized components, in-house coatings that ship protected steel to the site, and shipping access by road, rail, and deep-water port for remote and coastal projects, and you get a contractor built for the jobs that smaller shops have to decline. For owners, that combination translates into fewer vendors to manage and a schedule with fewer seams for delay to creep through.

Start Your Field Erected Tank Project

If your project calls for a reservoir, standpipe, or tank farm beyond shop-transportable size, we are ready to talk through capacity, codes, site conditions, and schedule. Contact T BAILEY LLC to request a bid for your field erected tanks, and bring your drawings if you have them, because a field erected storage tank project moves fastest when build method and design are matched early.