Summary

We all know that environmental factors affect a coating project. But it's important to remember how diverse geographic locations can complicate those factors. Today, we talk with Matt Morris of Gulf States Protective Coatings about these challenges and the impact that have on an applicator's day-to-day business. All of that and more are coming up next on The Red Bucket.

Timestamps

Click to follow along with the transcript:

•  0:00 - Intro
•  2:04 - Introduction to Matt Morris
•  4:03 - Introduction to Gulf States Protective Coatings
•  4:49 - Painting Tanks in a Coastal Environment
•  6:57 - Wind Complications on a Coating Project
•  9:32 - Shrouding and Salts
•  14:44 - Surface Preparation for Different Areas in a Tank
•  19:25 - Crow's Nests and Complex Angles in Storage Tanks
•  24:26 - Elastomeric Coatings: The Best Friend of a Bolted Ground Storage Tank
•  25:45 - Elastomeric Coatings vs. Epoxy Coatings
•  29:32 - "The Four Questions" [Non-Technical]
•  33:04 - "Tech Tips"
•  33:57 - Closing Remarks

Transcript

Intro

Jack Walker: All right, Paul, here we are again in Houston, Texas. We had a new experience for both of us yesterday.

Paul Atzemis: We sure did. We went to our first rodeo.

Jack: First ever. And it's the largest rodeo of all time.

Paul: And it was a sight like no other sight I have ever been to. It truly was a one-of-a-kind.

Jack: And we were lucky enough we got to see Brooks & Dunn together. At the same time. Not one. I don't know why that's so funny to me, but it is.

Paul: Now, I do have to say. When we were recording earlier, I feel a little better about what happened to me.

Jack: Oh, you feel a little bit more like a "professional." The air quotes.

Paul: Yeah.

Jack: Because yeah, Brooks & Dunn have been around forever. They've played a million concerts, and he dropped the microphone and broke it right in the middle of a song. It's how we knew he was definitely singing live.

Paul: Right? Because it stopped dead. You heard the mic blow up. He picked it up and was trying to sing and had to call the stagehand to come and bring him a new one.

Jack: So, because you knocked your microphone over, you feel a little bit more like Brooks or Dunn. I don't know which one it was because I can't tell the difference between the two of them.

Paul: I don't which one it was either.

Jack: Half of our audience just turned this off right now. So anyway, I apologize to the country music fans.

Introduction to Matt Morris

Jack: Enough about that.

Paul: Yeah, we've got some more Houston to bring to you.

Jack: Yes, we do. We're lucky enough to have Matt Morris from Gulf States Protective Coatings to join us today. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Paul: It's great to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you come from, how you ended up in paint/protective coatings with Gulf States.

Matt: So, right after I got out of high school, I went to the military. And when I got out of the military, I moved back in with my parents temporarily, like most people will do. And there was a family friend that lived there, and he owned a company. So, I was looking at going back to college and trying to do something in the meantime. And he's like, "Hey, during the summer, why don't you come work for me? I can put you on as a field coordinator, see how you like it, do it during your downtime, and just kind of go from there." So, still being young, needing to get out and be able to do stuff for myself. I decided to take the job, and I just ran with it from there. Stopped college and have been there for 17 years since.

Paul: That seems to be the story of how people end up in paint. "I did it one summer." My son, when he was in college, came to work for Carboline one summer, and helped with maintenance group and stuff. And I asked him as we were getting ready for the next summer, "Are you coming back next year?" And he looks at me, he's like, "No, Dad. You guys never leave. You do this a second time, and you're in it forever."

Matt: Yeah, but it's true. One of the things that I encountered whenever I was doing it was that it was always different. I could travel all over. Gulf States is pretty much in the Texas area, but we expand out to the other states as well, up to the East Coast, up north, pretty much everywhere. But what I liked is I would go, there would be new challenges that we might face. I was always learning. You saw some pretty crazy things that happen on these construction sites that really keep it entertaining. So, I just enjoyed it and have been doing it ever since.

Introduction to Gulf States protective coatings

Paul: So, why don't you tell us a little about Gulf States?

Matt: So, as I was saying, Gulf States kind of started because we were doing more of the coastal regions of the country. And then what we pretty much do on the regular is ground storage tanks and elevated storage tanks. We work for general contractors. We do public bids. We do it all. We do welding repairs, you name it. Gulf States has been around since, I believe it was 1992, whenever it was started. I mean, you pretty much call us, and we'll come out there. We've got a name that's pretty well-known around the area. We're starting to branch out more as we're having more and more successful jobs in other places of the country, and our crews look forward to going pretty much anywhere.

Painting tanks in a coastal environment

Jack: Obviously, we're in Houston, Texas. So, as a tank painter here in a coastal environment, there have to be certain considerations that you have to take and factor in that other people may not have to. You want to talk a little bit about that?

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So being on the coast here, we obviously have to deal with salts, and salts being a big issue for coatings. One of the first things that I always sit there, if it's not specified within the spec, which it usually is, is pressure washing. Pressure washing is vital to everything that we do. It has to be done daily. And that's both interior and exterior, if the interior is not closed off properly. We still advise most of the time to run some salt test anyways, even if we have properly closed off the interior, just because it's more of a, it helps us because obviously we don't want to come back and have to, to correct a mistake. So, salt: Huge issue. Another thing that we deal with a lot is shrouding. Being close to the water and everything, you're going to deal normally with more winds that come with that. So, shrouds can be a huge issue with trying to raise and lower them. So, you really kind of just start getting into how much of the shrouding is actually needed? Texas here, we deal with TCEQ for our environmental regulations. If we're within 500 feet of a residence, we have to shroud some way. They've got different ways of shrouding: could be wet blasting, it could be vacuum blasting, it could be full-on shroud containment.

Paul: And does it matter what you're doing? Does it matter if you're roller applying, spray applying? You still have to do it, regardless?

Matt: Typically, it's just for nuisance dust that we mainly have to deal with. Usually, what we like to do is try to get the blasting and the priming done. And then from there, we'll kind of lower it. If winds are a little higher and you've got more residents and things like that, that might be around, you obviously want to avoid overspray. Huge nightmare. Obviously, having to deal with some people that are a little upset that some wind caught some of the material and took it onto their vehicle. They come in pretty hot.

Wind complications on a coating project

Paul: Yeah, and I mean, you're looking at products that sometimes have hours of pot life. That overspray travels a long way in wind.

Matt: I've been told. I've never seen, I've been told it can go up to two miles. So, yes, we are very careful with that. But shrouding is just so hard being on the coast because the winds are so high most of the time. We got a project right now that we're working on that we're just battling. I mean, it's just every single day we've got, I mean, winds to 15, and if it's at 15, and that's the low end? We have a spec, and they call out for a shroud system, and they want a stamp seal drawing from an engineer for the structural part of it and everything. But they will put on there, in they're writing and everything that is submitted, that if it gets above 20 miles an hour, it has to be lowered. Otherwise, you could potentially cause damage to the tank. So, even though you're at 15 (ground level), when you get up a little bit higher, it is a lot worse.

Paul: Yeah. I've recently picked up a new hobby of drone flying. And as I've gotten them, you know, you get 200 feet in the air, 300 feet in the air. It is an entirely different wind pattern than it is at 20, 30 feet.

Matt: Yeah. The drones have been a new thing in our industry, at least when it comes to everyone has a drone now. Before, if you wanted to come up and see progress on the tank and everything, you had to climb. Now everyone has a license to fly a drone or whatever they have, and they just start flying them up there and whipping them all around. And there's been a couple of times actually that my painters were not aware. And I'll let you know. Scares the heck out of them.

Paul: I bet. And I bet that doesn't go over well. When you get a guy who's suspended from the side of a tank to now, he’s scared.

Matt: Can you imagine looking over your shoulder and seeing one of those, it's like, "Whoa, where did that come from?"

Paul: And we've been here in Houston this week, and I've been watching these trees outside the windows, and they are nonstop.

Matt: Oh, yes.

Paul: It has been a windy week.

Matt: Yes, it has. Especially yesterday because I was on a tank, and we were up there, and that was that one I was just talking about. And we had the shroud down and everything but if you've seen the shroud systems, at least the full containment ones, then you still leave the cap up there or the bonnet. So, the bonnet being up there, and I was inside the tank looking at some repairs and stuff that we were going to have to do, and it's just, "Woo woo, woo, woo woo." I was like, "My Lord, is the roof going to come off this thing?"

Shrouding and salts

Jack: So, we talked about some of the things related to coastal non-coastal with the DH and the salts, and we asked about shrouding. So, shrouding is mainly to keep the dust in, or the dust-out, or kind of a combination of both?

Matt: It's to keep the dust to the construction site. That's typically what our writing will say is that you have got to confine it to the site. Once it escapes the site, then you can start having issues.

Paul: So, the other thing we talked about a little bit was salt. Now, being coastal, salt is in the air. It's going to come in. What are your main methods for looking at trying to maybe control it, limit it, or how do you deal with it when you don't have it? You had mentioned having to do a lot of pressure washing, what do you use to help mitigate those problems?

Matt: So, if we're directly on the coast, a lot of times what we'll use is a HoldTight or one of those when we're doing our blasting. And what we have to do every morning when we come in is, typically it's going to take about two hours, we'll go ahead, and we'll blast or pressure wash the areas that we're blasting for that day. And I say two hours because by the time we get up into place, do it, bring it down as we're coming down, and then it drying, you're going to lose two to three hours of productivity for that day. Main thing I tell them all the time is test kits. Just keep on testing, do multiple ones a drop. They'll never have an issue from me, I've told them to purchase salt test kits because, ultimately, if there is an issue, we're coming back to do a lot of rework and that $100 salt kit isn't really a big deal in the grand scheme of things. We'll pressure wash a lot. We'll test a lot. And then after that, you just kind of have to start looking for things and things like that that might stand out to you. It could be anything. I mean, if we're coming into a tank to get started and you start to see where there has been salt issues, then you know that it could be right beside the water, it could be a mile from the water, or two miles from the water. Because with the way the winds, like you said, blow in through here, it can travel, and if it settles on the surface, it's got to be removed.

Jack: One of the things that I caught on that you said, and it struck me, and it was something that I didn't realize, power wash every day.

Matt: Every single day.

Jack: Every single day. Test every single day. That's how much salts are in the air down here. They have to constantly battle them every single day. I'm just sitting here as an ex-paint foreman thinking about the lost productivity related to that, and it breaks my brain, Matt.

Matt: It is. It is a lot of time, and you have to factor that in, or you can lose a lot of money quickly with that. And that's one of the things that I think it started sneaking into specs a little bit more these days is because if it's not spelled out, contractors are going out there thinking, "Oh, I'm not," because we might have people from up North that are down here, and they don't understand the corrosive environment. It'll catch you. And if you don't, we know the tanks, you can see them. There's a couple in certain areas around here that they just come off in sheets. I mean, those people did not check the salts, they probably weren't required at the time. And the engineers might not have known enough about it at the time.

Paul: And you know, when they ask somebody like my team, my answers are, "Make sure your salt levels are fine." End of topic. I make a single-line statement, "Check your salts." Not how often, not what are the requirements, not, you know. There's a whole lot of openness that if you're not ready for how bad it is in an area. It's going to catch you.

Matt: Oh, yes. We were doing a project down in Port Aransas, so down by the Corpus area. And one of the things was when we showed up on-site, they had a guy who had been working there. He was like their main director of the area, and he was on top of us as soon as we got there, like, "Hey, this is an issue. I'm just going to let you know. It's so corrosive down here that the life cycle of some AC units is about five to seven years because the corrosion has eaten up the moisture." The area there, it would just rust out. So, if you go down and you look at some of the tanks around there, especially ones that hadn't been properly maintained, they're bad, and I'm talking bad-bad. And that salt will not go. You have a little area, in about a couple of months, that spreads very quickly, and it just goes off on its own.

Jack: I mean, I totally would've fell into the fallacy of, "Well, I power washed it yesterday."

Matt: I still have to remind some people, because I'll get that. "Well, we already pressure washed." "Did you pressure wash today?" "Well, we pressure washed the day before yesterday." "Okay, that's not today. So, we're going to need to pressure wash again." I tell them all the time, "I'm not going to get mad at you about pressure washing." Always pressure wash. Just do it.

Paul: Because it really is, it's one of those, "An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure." And just that little bit of extra time is going to prevent a whole bunch of future problems.

Matt: Absolutely.

Surface preparation for different areas in a tank

Paul: So, in dealing with all these salts, you're bound to come into some areas where they're more affected than other areas. The top of the tank, the inside roof of the tank, you got condensation space. So, you've got area, you know, these tanks aren't airtight. You're going to have airflow in and out, so they're bringing in salts. You're going to have areas of condensation. How do you deal with the surface prep and the results of that surface prep or the process, whether you're talking about the top of the roof of the tank or the floor?

Matt: Well, with regards to salts for the interior, what we'll typically need to do is we try to seal off everything. That could be removing the vents on top of the tanks and sealing them off. That's making sure the hatches are closed. That's covering up the manways and things when you leave. But still, salts can travel just like anything. There's areas of the tanks that it can penetrate. And we just have to go in and pretty much do the same thing. I mean, we want to be careful, we want to run a couple of tests, especially prior to paint application. So, we kind of move there. When it comes to the different steps within a tank, let's talk about a ground storage tank, for instance, you obviously got the roof, the shell, and the floor. One of the things that when we're applying like 100% solids or anything inside of a tank, they'll typically require, depending on the product, full removal of the existing coating system. Or if it's new steel, you're going to have to go ahead and bring it to an SP-10. But on a rehab, you deal with pitted surfaces. We're talking about a tank that's been around for so long, and a lot of times, it can settle in these pitted areas on the roofs around rafters and things like that. The biggest thing that we try to teach with DH or dehumidification is, let's try to do these tanks in three phases. The reason is because of these corroded areas up on the roof will have pitting, we might be able to blast that area. And even though you have DH, the DH can't push across that area and get into those spots, and it starts to turn on you. So, if we can go ahead and do it like a roof: paint out, do our holiday testing, move to the shell, do the same, and then remove the stage out, and paint the floor, it seems to work better, and we don't have to keep going back and doing rework. Because there's been a lot of projects that we've gotten stuck on that some engineers don't want to do it. They think that if you do it in three phases that there could be an issue with, "Oh, the dust could discolor the new paint system that you have on the wall or the roof." We all know from tanks and stuff like that, the water and everything that's inside that tank and the stain that goes on, they're not going to have to worry about anything like that. It's going to be washed away or turned a different color. So, that's kind of really the biggest thing that we try to push is like, "Hey, let's do this in three phases." If we do this, everyone can kind of get in there and take a look. For elevated tanks, it obviously helps because you're making different moves with your swing stage. I mean, moving, for instance, we're doing a 2 million gallon right now in Austin. We've got a 40-foot swing stage inside there. Even though that thing is tied up to cables and motors and all of that, we had a weld inspection for some areas that needed to get checked out. And they were on the shell wall. Now, try telling your guys this has nothing to do with us, "Hey, I need you to move that 40-foot stage off the roof and go ahead and move it over here to the wall." "Well, can't they reach from where they're at?" That's typically what we'll get.

Paul: "Can a step ladder work?"

Matt: Yes. So, what it does is, is if you can get the roof done first and get everything signed off, because that's most of the time where you're going to run into most of your mil stuff, making sure you're meeting spec because you're dealing with rafters and you're dealing with hard areas to reach, and everything is just, it makes life easier for everyone.

Paul: Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. It is an area that'll be difficult to reach, and it is the most problematic. It's the vapor space. And you know, a lot of times, it gets overlooked by the difficulties that are the liquids, the chemicals, the vapors, whatever it is in that vapor space and how they collect and how they aggregate. And honestly, frequently, it is the more aggressive area because, in a lot of cases, that corrosion cell, it needs oxygen, and that helps promote it when you have warm, wet airflow through it. It's an accelerated process that happens where sometimes it's slowed down if it's in water, you've got a little bit of a buffer solution that keeps you slowed. So, that frequently is the more difficult area to work with. So, it makes total sense that, "Let me get that area done."

Crow's nests and complex angles in storage tanks

Matt: Yes, make sure it's good, make sure it's signed off on. When you mention vapor space and things like that in a ground storage tank, it's the reason that crow's nests are so popular. If people aren't familiar with the crow's nest, you have the areas where the rafters come together, where you have a dollar plate that goes straight up into the vent at the center of the roof. Well, because of that vapor that pushes through the ends of those rafters, they get corroded out. So, what we end up having to do is, usually, make about a six-foot diameter crow's nest in a circle that goes up, and what you'll do is you'll weld it to the existing one, and you'll trim back all those rafters. So, what you're doing in the process is you're removing all that corrosion that's going on, but at the same time, you're creating that space for the vapor to travel out. So, that you're not having to deal with the same types of corrosion. You'll see them a lot. I bet if you came across a picture, you would see them.

Paul: Yeah, and in a lot of cases, it's probably, I've seen them and didn't realize that that was an after-effect that was added in.

Matt: Yes. Some tank builders are kind of catching onto it, like, "Hey, we need to either create bigger vents for these areas. We need to find a way that we can go ahead," because it's going to try to escape to where the air's at, and the vents there and all of that area right beneath that starts to eat up pretty good.

Paul: Yeah, absolutely.

Jack: Well, and there's another factor that you kind of said, and I just really kind of want to reemphasize, is the complex geometries that you're dealing with within the roof. It's probably the hardest portion of the tank to coat in general.

Matt: Absolutely.

Paul: And you know, we do know, paint has a tendency, it doesn't want to stick to edges, it's going to crawl away from corners. And when you look at an area that's full of, you know, whether it be rafters or open beams, or whatever that structure is, there's a lot of rigid structure up there. And a lot of edges. And that just makes it all the more complicated and difficult to work on in those areas that, that you're dealing with the difficult to paint spaces, to begin with.

Matt: I'll get handed, you know, wet mil gauges all the time from paint manufacturers, and I will send them out to the guys and tell them, "Hey, you need to be checking your mils. We got 30 mils DFT minimum. You can't be 29 and a half. It has to be 30." And then they'll get done with the roof, and they'll be like, "Oh, we only got this much left." And I'm like, "Okay, what's going on? You know it's 30 mils minimum." And they're like, "Oh yeah, we got our 30." Well, because of the complex angles and everything that they're dealing with, they're 46, 48 mils. I mean, it's high. But at the same time, I understand with the way that they're having to like maneuver to try to hit these areas. They're trying to save a bunch of having to come back, plus they're giving extra protection up in that area to cover all of those areas that you mentioned: the rough edges, if there's any types of rivets, if there's bolts of trays, whatever. We kind of had to start figuring, like, "All right, well it's 30 mils minimum, but 45 on the roof, I guess."

Paul: And you know, that is one of the things that as a formulator from the manufacturer side, when you give it all the thought, you try to look at it and say, okay, very rarely are they going to have a piece of flat steel in a great space where a painter can stand straight in front of it with both feet flat on the ground and paint. So, you try to simulate all those other areas and nuances, and you try to figure out, "What's the maximum DFT I can put on there without it being a problem?" And then you try to relay that information out. We talked earlier, you work with a lot of polyuria, a lot of 100% solids products, so that high end isn't usually a problem, but in some solvented coatings, the maximum thickness is a difficult thing when you're working in complex geometries.

Matt: Well, especially with NSF and everything else that you have to deal with. But for instance, when we go back to the elastomeric bolted ground storage tank. Inside you have those bolt trays, and they'll sit there, and they'll say, "Oh, it's going to be specified as 30 mils." Just like I was saying with the prior one. It's going to have to be holiday tested with high voltage. Okay, well, bolt trays, 30 mils is not going to go over the top. You're going to leave the bolt trays exposed, and you're not going to pass the holiday test. So, it's kind of like, "Hey, you've got to do this, but then you're going to need to do these extra steps." But again, we get into, maybe someone doesn't know a lot about it. They're like, "I've sprayed elastomeric before." And then they get inside in one of those tanks after the bidding process is done, and then they see what they're facing, and it's like, "Okay, you're 30 mils here, but you're 80 on the bulk trays." I mean, it looks like a little mound going over the top of it because it's the only way that you're going to pass the specification standard of the holiday test. So, that's another thing that we kind of encounter with that.

Paul: Yeah, and we do work with a lot of customers like yourself to say, "What are the best ways? What can we do? How high can I go?" Maybe we need to put a reinforcement fabric in there. Surely, frequently, not something that was accounted for in the bid process. But it might be cheaper, faster than putting three times the amount of coating on there too. But you never know until you get inside of them, and you start, you start that actual process, and you go, "Oh, okay, what are we going to do here?"

Elastomeric coatings: The best friend of a bolted ground storage tank

Matt: Yes, I mean, the best friend of a bolted ground storage tank was the elastomeric coatings making their way to them. Because we've come across a lot of them that would have the seeping out like you were talking about, that reinforcement fabric might have to be applied before you go over the top of it with the elastomeric. You'll have to put that in, and that'll be kind of where the floor shell wall transition is. They might have some areas there that have corroded out over time. So, we'll go ahead, and we'll apply that. But also, at the same time, with the push for alternate styles of tanks these days and the battles that they go back and forth with, me being a coatings guy, I'm never going to be for the alternate side of tank. But it's that same thing. It's like, "I've had this tank, I think it needs to be demoed." And I can come in and I can be like, "It might need to be demoed, but at the same time, what if I tell you they've got a product out that can probably get you another 20 to 25 years of life out of this." So, it has saved many a tanks and money for the operators in the districts that have to deal with them.

Paul: It's always that, double-edged sword, I work for a paint manufacturer, I want everybody to buy and put on more paint, but I'm also a taxpayer.

Matt: I say that all time. I really do.

Elastomeric coatings vs. epoxy coatings

Jack: So, yeah, we've kind of given a bunch of good advantages of them, and you guys apply a lot of the elastomerics. Maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the advantages of elastomerics versus epoxies.

Matt: Biggest thing is labor. Obviously, with us just having to blast out, because typically in our industry, it's a blast and prime every single day. So, if you're taking that out and you can just straight blast, you don't have to worry about the downtime that comes with sediment needing to settle and doing any vacuuming, doing any of that stuff that goes into the priming process. You will deal with a little bit more cost because you're going to have to deal with the dehumidification unit. But if I don't have to do three coats of epoxy on the interior, then I don't have the labor every single day that's having to deal with that. I can blast it out, and then we can roll in with a plural component unit, set it up, and spray it out in three days.

Jack: So, one of the things that we talked about with elastomerics, too, because these are high build coatings and things like that, if you ever had to remove one. It can be quite a challenge.

Matt: Yes. I've always said that whenever these come back around for rehabilitation, that I hope I'm retired because, oh gosh, it's going to be tough for some people. Luckily technology and things that are coming out these days are trying to help because I think they see what's coming, and they've dealt with them enough to know that it's going to be a pain for the contractor, whoever has to remove it. We did have one project that we're doing down in a rural water district that we actually had to go to a disbonder. It's the first time I've ever used it. I haven't used it since, but it was really interesting because if you go in trying to remove an elastomeric, and you've got a blast nozzle, you'll realize if you're just standing there trying to hit it, it's just going to blast back at you. The sand is. So, you're really just wasting your time and not really moving very fast or far. So, what they said is, "Oh, well, we've got this new disbonder you can try." I guess the disbonder, I don't know the full technical side, but from what I understood and saw, basically, you applied the material, sealed up the tank, and vapor over about a 48 to 72-hour window just ate away at this coating. And then, once it was done and aired out and everything, we were able to go in and remove it fairly easily.

Paul: Yeah. And a little bit deeper on that, the one that we use, that's exactly what it is. It's a chemical that the tank lining itself is not resistant to. And so, it does, it starts to break it down, and that's literally what we're trying to do is make it easier to remove by breaking it down. Similar to a paint stripper, but not quite as, "Let me apply it and now I have liquid." It softens it to a point that you can remove it so that you're spot on with your thoughts on what's going on.

Matt: Yeah. And it came off very easily and we moved on. And I'll be interested to see whenever we, because this was a smaller scale operation that we were dealing with this. So, when we're dealing with a bigger structure like when we get into our giants, our 2-million-gallon tanks, things like that, that look like the Superdome when you walk in them. I'm curious how we're going to be able to work with vapor there. And then do it, because what I'd have to try to get into is then you got to start weighing the safety side because you're dealing with the chemical, making sure it's just a whole nother thing, but I don't have to worry about it right now.

Jack: If you guys have been listening, you can obviously tell that Matt knows a lot about what he's talking about, and that Gulf States is a good company to reach out to when you need coating application. If you guys want to get ahold of Matt, you guys can get ahold of Paul at technicalservice@carboline.com, and he can get you in contact with Matt.

"The four questions" [Non-technical]

Jack: So, now we're going to move to something that we do, that we like to have a little fun here on the show. We do it with every guest that we have. It's called our "Four Questions" segment. And I'll go ahead and start it off. Matt, what's your favorite TV show or movie?

Matt: Ooh, movie. I'm kind of a history buff. So, anytime Braveheart, Gladiator, any of those, come on, I'm just glued to the TV. So, I like that. Comedy-wise. I would say probably Wedding Crashers.

Jack: Oh, that's a pretty good one. "Ma! The meatloaf!"

Paul: So, on that note, what's your favorite sports team?

Matt: Sports team, obviously, being here in Houston, I like the local teams. The Rockets and the Texans are terrible right now, so they don't get a lot of my attention. But we got the Astros, World Champions. Legitimate this time. I think the best part of having if you're from a town that's won a championship, and I don't know if y'all are.

Paul: Oh, yeah. St. Louis has got a bunch of them.

Jack: Yeah. We got the rival Cardinals.

Matt: Well, yes, but I always, what I think is, the biggest thing I take when they do these runs through the postseason is everyone's always like, did they win the World Series? Was it fun for you to win the World Series? Well, I'll tell you that the biggest thing about the run is not a lot of sleep. And you're out with friends, but it's the bonding and stuff that you do during that. I mean, you're hanging out with people all the time. Y'all are all dead tired. You know you got to go to work the next morning, you're probably showing up the next day for another one. And then, when it comes time for your break, you all get sleep. But at the same time, I can sit there and tell you where I was. There's certain things throughout that, and there's relationships that are formed. There's all kinds of stuff. All because a sports team is playing in the playoffs. I never would've thought that whenever I was younger, because I was just, "Oh, they didn't win. They're good. They suck." It's just that's how it happens.

Jack: Along the lines, since you picked baseball, so we'll stay with baseball, if you play for the Houston Astros and they call your name out, "Now batting, number whatever, Matt Morris." What's the song that gets played as you walk up to home plate?

Matt: Oh, talk about putting on the spot. It would have to be something that is, whenever I was younger, I used to listen to Disturbed, and Disturbed actually plays at the Texans, and it's that kind of like countdown that like it's going and that it goes off from there. They have a song, but it's escaping me off the top, but probably one of the Disturbed albums.

Paul: What's your hobby in your free time? What you do?

Matt: I mean, obviously, with having small children, my hobbies, I don't really get to do a lot like I used to. But, you know, fishing from time to time, being here by the coast, I like to do that. Like to get friends together and do a lot of stuff, we'll go places, maybe go out of town. And do those things. But my hobbies, I guess I can get away to work out. So, I've really been enjoying doing that. I got some competition stuff that I'm going to be doing pretty soon. That I'm trying to train for. So, I think, as obviously, we get older and transition away from being able to do all the fun things, I think trying to take care of yourself health-wise and doing stuff like that, the easiest way for me, has been like, okay, let's focus my energy on competitions that are coming up, and then I'll go do that.

Paul: Nice.

Matt: I got one coming up. I'm going to die, but yep.

Jack: You look like you'll be okay. Well, guys, that's Matt Morris from Gulf States Protective Coatings. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Matt: Absolutely. Anytime.

Paul: Yeah, thank you.

"Tech Tips"

Jack: Up next is our "Tech Tips" segment.

Jamie Valdez: You have questions. They have answers. This is "Tech Tips."

John VonBerg: Hey, I'm John VonBerg with Carboline Rail Tech Service. Today I wanted to discuss five pounds above tail. And when I say that, I'm talking about your pressure to the gun that's going to affect your atomization. So, what we want to realize is we don't want spray with the same pressure every day. Start with low pressure, slowly raise five pounds at a time, getting rid of your fingers, and then your tails. Once the tails are gone, five more pounds, and that's it. This will work whether you're spraying from a PC or you're batch mixing. Same concept. Also, this will prevent overpressure, which could also result in improper atomization, which all this, if you take it into consideration, you'll use less paint, you'll have less waste, and less usage.

Closing remarks

Jack: Thanks again for joining us this week. It's been a great episode, and we'll see you guys in another month.