Meet the 12” x 20” Locust grate by Iron Age Designs.  This grate is made for custom Iron Age frames and is typically used in suspended walkways and stairs (see it in action HERE).  We had a sample available and brainstormed about innovative ways to use trench drain grates.

Ultimately, we decided to custom paint the grate and use it as a decorative planter stand for our office plant life.  It really came out beautifully…  I’ve included details on the process with photos below:

The first stage was to create a base coat that would be the natural color of the grate.  The paint I used was gray enamel designed to protect metals against rust.  After spraying an initial layer, I returned to coat the corners and crevices – just to ensure that there would be no rust-vulnerable area on the grates.

The grate dried in the sun for several hours until the paint was no longer soft.  Then we baked it at low heat (150 F) in an electric oven for 15 minutes so that the paint hardened.  Because paint is simply pigment suspended in a bonding agent, paint relies on a long evaporation process to become dry. The theory in baking the grate was to reinforce that process.

I wanted my final background to be bright and have a clean surface to show through, so I painted the grate white.  It took a few touch-ups here, too, to make sure that I had an even coating.  I baked the grate again and let it cool before continuing.

Early on the grate’s design, I’d decided on a blue-to-green gradient background that had a separation at the locust branch.  The effect suggests shadows underneath the branches and a blue sky.  The background shown below is different from the final product because it lacks the gradient dynamic of the blue paint (I forgot to photograph the final background before I began detailing).

With the background complete, I was able to begin detailing the leaves and stems.  This was the most was the most time consuming aspect of the project.  I worked with oil-based paints (bright yellow and red) to create a highlighting which gives the grate a Japanese anime effect.  You can see me at work in the photos below.  (Note:  Cleaning the brushes from this oil-based paint was a chore until I learned to use acetone.  It works like a charm but gives off a lot of fumes, so be careful!)

Once my artwork was complete, I gave it one final bake in the oven just to make certain it was dry and hard.  At this point, I could have given it a coating of clear enamel, but I was too anxious to put my new creation to use.

The final phase of my project was attaching felt pads to the bottom of the stand.  This is important in protecting the wood table from the heavy plant stand.  The grate used to make the stand is cast iron and weighs a hefty 18 pounds.  I used six ½ inch diameter pads that I purchased from the local hardware store.  They also had rubber bumpers that I considered using.  I felt that the “felt” would work better for this application.

Just take a look at the finished product below!  Wowzer!!  This was a fun project.  This locust grate is available in a 20” x 40” size, as well.  I’ve seen a coffee table made from this larger locust grate.  And, I have my eye on a sun grate that looks like it would make a nice wall hanging.  It makes me wonder about how many uses there are for these ornamental grates.  Email me, Hannah@trenchdrain.biz, with your ideas if you can think of other uses for any of the Iron Age ornamental grating products.  If you have photos of something special you have done, send those, too.  I’d love to see your work.

It was a Sunday afternoon in October, 2009.  The sky was vibrant, the wind gentle after a chilly morning, and the sound of lapping waves was soft in my ears.  Autumn showed in the emerging rainbow of trees surrounding Walden Pond.

The pond could hardly be considered a pond by its size, a hearty 61 square acres.  However, as I stepped out onto its sandy shore all I could think about was Henry David Thoreau paddling his canoe across its great expanse – that and the trench drain I’d spotted on the way into the reservation.

I could hardly believe that I’d seen it on my journey, but then again I always seem to spot trench drain wherever I go.  It lay across the paved service road that acts as an entrance point to the most famous landmark in American philosophy.

The trench drain was pretty wide and for good reason.  Though you can’t see it well (thanks to my stellar photography skills), the drain cuts across a stretching hill.  On the left side of the picture is the drive, which provides an excellent route for vehicle access as well as a clear path for the flowing water coming directly off the road above; to the right in the picture, water also flows down the small hill and runs across the path.

The Walden Pond State Reservation tries to eliminate erosion and preserve the original nature of the park by a number of methods:  this trench drain is just one of them.

Take a closer look:

An interesting part of this grate is that it has transversely slotted grates.  This is a key point in ADA Compliant grates, which require slots to be safe for wheelchair access.  The slots are placed perpendicular to the direction of travel so that wheelchairs, bicycles and strollers are able to travel safely.

Though I could find no markers on the drain, I can state with certainty this it is a grate typically sold through a foundry.  How can I presume that?  For one thing, foundries generally provide only frame-and-grate systems which require concrete construction and in-situ forming of a trench.  That is exactly the case shown above.  And, on another note, the iron grates were “raw” – or without a surface finish.  While trench drain manufacturers might epoxy or powder coat the grates, many foundries leave them in an uncoated or raw state.

The day was full of spectacular sights!  A few pictures of the landscape…

Looking out across Walden Pond

A small alcove in the pond, near Thoreau's cabin

There are stone stairs into the water here; look how clear that water is!

Now, the real purpose of my visit to Walden Pond was because of the philosophical history of the site.  Thoreau’s book, “Walden,” couldn’t help but make nature seem beautiful on paper; I wanted to compare the real site to his words and see whether they measured up.  Also, I admired his experiment into naturalism and wished to see his muse so that I could understand why he had devoted his time in such a way.

Perhaps the answer I went looking for could best be summed up with the following picture, which I took at the old site of his cabin:

I had a wonderful time at Walden Pond last year.  It was breathtakingly beautiful!  Though I meandered about the trails, I never did accomplish the mile-plus circuit around the pond.  Even without walking the full trail, I was happy to simply be there… and to find trench drain at work, preserving the famous landscape.

As North America continues to builds its infrastructure, our universal concern for water quality and storm water control has given rise to an increased use of trench drain.  Trench drain is becoming a bigger part of our hardscape and streetscape projects, and higher aesthetic demands are being made on the grating used in these drains. Because of this, it is a common practice to “finish” cast iron grates – to coat or treat them in order to protect the grates’ integrity and look.  This article focuses on five finishing options for Cast Iron grating and their uses in applications from industrial to residential.

Raw Cast Iron (Uncoated) 

Cast iron is, by far, the most common metal used to make trench grating because of its relatively low cost and good functionality.  The current standard finish that is supplied with decorative and municipal-highway trench grating is raw.  Raw (uncoated) cast iron is what you get when you don’t coat the casting, leaving it to the elements.  The foundries that manufacture the products each have their own reasoning, but one fact remains true:  foundries just love to sell raw castings!  In fact, because most aren’t set up to offer painting or coating services, it’s sometimes like pulling a hen’s teeth to have a foundry supply anything other than a raw, uncoated grate.

Raw cast iron will naturally rust and develop a dark patina, and this thought process leads many municipal-highway foundries to store their product outdoors.  After all, their product will be used on the street and be exposed to lots of water anyway.  By installation time a municipal-highway may have already had three years of exposure to sun and rain.

But that can be a long time coming for a grate:  in some environments, a grate can remain a rusty orange color for years, bleeding the color into the surrounding concrete and creating unattractive stains.  This is pretty important in residential applications where grates are chosen not only for their load rating but for their tidy appearance.  Perhaps a better industry-wide motivating factor toward the move to finished grating, though, is that corrosive environments can actually wear a raw grate away faster.  That creates hazards and replacement costs over time!  Yikes!

Bituminous Coating

A bituminous coating is the second finish type that I have seen on municipal-highway castings. The first type was… you’ve guessed it!  Raw cast iron.   Bituminous coating is a cheap way of “water-proofing” the grating for a few years.  The top surface of the grating will lose the protection in time, but the underside of the grate will remain coated, which will help prevent radical oxidation of the iron. In the past, the casting may have been coated with a light tar coating.  The tar was applied by actually dipping the casting in a vat of tar.  This was usually done at the request of the project’s architect or the government agency involved in specifying the grating.

The bulky ductile iron or cast iron grating made for highway or municipal applications is supplied by foundries such as Neenah, Campbell or East Jordan.

Epoxy Coating

From everything I’ve seen in commercial trench drain, the grates that are supplied by manufacturers like Polycast, MEA, ABT and Zurn have all been painted with black epoxy paint (see below photo).  I can’t remember ever seeing an uncoated cast iron grate supplied by any commercial-industrial trench drain manufacturer.

Below is a photograph of a trench grate painting station in China.  These products are mostly being shipped to Europe but still demonstrate that surface coating is a common occurrence in the commercial and industrial trench drain market worldwide.

One problem with an epoxy paint coating  is that it will eventually wear or chip, exposing the raw cast iron underneath and leading to localized rust formation.  The rate that this reaction will occur depends on the severity of the application but, in comparison to powder coating (see below for more information), epoxy coating seems to be more rugged and durable.  Some paint facilities recommend using a base coat of epoxy paint prior to a powder coating operation.

Powder Coating

Powder coating is a process where “powdered paint” is electro-statically deposited on a metal part and then heated to a temperature that allows the powder to melt, intimately coat the part and harden.  This method of coating is more efficient and safer on the environment than traditional wet paint coating because a much higher amount of the paint adheres to the part.   This coating method is used with decorative trench drain grating for applications that are not going to see heavy vehicle traffic.   If this coating is chipped off by some hard impact, it could lead to an exposed cast iron surface that would then rust. This is a primary reason I only recommend powder coated trench grating for residential and decorative applications.

Trench Drain Systems is a national distributor of trench drain systems and decorative grating.  For further information on this topic, email us at sales@trenchdrain.biz or by telephone at 610-638-1221.