Tank and vessel cladding

Tank cladding is the metal skin over the insulation on a tank or vessel: anything round and insulated that needs a hard outer skin. A tank is clad in parts, the round side, called the body, and an end at each end of it: a flat end, a domed end or a cone. Each part is its own fitting with its own page, and when you send the body and its ends on one job, they are made to match.

Measure over the insulation. For the body, give us the tank size over the insulation and the height of the body from one end to the other. Each end is measured on its own, so a tank with two flat ends needs both.

A sketch of the tank with the body, the ends and their sizes on it is enough for us to start. If a head is not a simple dome, send a photo or the vessel drawing with your sizes and the office will look at it.

Tank body cladding is the shell that wraps the round side of an insulated tank or vessel, vertical or horizontal. We work it out as one shell to your sizes, then split it into sheets you can lift by hand and fix one after another on site.

• Flat tank end: a disc that closes off the end of a tank. It can have a turned rim, the edge folded down so the end closes neatly over the shell cladding. Give us the diameter over the insulation and how deep you want the rim; a rim of nought is a plain disc.
• Domed tank end: covers a dished head, built from tapered petals that meet at a small round crown cap, so the aluminium follows the curve without puckering. Give us the vessel size over the insulation and the height of the dome. The petals come pre-rolled, with swaged seams, ready to fit.
• Tank cone: covers a conical end, and does the job of a big reducer where a large round section steps down to a smaller one. Give us the small size, the large size and the height between them. For a step on a lagged pipe run, the in-line reducer is the better fit.

Plain or stucco aluminium, 0.6 to 0.8 mm for the body and cone, and up to 1.0 mm for flat and domed ends. Stainless steel 304 and 316 is made to order where the job calls for it, and colour-coated coil is made to order too. The aluminium vs stainless steel guide helps you choose.

BS 5422 sets how thick the insulation should be, and the insulation decides the size of the cladding; in Site Measure you pick the insulation section as you measure, so the spec travels with the measurement. The pipework round a vessel is pipe cladding, and an insulated flange joint takes a flange box, a round split cover.

Every pattern is worked out from your measurements and made in Dublin 12. We aim to quote the same day, and a standard build is about a week from an approved measurement, collected from the workshop or delivered across Ireland. Each fitting page shows the shape and how to measure it, or browse every shape in the tank and vessel fittings list.