Metal jacketing

Embossed aluminum is the standard jacket and it earns the job: light, corrosion-resistant, and tough enough for a plant. We run 0.016-inch on most pipe and step up to 0.024 where spans are long or traffic is rough, in smooth or stucco finish. It is already included in our installed prices — no adder.

Stainless goes where aluminum gives up — food plants under daily washdown, chemical splash, caustic air — at $5–9 per square foot over aluminum, and it is the last jacket that section of line will need. PVC is the clean, economical indoor finish, about $2 per square foot less than aluminum; it stays off hot surfaces and out of the sun.

The CJM family started as a metal shop — CJM Metals still builds custom steel today — and jacketing is where that shows. We roll our own radiuses, cut our own gores and break our own flats in-house, so the metal arrives at your plant already fitting the pipe it was cut for.

Elbows are gored and lapped like shingles, not a wad of bunched foil and tape that splits the first winter; tees, end caps, tank heads and valve transitions get the same treatment. Because fabrication happens on the bench and not on the ladder, field time is banding and screwing — give us a maintenance window and we fill it with hours of work, not days.

Every horizontal lap faces down and away from the weather. Every longitudinal seam sits in the bottom third of the pipe, sealed, so wind-driven rain runs over the joint instead of into it. Bands lock the jacket every foot or so and screws hold the laps where vibration would work them open.

This is not cosmetics: insulation that takes on water loses most of its R-value and holds that water against hot steel, and corrosion under insulation is how a pipe that looked fine on the outside gets condemned at the next inspection. Penetrations, supports and saddles are where water actually gets in, so that is where we spend the time — flashed, caulked and capped instead of just cut around.

Hail flattens jacket, forklifts crease it, and UV chalks a mastic finish until it cracks. If the insulation underneath is still dry and sound you do not pay for a new system — we strip the damaged metal, check what is under it, and fit new jacket over the insulation you already own. The same goes for insulation that never got a jacket at all.

The honest part happens on the walk-down. We check the insulation with an IR gun and a probe: dry and tight, we re-jacket; wet or crushed, we tell you, because new metal over wet insulation just seals the problem in. That job is removal and re-insulation instead, and we quote it straight.

On new insulation work the aluminum jacket is already in the number — the installed prices on pipe and tank and vessel work include it. Stainless adds $5–9 per square foot; PVC takes about $2 off.

Jacket-only work — re-jacketing damage, cladding bare insulation — is priced per square foot on the walk-down, because the number depends on how much of the old metal fights back. Small jobs carry the same $1,500 minimum as everything else. The walk-down is free and the written estimate lands within 24 hours; if a storm just went through, call early.

Cost and energy figures on this page are planning examples, not measured results from a CJM project. Material, thickness and installation selections depend on the actual conditions and site requirements.