I have a collection of eight 100-gallon Rubbermaid water troughs. It’s not that I have that many horses, it’s just that these are really good watering troughs with one major flaw. The trough has two inside corners that recess the drain plug, and those corners are extreme stress points. Sooner or later, a crack will develop.
My collection of these troughs goes back over 30 years of using these tubs. Over that time, Rubbermaid has made several mold changes, but so far they’ve done nothing to eliminate the stress points. Five of my troughs have been retired because of cracks in one or both corners.
There are a number of YouTube videos showing how to fix them using a hot knife to weld the plastic back together. That works for a while, but since the repair is weaker than the original plastic and does nothing to reinforce the stress points, you’re only buying time, a few months at best.
Still, I didn’t have Rubbermaid tubs in mind when I bought my plastic repair kit. The kit was cheap and used metal staples to reinforce the plastic. It came with plastic filler sticks and a smoothing blade to make the repair look professional. I admit it, I’m a sucker for every new gadget and repair gimmick that comes along. I’ve bought glue that struggled to hold two sheets of paper together, waterproof tape that had no stick, and “no-effort” cleansers that made no effort to clean. At $30, my expectations for this kit were modest at best.
To my surprise, the kit was impressive — lots of plastic rods, sheets, backing material, smoothing blades and several packets of staples. After reading the instructions and sorting through the staples, I started my first repair.
I’ve often tried to fix plastic by remelting the pieces together. Sadly, those repairs are rarely strong and often break again in short order. I even have a handheld 3D printer extruder that melts plastic as it adds more — same disappointing story.
My lack of success made the idea of reinforcing staples even more appealing. Would it actually work? My first test subjects were a few battered plastic lawn chairs.
The trigger on the gun sends current through the staple, heating it instantly. You press the glowing staple into the plastic, release the trigger, and let the plastic cool. The shape of the staple locks it securely in place.
If you read the reviews on any of these repair kits, you see a large number of complaints about the gun only working for a few uses. Nothing is broken, but the staple is no longer making good contact with the gun, probably due to oxidation in the contact arm sockets. Pull the trigger and press the staple down into the repair. It will quickly heat up and melt into the plastic.
Staple repair does take a little practice. The trick is to embed the staple at just the right depth. If it’s too shallow, it won’t hold; too deep, and you might melt straight through, turning a small repair into a much bigger problem. I learned that one the hard way.
Opting not to re-melt the plastic or add filler, my first repairs were far from pretty — but they worked. They easily added another season to the life of the chairs. Well, three of them, anyway. The fourth chair became a “learning experience.” I got a little overzealous with the staples and made things worse trying to fix it.
Then came the unscheduled “Venn weight test” — 200 pounds of me and 70 pounds of Venn standing in my lap. The result was catastrophic failure at the repair point, cascading into several more breaks. That chair is now a plastic donor for future projects.
Back to the Rubbermaid tubs. The proper way to repair cracks in plastic is to drill small holes at each end of the crack to relieve stress and keep it from spreading. That’s a great technique for impact cracks, but in the Rubbermaid tubs, the stress comes from the force of the water contained by the tub. In this care the crack will just keep growing. Using the staples transfers the stress to the metal and greatly reduces the chance of the crack spreading.
Keep in mind, the staples don’t seal leaks. The crack itself still has to be closed. Rather than using the hot screwdriver trick popular on YouTube, I used the smoothing blade from the kit. Unlike the screwdriver method, I only needed to seal the cracks, not make them structurally sound.
I wasn’t 100% successful on the first try, but because of several interruptions, I stumbled across an interesting discovery: if the staples are in place to stop the crack from spreading, a very slow leak will often seal itself over time. As fine debris collects in the crack, it naturally plugs the gap. That can’t happen with the old hot-screwdriver fix, because the stress remains on the plastic itself.
I should mention that although only one corner was leaking, I found cracks in both corners. I wasn’t born yesterday, I went ahead and put staples in both corners as an additional measure I also placed staples both inside and outside of the tup. After repairing the tubs, I clipped off the staple ends and used a Dremel to smooth the inside staples down completely, no sharp edges to snag sensitive muzzles.
So far, I’ve successfully repaired three Rubbermaid tubs, easily paying for the kit several times over.
As for the kit itself, no, I’m not posting a link. Amazon probably carries twenty different versions by now. Mine is a 220-watt model, but most of the newer ones are 200 watts or more. The concept works beautifully; I’ll leave it to you to choose the version that suits you best.
Wondering how or even why I would make a song from Songer about fixing water troughs? So was I but I did it anyway.
Leak-Free Dreams
© 2025, Byron Seastrunk. All rights reserved.
